Trump defiant over Muslim ban backlash

US Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday defended his call to ban Muslims from entering the United States despite wide criticism from in and out of his country, calling it a temporary measure in a time of war. Trump likened his proposal to those implemented by former US President Franklin Roosevelt against people of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War Two. "What I'm doing is no different than FDR," Trump said on ABC's Good Morning America program in one of a round of heated television interviews where he defended his plan in the wake of last week's California shooting spree by two Muslims who authorities said were radicalized. "We have no choice but to do this," the candidate seeking the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential race told ABC. "We have people that want to blow up our buildings, our cities. We have to figure out what's going on." Critics have said his plan rejects American values by singling out people solely based on their religion. At a rally in South Carolina on Monday, Trump called for a complete shutdown of Muslims entering the US "until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on." "Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad and have no sense of reason or respect for human life," Trump said. Trump's statement drew swift and fierce blowback from many directions, including the White House, rivals for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and Republican former Vice President Dick Cheney, who said the idea "goes against everything we stand for and believe in." Clinton tweeted that Trump's idea was "reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive." Keywords trending on social media after Trump's statement included Hitler, shutdown and immigration. But conservative pundit Ann Coulter wrote "GO TRUMP, GO!" on the social media site. Egypt's Dar al-Iftaa, which each year issues tens of thousands of edicts that carry influence but not the force of law, denounced Trump's latest statement. "This hostile vision towards Islam and Muslims will increase the tension within American society," Dar Al-Iftaa said in a statement. "It is unfair to sanction all Muslims because of a group of extremists." Din Syamsuddin, chief of Indonesia's Muhammadiyah, the second-largest Muslim organization in the country, said Trump's comments were a joke. "It is laughable that there is a person in this modern, globalised era who is so narrow-minded as to ban some people from entering America," he said. Tahir Ashrafi, the head of the Ulema Council, Pakistan's biggest council of Muslim clerics, said Trump's comments promoted violence. "If some Muslim leader says there is a war between Christians and Muslims, we condemn him. So why should we not condemn an American if he says that?" In Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, Trump dismissed his critics. He told a rally that mosques in the US should also be scrutinized. Trump went farther than other Republican candidates, who have called for a suspension of a plan by President Barack Obama to bring into the US as many as 10,000 Syrian refugees fleeing their country's civil war and Islamic State militants. The United Nations refugee agency said such rhetoric was harming that resettlement program. The International Organization for Migration responded to Trump's comments by saying any discrimination based on religion went against all international accords on dealing with refugees. Trump's remarks followed last week's massacre in San Bernardino by a Muslim couple. The husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, was US-born. The wife, Tashfeen Malik, was born in Pakistan and came to the US from Saudi Arabia. The Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Monday the couple had been radicalized.