'Islamophobia' forced Donald Trumph to admit about his 'Muslim friends'?

Washington: The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave yet another controversial statement by saying that he has at least 20 'Muslim friends' but failed to name even a single out of them.

According to a report published in The Independent, on being asked by the Telegraph that who are the so called Muslim friends of Trump, he reportedly ducked the question and said, "Oh, I could give you about 20 of them."

The newspaper added that Trump's son was also unable to throw any light on his father's Muslim friends. He did, however, say they had "completed a lot of business deals" in the Middle East.

 

The former star of the US version of the Apprentice made the comments moments after coming off stage in Sunday's Republican debate in Manchester, New Hampshire.

During the debate Trump added torture to the contest by saying that he would "bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding". He has previously touted the benefits of waterboarding - which stimulates drowning - telling a crowd at a campaign rally last year that "you bet your ass" he would reintroduce the method of torture.

Notably, in January, the Republican White House frontrunner Donald Trump's had called for a ban on Muslims entering the US have been used by Somalia's Shebab in a jihadist recruitment video, a US monitoring group had said.

Trump's inflammatory remarks later sparked a wave of global outrage, with his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton warning that his words were playing into the hands of extremist groups.

 

Furthermore, following the shooting in San Bernadino in 2014, in which 14 people were killed in an attack by supporters of the so-called Islamic State, the billionaire business mogul responded by calling for all Muslims to be banned from the United States.