What Trump team has said about Islam

Does Donald Trump trust Islam is a religion?

It was a direct inquiry, asked of Sebastian Gorka, delegate colleague to the president, amid a radio meeting a week ago. His answer was definitely not direct, be that as it may.

"It's not a discourse about Islam as a religion or not a religion," he answered. "It's about radical Islamic fear mongering. We are set up to speak the truth about the danger. We're not going to white it out, erase it as the Obama organization did."

Be that as it may, is it a religion?

"I think you ought to make that inquiry," Gorka proceeded. "In any case, I would state that is truly a misreading of everything he's said throughout the most recent year and a half."

A more critical take a gander at Mr Trump's remarks in the course of the most recent 18 months just confounds the matter, however - as do the perspectives of the counselors nearest to the new president.

Mr Trump has over and over cautioned of the perils of "radical Islamic fear mongering" - a line seen as an immediate reprimand of Barack Obama, who while president had distinctly declined to utilize the term.

He pummeled Mr Obama and Hillary Clinton for being "originators" of the purported Islamic State. He openly fought with the guardians of a Muslim US officer murdered in Iraq. He has, on occasion, pushed an impermanent prohibition on Muslims entering the US and established a "watch list" for those as of now in the US.

These approaches and activities, commentators say, uncover a hostile to Islamic ill will that lies at the heart of Mr Trump's legislative issues.

"All the way, the 2016 presidential decision strikingly uncovered that Islamaphobia is alive, and powerful and politically full as ever," composes University of Detroit Professor Khaled Baydoun. "Scapegoating Islam and denouncing Muslims was significantly more than only crusade informing; for Donald Trump it was a triumphant procedure."

At times Mr Trump did little to dispel this conclusion.

"I think Islam hates us," he said during an interview in March 2016.

At other moments, he struck a more measured tone, drawing a distinction between the more than 1.6 billion who follow the Islamic faith and the smaller subset of "bad and dangerous people" who happen to be Muslims.

"I love the Muslims," Mr Trump said in September 2015. "I think they're great people."

If a presidential administration is a reflection of the man who sits in the Oval Office, it shouldn't be any surprise that Mr Trump's conflicted views about Muslims are also on display in the team of senior advisers that surround him