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Photo: Mohammed Shehadeh, imam of Al-Aqsa Islamic Society, speaking after a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday. Photo: Max Marin/AL DÍA News

City leaders stand with Muslim community, bash Trump

Mayor-elect Kenney manned the defensive, while Mayor Nutter went into attack mode.

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On Tuesday in City Hall, Mayor Michael Nutter and mayor-elect Jim Kenney stood alongside two dozen other civic leaders in support of Philadelphia's Muslim community. The press conference was incited by the news that someone had left a severed pig's head outside of Al-Aqsa Islamic Society's mosque late Sunday evening. But discussion took a turn to national issues immediately.

Earlier in the day, Nutter had responded to presidential candidate Donald Trump's proposal to ban all Muslim immigration from the U.S. by saying that, if the law permitted, he would ban Trump from Philadelphia.

But he wasn't done there.

After a moment of solidarity for the city's Muslim leaders by his side, Nutter compared Trump's "dangerous" tactics to those of Adolph Hitler. He would double down to justify this statement later.

"Donald Trump's comments are a threat to the moral security of the United States of America," he said.

"This is fear-mongering that we have not seen literally since the 1930s and 40s. Donald Trump has taken a page from the playbook of Hitler: He has demonized a group, blamed a group for the country's problems and then he seeks to ban or eliminate that group as some kind of solution to a problem that does not exist. This is a dangerous form of American radicalization."

Nutter ended the press conference momentarily after calling Trump an "a**hole." He apologized and later returned for more questions from the press.

Both the mayor and the mayor-elect took swipes at the press corps, too. In short, Nutter called on media organizations to reconsider how much coverage they devote to politicans like Trump.

Kenney compared the current situation facing American Muslims to that facing undocumented immigrants, and criticized journalists who used the terms "illegal" and "alien" to refer to undocumented persons. 

"They're not aliens," Kenney said. "They are human beings."

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said that the department had obtained surveillance video of Sunday's incident involving the pig's head. The investigation, however, is still ongoing. Ramsey asked for the public's assistance in identifying the vehicle.

Representatives from Al-Aqsa Islamic Society encouraged unity. Speaking of his feelings about the incident, Imam Mohammed Shehadeh said in Arabic that "I hope that [the perpetrator] doesn’t repeat this mistake again,”

At the same time, Shehadeh added he “hopes nobody takes this as an example and tries to do something like this.” 

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