Donald Trump’s administration has seven people who have expressed Islamophobic sentiment

One person would be too many

Stephen Bannon, Mr Trump's chief adviser, works for a white supremacist website (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

"There is a war on. And the war is against all of western civilisation…If we do not destroy the scourge of radical Islam, it will ultimately destroy Western civilization."

KT McFarland, the Fox News analyst and Donald Trump’s incoming deputy national security adviser, is just one of six people who have been appointed to run the government come January 2017 - excluding the president-elect himself - who have openly expressed prejudiced views about Muslims.

Political correctness, Ms McFarland added, of not discriminating against Muslims "is getting us killed".

The Council on American-Islamic Relations has compiled a list of racist quotations expressed by everyone from the incoming head of the justice department, Jeff Sessions, to the new national security advisor Michael Flynn.

"It’s not in their [Muslims'] conscience, life like we understand life. It just isn’t," insisted Mr Flynn.

The confusion between the peaceful religion of Islam, versus radical religious extremism which is present for a minority of people in every religion, has led to a major spike in racially motivated hate crimes.

Hate crimes against American Muslims have soared to their highest levels since the 9/11 attacks.

In Oklahoma City, the FBI was called upon to investigate the dumping of a pig carcass outside an Islamic center in Lawton. Muslims are prohibited from eating pork products. The driver of the truck backed up to the centre, as shown in CCTV footage, the carcass fell off the tailgate, and the owner drove away.

Muslims have been beaten up and killed. Mosques have been frequent targets, and women have had their hijabs ripped off their heads in the street.

Ben Carson, the new US housing and urban development secretary, said he believes that there is a Muslim plot to take over America, called "civilizational jihad".

Out of a total population of 318 million people in the US, there are only about 3.3 million Muslims.

He compared Syrian refugees to rabid dogs and said: "Bringing in people from the Middle East right now carries extra danger and we cannot put our people at risk because we are trying to be politically correct."

Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo, who will serve as the head of the CIA, defended a staffer who posted a link to a blog on his social media accounts that used the racial slur "turban topper" and called president Barack Obama an "evil Muslim communist USURPER".

"I am convinced there is no malice in his actions," he said in 2010 when he was running for office. He also blamed Muslim leaders for their "silence" and "complicity" after the 2013 Boston Marathon attacks.

Stephen Bannon, Mr Trump’s senior counsel and the founder of white supremacist platform Breitbart, compared Shariah to “Nazism, racism and communism”. He also falsely accused Virginia democratic senator Tim Kaine as being affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

He said Richard Spencer, a white supremacist, was "one of the top two or three experts in the world on this great war we are fighting against fundamental Islam."

Potential appointees to the administration include 12 more people who have openly made anti-Muslim statements, including New Jersey governor Chris Christie who said Shariah law was “crap” and he was fed up of “dealing with the crazies”, and former speaker of the house Newt Gingrich, who advocated making all Muslims take a religious "test".

"We should, frankly, test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported," said Mr Gingrich.

Mr Trump first proposed a temporary ban of all Muslims entering the US in November 2015, shortly after the terrorist attacks in Paris. He also lied that he had seen Muslims clapping and cheering as the Twin Towers came down on 9/11.

A 2016 study from the University of Minnesota found that disapproval of Muslims in the US had almost doubled from 26 per cent a decade ago to 45.5 per cent in 2016, making Muslims the most disliked group in the country.