'No Muslim for president'

"I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that," Carson told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Carson, a retired brain surgeon, who often refers to his own deep Christian faith, said he thought a US president's religion should be "consistent with the Constitution."

Asked if he thought Islam met this bar, he said: "No, I do not."

Carson, who is third in opinion polls on who should be the Republican candidate, made his remarks after front-runner Donald Trump declined to challenge a questioner's assertion that US President Barack Obama was a Muslim. Trump had responded to the question whether he would accept a Muslim president by saying: "Some people have said it already happened."

Widespread condemnation

Carson's comments quickly drew scorn from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, another of the sixteen Republican presidential candidates for the November 2016 vote.

"I think Dr. Carson needs to apologize," Graham said, adding the comments were particularly offensive to US soldiers who are Muslim.

The Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR), America's largest Muslim civil rights group, condemned Carson for his statement, which it said should disqualify him from the presidential contest because the US Constitution forbids religious tests for holding public office.

CAIR director Nihad Awad said, "This disqualifies him from being a president. My advice to GOP presidential candidates is: Read the US Constitution if you haven't yet! It keeps America great."

'GOP fearmongering'

Democrat politicians were also quick to lash out at Carson:

"It's unimaginable that the leading GOP presidential candidates are resorting to fearmongering to benefit their campaigns," said Minnesota Democratic Representative Keith Ellison, the first practicing Muslim elected to Congress.

"It took us too long to overcome the prejudice against electing a Catholic or an African-American president. People should be elected to office based on their ideas, not their religion or the color of their skin," said Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, stressing that he was "disappointed" in Carson.

In a statement later on Sunday, Doug Watts, a Carson campaign spokesman, said Carson believed strongly in the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom, "but he also believes that the American people are far from ready to accept a Muslim as president in our Judeo-Christian society."

A Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll conducted in January in Iowa, the first state to vote in the nominating contest, showed 39 percent of Republicans saw Islam as inherently violent, compared with 13 percent of Democrats.

And a Huffington Post/YouGov poll found that 55 percent of Americans had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Islam.

rg/tj (AFP, Reuters)