Presidential candidate Donald Trump, an ultra-conservative who prides himself on being rude and politically incorrect — outdid himself Monday by calling for a complete ban of Muslims entering the United States of America.

In making that statement, Trump painted Muslims all over the world with the same brush — one of terrorism and hatred.

But for many, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“This is exactly what ISIS wants from Americans, to turn us against each other,” said Nihad Awad, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“This is outrageous, coming from someone who wants to assume the highest office in the land. Donald Trump sounds more like a leader of a lynch mob than a great nation like ours,” Awad said Tuesday. “This rhetoric echoes the policies enacted in Nazi Germany against the Jews. Have we learned anything from history, Donald Trump?”

Awad said American Muslims were mourning. He noted that American Muslims were among the victims, and the first responders, of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The image Trump painted of himself and of Americans for the rest of the world was unflattering as well, and the global reaction was predictably critical.

House speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and former Vice President Dick Cheney said Trump’s remarks violate American ideals and the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion.

“This is not conservatism,” Paul said. “Some of our best and biggest allies in this struggle and fight against radical Islam terror are Muslims.”

According to the U.S. Department of Defense, there are currently 5,896 self-identified Muslims serving in the U.S. military — and that’s not counting 400,000 men and women who did not report their religion.

Josh Earnest, White House press secretary, said Tuesday that Trump’s call for banning Muslims proves he is not a viable candidate for president.

“The fact is, the first thing a president does when he or she takes the oath of office is to swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he said. “What Donald Trump said yesterday disqualifies him for the office of president.”

We realize that everything humanly — and humanely — possible must be done to protect Americans from terrorist attacks. But banning Muslims is not the answer. Banning Muslims would be racist, prejudicial, discriminatory and just plain wrong.

We echo the question: Have we learned anything from history?

Ironically, Trump’s call for banning Muslims came on the 74th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by Japan. 

Here in the shadow of Heart Mountain, we know the heartbreaking history behind the imprisonment of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II.

We have heard how Japanese Americans were taken from their homes and businesses on the West Coast in the early 1940s, and their property confiscated.

We know they were transported, often from mild climates, to a land of harsh cold and extreme heat, where they were housed in inferior, poorly insulated barracks. They were provided only the bare necessities for life, with little consideration for the hardships they were experiencing.

Why did that happen?

One word: Fear.

Americans were afraid that Japanese Americans, many of whom had been in this country for two or three generations, might still be loyal to Japan, and they could pose a threat to our safety. So we stripped them of their dignity, of their humanity, and sent them to places of hardship, where they were unjustly imprisoned without cause.

Today, the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center are working to ensure that kind of injustice never happens again.

The foundation’s mission, among other things, is to preserve the history of the Japanese American confinement “and the stories that symbolize the fragility of democracy.”

The foundation also exists to “support inquiry, research and outreach to highlight the lessons of the Japanese American confinement and their relevance to the preservation of liberty and civil rights for all Americans today.”

We must learn from our mistakes, or we are doomed to repeat them.