Sister of Chapel Hill shooting victim challenges Trump

The sister of a murdered Muslim student challenges US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to meet with her, after his comments about executing Muslims.

Addressing a rally in Charleston, South Carolina, on Friday, Trump spoke approvingly of killing Muslims with bullets dipped in the blood of pigs.

Dr. Suzanne Barakat, 28, a physician in San Francisco, said Trump’s latest comments and his other anti-Muslim rhetoric have contributed to an atmosphere of intolerance that she fears could have deadly consequences.

“It allows for the Average Joe to see Muslims the way Craig Hicks saw my brother and his wife of six weeks and her sister,” she said, referring to the man who shot dead her relatives February last year. “As ‘The Other,’ as subhuman, because of their faith.”

​Craig Stephen Hicks, a middle-aged white man, shot dead Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, near the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill campus on February 10, 2015.

According to autopsies, Barakat was shot multiple times in the head and chest after he answered the door to his apartment. Barakat’s wife and her sister were also both shot in the head.

Trump, who has never held elected office, is still leading the Republican presidential primary field, despite the fact that his campaign has been marked by controversial statements, including with disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants and Muslims.

Trump has also created a furor in the US and around the world by proposing a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims” entering the United States, following a mass shooting in California.

The New York real-estate mogul has also called for a database to track Muslims across the United States, and he has also said that the US would have “absolutely no choice” but to close down mosques.