Hate-filled attacks against Muslims to rise under Trump: Author

US President-elect Donald Trump’s administration does not seem to have any plan to stop the rise of Islamophobia in the country, says an American author, warning that more hate crimes are awaiting US minorities.

Eric Ham, the Washington-based author of The GOP Civil War, told Press TV on Thursday that threatening letters to US mosques after Trump’s election were just the beginning of a storm.

Hate-filled letters sent to mosques in the states of California, Georgia, Rhode Island and Indiana have warned Muslims to either leave the country or face extermination.

“We have already seen an explosion of hate crimes and acts against Muslims and other minorities in the US since Donald Trump was elected,” Ham told Press TV on Thursday.

After a surge of hate crimes was reported following Trump’s November 8 victory against his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, the Republican president-elect has tried to calm the situation by calling for an end to the protests against his election.

However, that plea backfired as hate crimes reached such high levels that Attorney General Loretta Lynch said the Justice Department was launching a special investigation into the matter.

Ham said Trump and his cabinet picks do not appear serious enough to end the rising tensions, an issue that may worsen in the future.

“He has not been as forceful as he could be and unfortunately some of the people that he has surrounded himself with they have not really spoken out against many of these attacks that we are seeing take place either,” the author said.

Referring to Trump’s handling of the recent knife attack at Ohio State University, where he said the perpetrator should not have been allowed to the US, Ham noted that these crimes are likely to rise after Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

Once Trump enters office, “I think we will actually begin to see not only the rhetoric increase but then I think we are also going to beginning to see sadly an escalation of these types of events” against Muslims and other minorities, the analyst noted.

Some of Trump’s major picks like his CIA director Mike Pompeo and his top security adviser Michael Flynn have a history of spreading fear and hatred against Islam.

Pompeo, for example, has called Islam an adversary to Christianity and says the terrorism threat facing the US comes from Muslims who “abhor Christians.”

“These folks believe that it is religiously driven for them to wipe Christians from the face of the earth,” he said at a church two years ago.

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