Dubai: Donald Trump’s call for a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the United States drew widespread condemnation around the world on Tuesday, including from British and French leaders and the UN refugee agency.

Citizens, politicians and refugee officials alike slammed the Republican presidential front-runner’s latest controversial statement, calling it hate speech and a disturbing sign of Islamophobia in a country rattled in recent weeks by large-scale terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.

Dar Al Ifta, Egypt’s official religious body, dubbed Trump’s remarks “hate rhetoric,” and a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency expressed concern that they could jeopardise the ongoing refugee resettlement process.

It is rare for a British prime minister to comment on contenders in the US presidential race, but Prime Minister David Cameron joined British politicians from all parties in condemning Trump’s remarks. Cameron said through a spokeswoman that he “completely disagrees” with Trump’s comments, which he regards as “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.”

The billionaire developer and reality-television star, who polls show leads the field for the GOP presidential nomination, released a statement Monday calling for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Trump repeated his call for a ban in television interviews on Tuesday.

Blow to diplomacy

US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Trump’s comments makes it harder to carry out effective diplomacy.

“There are courageous Muslims around the world, in the Middle East and elsewhere, standing up” to Daesh (the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), Kerry said Wednesday in Paris. “What Trump has said runs contrary to all that, and makes our job of reaching out to people and sharing the real America that much more complicated and that much more difficult.”

Stressing that he was trying to be “diplomatic” in his comments about the billionaire real-estate developer, Kerry said the US “cannot succumb to plunking everybody in the world in one pot. That is not America, that is not our constitution.”

London’s Metropolitan Police also weighed in, rebutting Trump’s comment that areas of the city are so radicalised that police are afraid for their lives.

“We would not normally dignify such comments with a response; however, on this occasion, we think it’s important to state to Londoners that Trump could not be more wrong,” a police spokeswoman said.

Any US presidential candidate “is welcome to receive a briefing from the Met Police on the reality of policing London,” she added.

In France, where the ruling Socialists are in a pitched election battle with a far-right anti-immigrant party, Prime Minister Manuel Valls on Tuesday wrote on Twitter that “Trump, like others, stokes hatred and conflations: our ONLY enemy is radical Islamism.”

Potent French election

Valls’ implicit comparison was with the National Front party, which is poised to seize power in local legislatures around France in run-off elections Sunday. National Front leader Marine Le Pen has seized on fears of Muslims and terrorism to create a potent ballot-box force even as mainstream voices in France have promoted moderation.

The heated rhetoric left many Muslims feeling bewildered, scared and angry. In Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, for example, Syrians stranded in overcrowded, cold refugee camps said they worried that rising xenophobia could further complicate their hopes of seeking asylum in the United States.

“How can a country that always talks about human rights and freedom do this or even consider this?” said Bourhan Salem, 32, who fled to Bekaa Valley to escape the violence around his home in Syria’s Dara’a province. “Do they know what we have suffered?”

In Geneva, Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the UN refugee agency, said Trump was speaking of “an entire population” but that his remarks particularly affect refugees.

“We are concerned that the rhetoric that is being used in the election campaign is putting an incredibly important resettlement programme at risk that is meant for the most vulnerable people — the victims of the wars that the world is unable to stop,” Fleming said.

Mohammad Radwan, a 28-year-old construction worker who left the Syrian city of Homs for safety in Lebanon, expressed concern for Muslim Americans.

“There are so many Muslims living in America. What’s going to happen to them? Are they all going to be deported one day? It’s hard to understand this,” Radwan said.

From Kabul: ‘None of us deserve him’

In Kabul, a property dealer named Timur Shah said that Americans need to “rise up” and prevent Trump from becoming their leader.

“None of us deserve him. What he says is harmful for all of us and will help [Daesh] and fanatics on all sides,” Shah said.

Trump’s call also drew reactions from journalists and editorial writers throughout Europe and in Israel, where he is due to arrive for a visit later this month. Israeli columnist Chemi Shalev said the sight of the crowds cheering Trump evoked the early days of Nazi Germany.

“For some Jews, the sight of thousands of supporters waving their fists in anger as Trump incited against Muslims and urged a blanket ban on their entry to the United States could have evoked associations with beer halls in Munich a century ago,” Shalev wrote in the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz.

Trump’s comments were widely covered in the European media, with many outlets wondering if he went too far this time. The German daily Sddeutsche Zeitung ran an editorial with the headline ‘How Donald Trump is betraying America’.

‘Bombshell, even by Trump’s standards’

London’s Daily Telegraph newspaper called the statement a “bombshell” even by Trump’s standards. The Guardian wrote that he was “further out of the mainstream than he has been at any point since announcing his candidacy.”

Trump’s comments garnered worldwide reaction on social media, as well.

In Brazil, acclaimed journalist Patricia Campos Mello shared a Slate story on Trump on her Facebook page and commented, “There is no way for this guy to get more dumb.”

One of the commenters responded, “There is, wait and see.”

One Saudi Arabian woman, Naveen Malek, said in a tweet: “We are facing a Third World War these days. The new leaders of intolerance are people such as Trump and the French far-right.”

Trump has bolstered his popularity with a series of increasingly controversial remarks — on women, Hispanic immigrants, the disabled and Muslims.

Yet he has remained solidly atop national polls among Republican presidential candidates since July.

— Compiled from agencies