Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee no longer wanted to ban Muslims from entering the United States, his vice-presidential candidate Mike Pence said. Although, Mr. Trump had last year called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims”.

Later, he refined this position to “extreme vetting” of people coming from places inflicted by terrorism, but the controversy stirred by his call continues to dominate the presidential campaign.

“Of course not,” Mr. Pence said, when asked whether the proposal for banning Muslims still remained.

“If you were a Christian from Syria, one of the hardest things you could do was to get into the United States. If you were a Muslim from Syria, it was one of the easier places to come into the United States from,” Mr. Trump said in June citing statistics that suggested only about 0.3 per cent of the around 7,000 refugees entered the U.S. this year were Christians.

Mr. Trump’s rhetoric has forced Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton also to play to the gallery. While calling out Mr. Trump for demonising “millions of law-abiding Muslims in America” last month, she also supported “tough vetting.”

“So I am absolutely in favour of and have long been an advocate for tough vetting for making sure that we don’t let people into this country, and not just people who come here to settle, but we need a better visa system. Let’s remember what happened on 9/11. These were not refugees who got into airplanes and attacked our city and country,” Clinton said.

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Nandini