U.S. Republican candidate Ben Carson has been slammed by rival politicians and the country’s largest Muslim advocacy group after saying that a Muslim should never be elected as president of the United States.

“I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that,” Carson, who is a Christian, told CBS’s Meet the Press programme on Sunday.

The U.S.-based Muslim advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations has now called for Carson to leave the Republican race. “It’s beyond the pale and he should withdraw,” Ibrahim Hooper, the group’s spokesperson, told Al Jazeera.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, also criticized Carson’s remarks. “You know, this is the year 2015,” he said. “You judge candidates for president not on their religion, not on the color of their skin, but on their ideas, on what they stand for.”

Sanders went on to tweet that it took the U.S. “too long to overcome the prejudice against electing a Catholic or an African-American president.”

The country’s first-ever Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, also criticized the comments as “fear mongering” in an attempt to win more voters, saying they are “out of touch with who we are as a people.”

Read More: yahoo