Source: The Wall Street Journal
By BETH REINHARD
MANASSAS, Va.—Corey Stewart had visited the Dar Al-Noor mosque many times as chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, but never as the leader of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in Virginia.
“As-salamu alaykum,” he said Monday morning, greeting hundreds of Muslims on the holiday of Eid al-Adha, marking the end of the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca. “This is kind of an awkward position that I’m in.”
He didn’t need to explain. Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigrants has provoked widespread outrage and potentially unprecedented interest in the presidential election by the fast-growing Muslim community.
Muslims make up only about 1% of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center. But the community is concentrated in several large swing states that could influence the November election, including Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.
“I have never seen an election cycle this divisive, where Americans are being turned against each other,” Rafi Uddin Ahmed, the mosque’s former president, told the room full of male worshipers. “This is not the America that you know. We need to make sure we are active, every election, but especially this one.”
The U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, the largest coalition of national and local Muslim groups, aims to register one million voters by the Nov. 8 election.
Categories: America, Muslims, The Muslim Times, USA