Several national Islamic groups announced on Monday that they will be working in unison to register a million Muslim Americans to vote.
Al Jazeera reported that the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations, an umbrella organization for several other Islamic groups that have been linked to extremists, has announced their “One America” initiative including a bus tour and voter drive to counter growing Islamophobia on the 2016 campaign trail.
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“USCMO leaders and members understand the magnitude of the challenge facing our nation and our community and will not allow either Islamophobes or un-Islamic extremist groups like ISIS to define American Muslims or to decide our fate,” said Oussama Jammal, the group’s secretary general.
The group insists that it will not focus on just registering Muslims, but also younger non-Muslims who have a similar opinion about the rhetoric being uttered on the campaign trail.
“We’re not looking to register 1 million more Muslims. We’re looking to work with interfaith partners to register 1 million more Americans,” said Robert McCaw, government affairs director of the Council on American Islamic Relations. “This is going to be more of an interfaith and community project. When you look at the toxic political climate in the United States, minority community members take the brunt of many political attacks now more than ever. We have to join together so we’re heard. The best way is to go to the polls.”
During their press conference they cited how hate crimes against Muslims are on the rise and were distressed by the rhetoric being echoed by several candidates, but mostly Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
USCMO has links to several radical Islamists organizations including the Muslim American Society, which federal prosecutors have linked to the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. A USCMO board member Mazen Mokhtar, has been outed by federal court documents as a fundraiser for Taliban and Chechen jihadists.
CAIR is another organization linked with the USCMO and has been accused of a long series of links to the Islamic terrorism, including funding Hamas.
