Despite neither candidate reaching out to Muslim Americans, the community is organizing around the election. “The Arab and Muslim community has been very involved ... the vast majority of the community is registered and does vote,” says Al-Qatami. The Muslim Student Association has been actively encouraging its local college and university chapters to register students and turn them out to vote. And at Penn State, the MSA chapter is hard at work on Get Out the Vote efforts.
Many Muslim organizations and mosques are also putting energy toward registering their community to vote. Godani says during the her mosque’s Eid prayer marking the end of Ramadan, people were walking around with clipboards registering new voters. Godani says she thinks registering to vote is important because “with the number of Muslims in the United States being as large as it is there needs to be a lobby to show our voice counts.”
Ultimately, Muslim Americans want the next president to pay attention to their community. Corey Saylor, legislative director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, says, “whichever candidate wins it is my hope they will reach out to the Muslim American organizations and allow us to give them policy advice in regards to the Muslim world.”
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