(Al-Jazeera) Participants at the first national gathering of Muslims in politics in the United States spoke of the two-day event, which ended on Wednesday, as an opportunity [to] move American Muslim communities beyond the defensive posture they have been forced to take in US media and politics for decades.
“This is 10 years late,” said Mohammed Gula, executive director for Virginia of Emgage USA, an organisation seeking to encourage and assist Muslims who wish to enter politics.
“It’s also important to recognise that we’ve never really felt that there was space for us to do that [before],” Gula told Al Jazeera, adding that the election of President Donald Trump, who campaigned on Islamophobic rhetoric and instituted a travel ban on a number of Muslim-majority countries upon taking office, lent a sense of urgency to Muslim political organising.
