Muslim leaders in Modesto area urge Trump to do good

Muslim leaders in Modesto and Manteca heard the painful words Donald Trump spoke about their faith over the past year.

Now that Trump has won the presidency, they urge their members and the greater community to give him a chance to do good.

“We just hope and pray that God Almighty guides Donald Trump and his administration to make America grow on the path toward greatness,” Imam Mohammad El Farra of the Islamic Center of Manteca said.

He spoke Sunday with The Modesto Bee along with Imam Ahmad Kayello of the Islamic Center of Modesto and one of its members, Ahmed Hashmi. The discussion took place at the Carpenter Road mosque where many of the 3,000 or so Muslims in Stanislaus County worship.

The billionaire Republican set off a firestorm last December when responding to the massacres in Paris and San Bernardino. Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

In August, Trump insulted the Muslim family of a U.S. Army captain killed in Iraq in 2004, after the soldier’s father criticized the candidate at the Democratic National Convention.

“To me, personally, this is not a civil way, an ethical way, for someone running for the presidency,” Kayello said Sunday.

Hashmi agreed: “He’s just creating fear among people, not only Muslims, but a lot of minorities.”

Despite this, El Farra said, the election of Trump was God’s will and Muslims should hope for the best rather than protest.

El Farra said only 0.006 percent of the world’s 1.76 billion Muslims are part of the terrorist group that calls itself Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. He urges more attention to the Muslim immigrants to the United States who work in medicine, engineering and other fields. And he said they pray to the same God as Christians and Jews, while recognizing the importance of Jesus and other religious figures.

The three men noted several efforts to work with other faiths, such as an annual Thanksgiving dinner involving Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Jews and others. The free event will be at 7 p.m. Monday at First United Methodist Church in Modesto.

Kayello praised the Modesto City Schools requirement that high school freshmen study the history of religions around the world. And the men recalled small acts of kindness from non-Muslims, such as a passerby who helped remove graffiti from the Manteca mosque.

Hashmi told of a Bay Area woman who holds “meet a Muslim” events at restaurants.

“They talk about Islam. They talk about what Muslims are, how we can get together, so that if they have any kind of fear, any kind of misunderstanding, she’s trying to remove it,” he said.

This story was originally published November 14, 2016 at 5:03 PM with the headline "Muslim leaders in Modesto area urge Trump to do good."