FORT WORTH, TEXAS // A US Muslim who was thrown out of a Donald Trump rally in South Carolina while staging a silent protest wants to make the Republican presidential candidate’s backers recognise they are supporting “hateful rhetoric”.
Rose Hamid, a 56-year-old flight attendant from North Carolina, stood up silently in the stands directly behind Mr Trump during Friday night’s rally when the billionaire businessman suggested that refugees fleeing violence in Syria were affiliated with ISIL militants.
“I get why he’s popular: he’s an entertainer, he’s engaging, there are certainly aspects that appeal to certain parts of society. He even has valid points in some cases,” Ms Hamid said on Saturday.
“But they have to recognise what they’re supporting,” she said, referring to Trump’s supporters. “His ramping up of his hateful rhetoric is just not what America is, and it’s not who we are as a country.”
At the rally, Ms Hamid was wearing a white head scarf and a blue T-shirt made by her son, emblazoned with the words, “Salam, I come in peace”.
Ms Hamid, who called herself a registered Democrat, said she went to the rally because she wanted some of Mr Trump’s supporters to meet a Muslim in real life. Ms Hamid said she told herself she would stand up quietly if Mr Trump said anything hateful about any group, not just Muslims.
As she stood, people in the crowd around her at the rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina started yelling “Trump! Trump!” as organisers earlier had instructed them to do. Soon afterwards, security officers appeared at her seat and, with little explanation, told her and a friend they had to leave the premises, she said.
“They didn’t even tell us we were causing a disturbance,” she said. “They just said, ‘Come with me, come with me.’ I was asking, ‘Why? Why?’ and they just said, ‘Come with me.’”
Ms Hamid said she was later told she was trespassing at a private event.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair), a Muslim advocacy group, on Saturday called on Mr Trump to apologise after the incident, which ignited a firestorm on social media and prompted criticism by at least one fellow Republican.
“The image of a Muslim woman being abused and ejected from a political rally sends a chilling message to American Muslims and to all those who value our nation’s traditions of religious diversity and civic participation,” said Nihad Awad, executive director of Cair.
Ohio governor John Kasich, another Republican presidential hopeful, said the crowd’s response at Mr Trump’s rally was inappropriate.
“We don’t need to be shouting and booing and scaring somebody who decided to stand up and have some sort of silent protest,” Mr Kasich said at a poverty summit in South Carolina on Saturday.
The incident was the latest controversy involving Mr Trump regarding Muslims. Last month he advocated banning all foreign Muslims from entering the United States “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on”.
In November, he said he saw thousands of Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey, cheering the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre.
Fact-checkers have debunked this assertion.
Ms Hamid said some may not be looking past Mr Trump’s showy campaign to see the damage he is doing.
“His supporters really need to look at what it is that he’s proposing, and the type of bully mentality that he has of disrespecting people to such a tremendous degree,” Ms Hamid said.
She said she was leaning toward supporting Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination in November’s election.
Ms Hamid is president of a group called Muslim Women of the Carolinas, but she said it is a social organisation, not a political one, and was not involved in her action on Friday.
At a rally on Saturday in Ottumwa, Iowa, Mr Trump cited last month’s San Bernardino, California massacre and the shooting of a Philadelphia police officer on Friday by a man who police claimed had pledged allegiance to ISIL as examples of Muslim anger toward Americans.
“The hatred is so incredible,” Mr Trump said. “And the danger, when we have people willing to fly aeroplanes into the World Trade Centre and many other things, we’ve got to solve it.”
* Reuters
