Trump, Who Once Proposed a Muslim Registry, Now Courts Their Votes

When he ran for president eight years ago, Donald J. Trump floated the idea of creating a national registry of Muslims and proposed banning immigration from Muslim countries. So it was striking to see him on Saturday at a rally in suburban Detroit celebrating endorsements from a handful of Muslim and Arab American leaders.

It was a political turnaround that would have seemed unthinkable during Mr. Trump’s first campaign, when he frequently spouted anti-Muslim rhetoric. As president, Mr. Trump blocked travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, creating travel chaos. And at moments during this campaign, he has drawn on the anti-Muslim sentiments from earlier in his political career.

But in a tight election, Mr. Trump and his campaign have been trying to win the support of Arab American and Muslim voters who may be disaffected with Democrats over President Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza and the party’s positions on social issues. Their support is seen as especially important in Michigan, a key battleground state with many Arab American and Muslim voters.

At Saturday’s rally in Novi, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, Mr. Trump invited a group of people that his campaign said included a number of Muslim and Arab American leaders to the stage, where they endorsed him. (Mr. Trump claimed they were “highly respected leaders,” but his campaign has not provided any details about who most of them were, making it difficult to assess their prominence.)

“We as Muslims stand with President Trump because he promises peace,” Belal Alzuhiry, an imam from the Detroit area, said in front of hundreds at Suburban Collection Showplace, an exhibition center. “We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine.”

Mr. Trump has not provided a plan by which he would end the war in Ukraine or the widening one in the Middle East, which began when Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.