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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.
Mr. Trump is also courting Jewish voters, and has repeatedly voiced his staunch support for Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, encouraging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “finish the job” there. And as he stokes fears around immigration, Mr. Trump has described some Middle Eastern immigrants as “known terrorists.”
Mr. Alzuhiry also cited Mr. Trump’s social views as a major reason for his support, noting that he and other Muslim leaders backed Mr. Trump’s “commitment to promoting family values and protecting our children’s well-being, especially when it comes to curriculums and schools.”
Arab Americans have been reliable Democratic voters for two decades. But that affinity has been strained by the Biden administration’s continued support for Israel’s military offensive and particularly in the war’s recent move to Lebanon.
Much of Mr. Trump’s outreach has been brokered by two close allies who have held private meetings with and pitched Muslim and Arab American leaders. Mr. Alzuhiry was one of two imams who met with Mr. Trump after a speech last week in Detroit, where he questioned the former president over some of his language around Muslim Americans.
But Mr. Trump has made more public overtures to voters, including two interviews with Arab media outlets last week.
Mr. Trump is hoping to pick up their support as he tries to flip Michigan, a critical battleground that he won in 2016 but lost four years later. During his rally in Novi, he once again spoke about his plan to restore the auto industry through a combination of tax incentives and tariffs. He also continued to criticize Detroit, as he did in a speech in the city earlier this month.
“I think Detroit and some of our areas makes us a developing nation,” he said on Saturday.
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