Dallas, USA - American Muslims are setting up voter registration booths in mosques across the United States, echoing a tactic employed by evangelical Christians to support conservative Republican candidates.
Their target: close contests where Muslim voters could make a difference.
"We have set up booths in 150 mosques across the country in the past two weeks," said Mukit Hossain, a political consultant to the Muslim American Society which is behind the drive.
The booths have a computer monitor with a link to a Web site http://www.masvip.org/ to enable Muslims to register on line during Friday prayers.
Hossain said about 10,000 were estimated to have been registered to date but he expected "tens of thousands" more to be signed up before crucial midterm elections on November 7 that will decide which party controls Congress during President George W. Bush's final two years in office.
Those numbers are small compared to estimates of over 2 million registered Muslim voters nationwide but the drive is targeting areas where a few voters can determine the outcome -- another echo of evangelical Christian political activism.
"We have looked and said do we have enough Muslims to impact this race? And secondly what are the issues, how important are they for the Muslim community and where do the candidates stand?," Hossain said.
One race he highlighted was District 8 in Arizona, where he said the Muslim community was sizable and had concerns about the anti-immigration tone of Republican candidate Randy Graf, who is running to replace an outgoing moderate Republican in a closely watched House contest.
"The Virginia Senate race is another one because you have 52,000 Muslim voters there and in a tight race they can make a difference," said Hossain, who is also president of the Muslim American Political Action Committee.
He said U.S. Muslims were concerned about Republican Sen. George Allen's record on civil liberties.
A survey of Muslim voters last year showed the political issues that concerned them most were the perceived erosion of civil liberties since the September 11 attacks, the hardening of immigration laws and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, Hossain said.
The next priorities on their list are more mainstream, middle-class concerns: education and health care.
Many Muslims are socially conservative and agree with their evangelical Christian counterparts on a range of issues such as outlawing abortion and banning same-sex marriage.
Politically motivated Christians have for the past three decades been using the pulpit as a platform to get voters to the polls to support conservative candidates.
Hossain said American Muslims were not simply copying this strategy but felt compelled to take their political activism to the mosque in the wake of Sept 11.