MICHIGAN – American Muslim civil rights groups have been leading campaigns to encourage Muslims to register in November polls, in a bid to have a voice against rising Islamophobic sentiments in politics.

“One party has been almost ostracizing Muslims with their rhetoric,” Rabab Qamar, who helped organize a voter registration drive during the last Friday in Ramadan in Michigan, told Michigan Radio on Monday, July 18.

“I think it’s kind of pushed a lot of people from the Muslim community out to vote.”

For many American Muslims, speeches by presumptive Republican nominee, Donald Trump, talking about banning Muslim immigrants, and other Republicans calling for mosques surveillance, have been quite disturbing, and that has been the main drive behind poll registrations.

During previous polls, Arab and Muslim Americans vote in smaller numbers.

But different groups are trying to change that.

“Voter registration just didn’t start happening in 2016,” said Robert McCaw, the government affairs director for the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR.

“The community has been putting a lot of resources over the years in increasing our political and civic participation. I think this is just some of the fruits of that labor.”

McCaw added that CAIR estimates there’s been a 60% increase in the number of Muslim Americans registered to vote in the United States since 2012.

McCaw says Michigan’s voter rolls have seen the number of Muslim and Arab voters grow to about 55,000, with the majority of them voting for  Democrats.

Muzammil Ahmed is the chairperson of the Michigan Muslim Community Council credits Donald Trump for inspiring many Muslims to register and vote for the first time, if just to vote against him.

“We are here not to do it for just the Muslim community,” Ahmed said.

“Many people have been feeling maligned and have been feeling isolated because of the environment and rhetoric that’s been out there currently.”