Muslim community in Iowa still in a state of shock

Des Moines, Iowa — It has been a week since the horrific incident but the Muslim community in Des Moines, Iowa still hasn’t recovered from the shock.

According to the latest reports, Tariq Saleh, a 25 years old Muslim male of Pakistani descent was a “regular guy”. “ I have known the guy since kindergarten. He went for the jumma (Friday) prayers with me. Sometimes we would get together and play football over the weekend. I still can’t believe somebody like him could do such a thing” said Adam Yang, a childhood friend of Tariq.

However, Tariq’s neighbor, Abraham Miller, saw clear signs. “I knew something was wrong with that boy. Sometimes he would just look away when I looked at him. Other times he would smile but don’t say nothin. That boy sure was hiding somethin”

On Friday, 18th December at around 2pm, Tariq Saleh stood up in a packed mosque after the weekly Friday prayers and openly declared his support for Donald Trump. Out of the 32 people present in the room, 18 had were still in a critical state of shock, 10 were in a state of disbelief and the rest could not be contacted.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the Muslim community. We can fight bigotry only by standing together as one nation under our lord Jesus Christ.” said the local republican leader.

“There are more than a billion Muslims in the world. We can’t take the actions of a few radicalized Muslims and generalize it for all of them. 99.99% of the Muslims around the world strongly condemn these actions” said Karim Hassan, the head of local chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

We have contacted Tariq’s father who owns two gas stations in Des Moines but have not heard back. We will update our readers as soon as we get a response.

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