SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO.com) -- A South Dakota group has responded to President Trump's tweeting of anti-Muslim videos today.
South Dakota Voices for Peace executive director Taneeza Islam takes the President's tweets personally.
“This is a real threat for me, my family and over 7 million Muslims in the United States, including the millions of others who are not Muslims but are attacked because they don’t ‘look American’,” said Islam, a practicing Muslim.
She says has received threats for the work she does providing accurate information about Islam, Muslims, immigrants and refugees in South Dakota.
“There has never been a genocide in human history that didn’t start with dehumanizing the targeted population," Islam said.
“Trump is fulfilling his campaign promise to ‘ban all Muslims from entering the United States,’ by laying the groundwork with dangerous anti-Muslim propaganda,” said South Dakota Voices for Peace's Samantha Spawn. “By retweeting videos originating from the cult-right in the UK, Trump is working hard to import to America the same hatred that has been condemned across Europe."
Spawn say even South Dakota is seeing some preliminary repercussions in South Dakota but did not elaborate with specifics in their media release.
"It’s our fear that the continued use of this rhetoric will escalate an already tenuous situation into a deadly one," Spawn, the group's communications director, said. "How many more hate crimes do Muslims, immigrants and refugees have to endure before Trump is able to accept responsibility for his reckless and racist agenda?”
The group says the Southern Poverty Law Center identifies five hate groups in South Dakota and one national organization with an active chapter in Rapid City, SD, ACT! for America. They say four of these five hate groups are anti-immigrant and Islamophobic groups, and ACT! is classified as the largest of such groups.
SDVP says since January 2017, they've tracked 24 Islamophobic events that have taken place in South Dakota.