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The US president made the comments after being asked to defend a retweet of a conservative commentator who seemed to question whether Muslims would be treated with the same severity as Christians who broke social distancing rules.
“I would say that there could be a difference,” Trump said during his daily coronavirus press conference. “And we’ll have to see what will happen. Because I’ve seen a great disparity in this country.” “They go after Christian churches but they don’t tend to go after mosques,” he said on Saturday.
Ramzan, which begins at sunset on Thursday, falls a week and a half after Easter, when some Christians bucked public health regulations to attend illicit services.
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Trump has been accused of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the past and one of his first acts upon entering office was to ban travellers from several Muslim-majority countries.
More than 700,000 cases of coronavirus have been reported in the United States, forcing religious communities across the country to shutter their doors.
The Islamic Society of North America, alongside Muslim medical experts, has urged the suspension of group prayers, among other gatherings.
Jewish Americans were likewise forced to turn traditional Passover seders into virtual affairs when the eight-day holiday began at sundown on April 8.
Despite similar measures taken across much of the Christian community, a Virginia pastor who continued to preach in defiance of stay-at-home rules died a week ago of coronavirus.
And pastors at two megachurches in Florida and Louisiana have been arrested on misdemeanor charges for flouting stay-at-home orders.
“The Christian faith is treated much differently than it was,” Trump added on Saturday, “and I think it’s treated very unfairly.