Regina Mustafa is trying to become the first Muslim woman elected to Congress and, if successful, she says she will use her "sheer passion" to represent oppressed minorities across the United States, fight for more gun control and battle against climate change.

Mustafa, a 37-year-old community activist living in Rochester, Minnesota, has announced her candidacy for the state's 1st congressional district.

Mustafa moved to the state 12 years ago from Philadelphia. She is one of eight Democrats running for the seat being vacated by Tim Walz, D-Minn., who's leaving Congress to run for governor. Whoever wins the primary will likely win the general election in a district that swings Democrat.

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Mustafa, who says she is a seasoned community activist, has focused her activism since moving to Rochester on interfaith dialogue with Christian and Jewish partners.

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She started a nonprofit called "Community Interfaith Dialogue on Islam" with the backing of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Circle of Rochester.

CAIR is a Hamas-tied Muslim Brotherhood front group which operates with impunity inside the United States, even though the extremist Brotherhood has been banned as a terrorist organization by several Arab countries.

Congress already has two Muslim members – Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., and Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., but Mustafa would be the first woman of the Islamic faith to serve in either legislative house at the federal level.

She is part of an up and coming younger generation of Islamic politicians that includes Somali-American Ilhan Omar, who was recently elected to the Minnesota State House, and Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, the former Detroit health director and son of Egyptian immigrants who is running for governor of Michigan, also with the full backing of CAIR. Sayed's father in-law is a former president and current board member of CAIR Michigan. While a student at the University of Michigan Al-Sayed was vice president of the Muslim Student Association, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood and a grooming factory for radicals.

Fayrouz Saad, another Arab-American, announced recently she is running for Republican Rep. David Trott's Michigan congressional seat.

As WND reported earlier this year, a network of Islamists has formed a new political action committee called Jetpac, whose mission is to recruit, train and fund Muslims for political office at the local, state and federal levels.

Mustafa is part of this new generation of young Muslim politicians.

She credits her children, and CAIR, for being the inspiration behind her interfaith activism. It is this interfaith work that she said provided the impetus to take the "next step" of launching a political career.

"THANK YOU, Council on American-Islamic Relations for being a source of inspiration and support for CIDI's efforts," she says on her website.

CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terror-financing trial ever conducted on U.S. soil. The case was prosecuted by the George W. Bush administration against the Holy Land Foundation, which was caught funneling money it raised from U.S. Muslims to Hamas terrorists. Hamas is on the U.S. State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations because it encourages and glorifies the slaughter of Jewish civilians while working to foster a one-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

But in Mustafa's mind, the real victims in a post-9/11 world are Muslims.

"My inspiration comes from my children," she says on her website. "I want a better future for them, a future where they can proudly hold their heads up high as Muslims and Americans. Since 9/11, Muslims in the U.S. have faced prejudice and being misrepresented in the media. The only way we can confront falsehood and negativity is to reach out to our neighbors and be active members of our society. Americans, and especially Minnesotans, are really warmhearted and open-minded people."

WND contacted Mustafa via phone on Aug. 10, a few days after she had announced her candidacy for Congress.

"I have been a community activist in Rochester a number of years, formed an interfaith group, reaching out trying to bridge the gaps in our society. So a congressional seat was the next step in continuing my work not just in bridging different people together but working for affordable healthcare and housing as well as other issues at the federal level, like gun control and climate change," she told WND. "I think more gun control would be compatible with our community and make our community safer."

She said she is excited about the prospect of representing the minorities of Minnesota and the nation.

"For me, my stance is, I can't lose this race because being in the race and being a voice for minorities, and for their health-care needs. We as Americans should be doing better in that. I just feel going ahead it's going to be good for me. Polls show overall that people in America have a very negative perception of Islam, but when you ask people what's their perception of Islam when they know someone who is Muslim, their opinion of Islam is much higher. I know it's not very easy to walk up to someone and ask them so I reach out to the individuals even if they send a hateful message. So it's very successful."

Despite her work on interfaith issues, Mustafa was not open to discussing her personal faith. WND asked what attracted her, as an American woman, to Islam and why she converted.

"How do you know I converted?" she asked.

WND told her it was just a guess, since she doesn't appear to be from the Middle East or other regions where Islam dominates.

"I did convert," she said. "I just don't see why that question has anything to do with my campaign, if I was raised with a certain religion or not I just don't see that as pertinent."

WND asked Mustafa why Muslims tend to persecute Christians in almost every Muslim-majority country.

"I think that's a gross generalization," she said.

WND asked her which Muslim-majority country would be the most welcoming of Christians.

"Oh Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, I have Egyptian friends who are Coptic Christians," she said.

All of those countries have blasphemy laws where it is illegal to criticize Muhammad, Allah or Islam.

In fact, it was reported Friday by the Investigative Project on Terrorism that Malaysia has initiated a police program of "hunting down" non-Muslim "apostates" and assigning them to re-education camps designed to "fix" their faith.

Mustafa did agree that some Islamic states such as Saudi Arabia needed to loosen their restrictions on other faiths, although she denied that it's illegal to own a Bible in Saudi Arabia and said freedom of worship is allowed "in compounds," where international workers live.

When WND asked her to provide information and facts to support the open expression of Christianity in Saudi Arabia, she abruptly ended the interview and hung up.

WND hadn't even gotten to these other pertinent questions: