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Increasingly, America’s Muslims, many of whom were born in the United States, want imams trained in U.S. ways and culture, rather than those versed in the more formal ways practiced overseas and who sometimes do not speak English. But there are very few schools in the U.S. that can provide the necessary training. While efforts are under way in a dozen U.S. cities to develop seminaries to prepare homegrown American imams and chaplains, Bagby thinks the Trump era is likely to slow progress. “The big challenge on everyone’s mind now,” he says, “is that the imam’s position is just not a particularly desirable one.”

Without a robust U.S. training operation, the vast majority of full time imams in American mosques are either trained or born overseas. (The percentage was more than 90 percent in 2013, according to the ISNA study, and Bagby and others estimate that it hasn’t changed much in the past four years.) Most of these visiting imams enter the U.S. with a R1 visa for temporary religious workers; the visas are often good for up to five years, but most imams remain only for a few months. In an effort to stem fraudulent applications for such visas, the number of R1s issued during the Obama era declined significantly from 10,061 in 2008 to 2,771 in 2009. In the following years, though, the number rose steadily and in 2016 the government issued a total of 4,764 R1s. It is unclear whether or by how much those numbers have dropped during the Trump administration, as statistics for fiscal year 2017 will not be available until next year, says a U.S. State Department spokesman. But judging by the experience of several U.S. mosques this past Ramadan, foreign imams are finding it harder to enter the country in the Trump era.

“Now, imams overseas are saying they don’t want to come,” Musri adds. “They don’t want to be humiliated at the airport, or to be turned around. Even if they have a visa, they don’t want to bother. So a lot of mosques aren’t even asking anymore.”

Lorenzo Vidino, director of George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, questions whether the imam shortage would lead to violence. He says that extremists rarely spring from a mosque community, but are more often lone wolves or Muslim converts with little understanding of the Islamic faith. While some imams may have dissuaded a few potential terrorists, Vidino adds, it is difficult to prove. “I think it’s a bit of a simplistic narrative to say that imams serve as a bulwark against radicalization,” says Vidino. “No one denies that an imam might do that, but it’s very hard to prove. It’s like proving a negative. How would anyone know if an incident hadn’t occurred?”

“Simply put, Islamophobia is a reminder that you don’t belong,” says Lyons-Padilla, author of a Behavioral Science & Policy article called, “Belonging Nowhere: Marginalization and Radicalization Risk among Muslim Immigrants.” “To the extent that the imam shortage is perceived as an act of discrimination through the visa approval process, or another consequence of Islamophobia, that could lead to support for extremism down the road,”

The nation’s Muslim community has been highly cooperative with law enforcement; nearly half the tips on potential extremists come from other Muslims, according to one former State Department official. Some feel that fewer imams—as well as the general perception within the Muslim community that its leaders are being discriminated against—could mean a decline in communications with law enforcement and interfaith groups including other religious institutions like churches and synagogues