Donald Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric is hurting his Persian Gulf business

Donald Trump-branded golf club in Dubai.

(Image credit: Karim Sahib/AFP/Getty Images)

Not surprisingly, Donald Trump's increasingly strident calls to stop allowing Muslims into the U.S. and monitor or shut down mosques isn't very popular among Muslims, either in the U.S. or around the world. Trump may not care, given the very small Muslim population in the U.S., but there is at least one group of Muslims Trump has been courting for years — Gulf Arab businessmen — and they aren't pleased with his anti-Muslim rhetoric, either, The Associated Press reports.

Trump has done business in the Gulf Arab emirates for years, especially Dubai, including licensing his name for golf courses and starting development on luxury hotels and other real estate projects, and he has pushed to expand his hotel business in the region to 30 hotels by 2020. Now, Trump's brand is suffering. Dubai's Landmark Group is pulling all Trump home decor items from its 180 Lifestyle stores because, it said, it "values and respects the sentiments of its customer."

One of Trump's partners in the aborted 62-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, Emirati business magnate Khalaf al-Habtoor publicly backed Trump's presidential run in early August, but changed his mind late last month, throwing his support to Hillary Clinton in a column in the Abu Dhabi newspaper The National. "If he comes to my office, I will not let him in," al-Habtoor tells AP. "I reject him." The Emirati newspaper Gulf News was less charitable, writing Wednesday that Trump's "extremism is no different than that of Daesh," or the Islamic State. "Zip it, Donald," the paper added. "Just zip it."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.