Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring speaks to members of the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center mosque during a town hall meeting. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

The Republican Party of Virginia wants the state attorney general to apologize “to the victims of Islamic terrorism” for attending a Falls Church mosque.

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring co-hosted a town hall meeting with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to discuss the impact of President Donald Trump’s revised travel ban at Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center on March 17. It also featured a “Citizenship Application Clinic.”

The Republican Party of Virginia characterized the event differently. “Herring joined with a Hamas-linked group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, to host a town hall to oppose the Trump Administration’s efforts to keep Americans safe from terrorism,” reads petition on the Republican website, first flagged by The Huffington Post.

CAIR is a Muslim advocacy group that consistently condemns acts of terrorism “out of the convictions of our faith.” That has not stopped its critics, including from asserting links with Hamas, which have never been proven. After its national offices were evacuated last year, CAIR spokesperson told DCist that “we receive threats on almost a daily basis.”

Herring said at the town hall that he was proud of Virginia’s efforts to fight the travel ban, which he said is “rooted in religious bigotry.” The executive order, set to take effect last week, was blocked by a temporary restraining order from a federal judge in Hawaii and faced another blow in a Maryland court. Herring joined a suit against the first ban and is collaborating with Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh “on a brief in opposition to the ban that we plan to file jointly in the Fourth Circuit.”

The petition from the Virginia GOP also attacks Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center as pro-terrorist. For more than a decade, the mosque has blanched at its association with Anwar al-Aulaqi, a former preacher who was an articulate advocate for the Muslim experience in the months after September 11. Years later, though, he became an advocate for violent attacks against the United States. A U.S. drone strike killed him in 2011.

But Virginia politicians, Republicans included, are no stranger to the house of worship. The Richmond Times-Dispatch points out that the Virginia General Assembly passed a resolution commending the mosque in 2014. The imam embraced a top FBI official at the mosque shortly before Trump’s inauguration.

Herring told the crowd that he visited Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center shortly after the election “because I knew that many communities in Virginia and elsewhere were feeling really vulnerable and I had an important message,” he said. “As the attorney general, I am here to defend and protect the rights and civil liberties of all Virginians, including minority communities, no matter what you look like, what your background is, and where you worship.”

Virginia has a Muslim population of about 200,000 people, the majority of whom live and worship in the D.C. region. FBI data shows a 67 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes from 2014 to 2015.