Given that Muslims and Mormons share similar values and a similar status as minority faiths, a Utah Muslim leader says he's perplexed by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's apparent unwillingness to place a Muslim in the Cabinet.

"We share similar beliefs of family, social justice," says Tarek Nosseir, president of the Islamic Society of Greater Salt Lake. "If it was happening to LDS people, I'm sure you wouldn't be too happy ....

"It is hurtful to me that a person who is seeking the highest office in the nation is just not willing to put the best person in the job according their qualifications," Nosseir says.

Romney has been in damage control mode after a prominent Muslim-American reported that Romney had told a private fund-raising event that he would not appoint a Muslim to his Cabinet.

Romney addressed the touchy issue yesterday in St. Petersburg, Fla., hours after Mansoor Ijaz wrote about his encounter with Romney in Tuesday's editions of the Christian Science Monitor.

Ijaz, an American-born businessman of Pakistani heritage, used an opinion piece titled "A Muslim belongs in the Cabinet" to recount Romney's remarks to donors at the private fundraiser in Las Vegas in mid-November.

"I asked Mr. Romney whether he would consider including qualified Americans of the Islamic faith in his Cabinet as advisers on national security matters, given his position that 'jihadism' is the principal foreign policy threat facing America today," Ijaz, who was educated at University of Virginia and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote.

Romney replied " ... based on the numbers of American Muslims — as a percentage — in our population, I cannot see that a Cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration," Ijaz wrote.

Ijaz wrote that Romney's apparent rejection of Muslims for Cabinet-level positions "demonstrated an aggravating hypocrisy." Romney, a Mormon, "wants America to be blind to his religious beliefs and judge him on merit," Ijaz wrote. "Yet he seems to accept excluding Muslims because of their religion, claiming they're too much of a minority for a post in high-level policy making."

Membership in both religions is rather small in the United States. Religious surveys have suggested other religions, including Baptists, Catholics and atheists claim larger chunks of the American population.

Mormons comprise just 1.3 of the nation's adult population according to the 2005 Baylor Religion Survey. The survey placed Muslims at under 1 percent of the adult population.

Ijaz urged Romney and other presidential candidates to "actively begin searching" for American Muslims and Arab Americans to serve in Cabinet posts to diminish the "risk (of) promulgating policies that once again put the U.S. straight in the sights of the terrorists who seek to bring America down."