Muslim Americans' campaign to repair Jewish cemetery gets the J.K. Rowling bump

A fundraising project launched by Muslim American activists to help repair a Jewish cemetery has reached its goal of $20,000 in just three hours.

The campaign, organised by Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi, calls for "solidarity with the Jewish-American community" to rebuild the almost 200 headstones damaged at the Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri.

It gathered 2,000 donations and raised more than $56,000.

"Muslim Americans stand in solidarity with the Jewish-American community to condemn this horrific act of desecration against the Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery," the fundraising page states.

Campaigners said that any additional funds raised would be used to "assist other vandalized Jewish centers nationwide."

Donations snowballed within hours of J.K. Rowling tweeting about the fundraising effort.

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"This is such a beautiful thing," Rowling tweeted Tuesday night.

The unanticipated volume of traffic after the tweet caused the website to crash, according to Storyful.

The fundraising effort comes after U.S. President Donald Trump spoke out against the recent threats against the Jewish community, in America saying the rise in anti-Semitism was "horrible and painful."