“Read and your Lord is Most Honorable, Who taught with the pen, Taught man what he knew not.”

These are among the Quranic verses read by CAIR-Chicago Outreach Coordinator Gerald Hankerson at the American Library Association (ALA) Banned Books Week Read-Out in Washington Square on September 25. The most recent list of most frequently banned readings for 2010 was topped by the Qur’an, the holy text of Islam.

CAIR-Chicago Outreach Coordinator Gerald Hankerson will participate in another banned book reading hosted by the American Library Association. Hankerson will read from the Qur’an.

On September 11, Outreach Coordinator Gerald Hankerson participated in an event hosted by the American Library Association(ALA), entitled “The Qur’an Read-out Protest”. The event was in coordinated as response to recent Qur’an burning threats, such as Pastor Terry Jones’ proposed “Burn A Koran Day.”

With Pastor Terry Jones’ “Burn A Koran Day” fiasco and the ongoing Park51 debate taking center stage in the media, CAIR-Chicago is taking action. We are challenging misinformation and anti-Muslim rhetoric through interfaith and outreach efforts to educate the public. You may have also seen us in the news recently, adding balanced and informed perspectives to public discourse.

“This might be the first time many people get to hear exactly what the Quran says. Hopefully it’ll lead to asking more questions about Islam and reaching out to Muslims in the area,” said CAIR-Chicago Outreach Coordinator, Gerald Hankerson.

“The extremists that caused the attacks on 9/11 do not represent the vast majority of Muslims who see Islam as a submission to God,” said Gerald Hankerson of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Comments on this blog regularly reveal some persistent and false stereotypes about Islam. Monday’s arrest of seven suspected terrorists in North Carolina allegedly plotting violent jihad is sure to spark more.

A controversy erupted last week in Chicago after it was publicly revealed that a noted anti-Islam blogger, Robert Spencer, had been invited to an American Library Association panel advertised as “dispelling stereotypes about Islam.

The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago) today announced that all other panelists scheduled to speak at an American Library Association (ALA) annual conference session July 12 on stereotyping of Islam have withdrawn in protest over the participation of Robert Spencer, which CAIR calls “one of the nation’s leading Islam-bashers.”

Myra Appel, chair of the Ethnic and Multicultural Information Exchange Roundtable (EMIERT), has released a public statement (below) regarding the recent cancellation of the ALA panel “Perspectives on Islam.”