Aymen Abdel Halim, the communications coordinator for Chicago’s Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), described the bill as a violation of citizens’ constitutional and civil rights. “This is kind of a widespread action against all Americans,” he said. “What we are seeing is a continued erosion of our civil liberties.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today calls on Muslims and other people of conscience to ask their elected representatives to support the Due Process Guarantee Act, which would bar the military from detaining U.S. citizens without charge or trial.

“It’s something that we must take very seriously,” said CAIR-Chicago executive director Ahmed M. Rehab. “CAIR-Chicago is very disturbed by this news. The Muslim community is disturbed. People of conscience are disturbed. We’ve called police to investigate it, and to prosecute it as a hate crime, because that’s what it is.”

A stabbing at the Champaign train station this week is not a hate crime, according to the charges filed by the state’s attorney’s office. But an advocacy group disagrees. Amina Sharif, spokeswoman for the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Thursday it’s important to discourage prejudice.

Amina Sharif, communications director for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) office in Chicago, said she is hopeful for the new series, because it will offer “a more mainstream image of American Muslims. They are often stereotyped and misunderstood because of negative portrayals in media and pop culture. [This program] is normalizing Muslims,” said Sharif. “That’s the way [of] American culture – we needed ‘The Cosby Show’ to help normalize African American families. In this society public opinion is shaped mainly by media and pop culture,” she said.

“The TSA works hard everyday to keep Americans safe,” Amina Sharif, TSA communications coordinator said in the release. “When such egregious behavior is flagged on the part of one of their agents, it breeds confidence in us as passengers that it is dealt with as swiftly and as seriously as it was in the case of Roy Egan.”

As the Tea Party convention comes to Daytona Beach, many polititians declined their invitation not wanting to associate themselves with speakers like Pamela Geller, an anti-Muslim activist. “In other states, elected officials have pulled out and do not want to be on the same stage as her,” said CAIR media-relations director Ahmed Rehab.

“We’re relieved at the end of an era. Muslims don’t rejoice at the death of an individual. However, we are rejoicing at the death of dictatorship and tyranny, and the murderous period that Gadhafi was going after his own people,” said CAIR’s Ahmed Rehab. The Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago says, now that the war against Gadhafi’s regime is over, Libya will face a new challenge.

“For Amina Sharif, communication director of the Chicago branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the mainstream interest in Islam and Muslims began after September 11, but the negative feelings were always there.

“For Sharif much of the blame lies with the media and popular culture in the US, which she says is often “orientalist and slanted” in its depiction of Muslims and Islam.”

Ahmed Rehab appeared on The John Williams Show on CBS Minnesota to discuss Muslim relations both before and after the events out of 9/11.