CAIR-Chicago’s Executive Director Ahmed Rehab spoke on an interfaith panel at St. Michael Parish church in Orland Park on September 18th. The event, entitled “Extremism and Violence in the Name of Religion,” featured Christian, Muslim, and Jewish speakers.

In the wake of the abhorrent events that occurred last Friday in Norway, information has come to light revealing connections between the terrorist suspect, Anders Brehing Breivik, to the anti-Islam movement in England, as well as to prominent Islamophobes in the US.

“How many mosques constitute an oversaturation in unincorporated DuPage County, according to the Zoning Board of Appeals?” asked Ahmed Rehab, director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, at a news conference. “The answer would be one. One would be one too many apparently, and that’s very disconcerting to us.”

In tough economic times most neighborhoods would welcome development. But in suburban Willowbrook, they’re waving it off for an unusual reason: religious oversaturation.

Ahmed Rehab, CAIR-Chicago Executive Director, discusses the tragic bombing of a Coptic church in Egypt and the strong response of everyday Egyptians – Muslims and Copts.

Ahmed Rehab, Executive Director of CAIR-Chicago said, “We feel sickened by this attack, and will not be silent. Those who perpetrated these cowardly murders cannot purport to call themselves men of God or men of faith.”

From Ahmed Rehab’s point of view, however, American culture — including textbooks — routinely vilifies Islam and focuses unduly on the militaristic aspects of the religion.

“Islam has a wealthy history that goes beyond the battles, in the arts and cultures and sciences,“ said Rehab, spokesman for the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR). “There’s this strange attempt to portray anything Islamic as uniquely bad.

“When someone comes along and then speaks the truth, or basically renders an accurate account of reality, then (readers) are shocked and confused because it goes against everything they have heard, therefore it must be a lie. It’s what I call willful ignorance.”

According to Gallup, more than 4 in 10 Americans (43%) admit to feeling at least “a little” prejudice toward Muslims. This is more than twice the number who say the same about Christians (18%), and almost three times more than that of Jews (15%) and Buddhists (14%). The poll questioned Americans about knowledge of Islam, to which 63% of Americans said they have “very little” knowledge or “none at all.”