“If you add up hate mail, hateful phone calls and e-mails, racial slurs being yelled at people and verbal or physical altercations, it’s dozens of incidents,” said Amina Sharif.

“Hate is a self-addressed envelope and so the person who bears this hate is the victim of his own hatred before I am. And I can only pray for that person to find peace and to rid himself of that hatred,” said Ahmed Rehab.

CAIR-Chicago Civil Rights Director Christina Abraham, who attended the hearing with Amal Abusumayyah, said afterward, “We are hopeful that this sent a message to the public that sort of behavior will not be tolerated by a fair and just society.”

CAIR-Chicago announced today that it is pleased with the plea agreement reached yesterday between state prosecutors and Valerie Kenney, a suburban woman who faced hate crime charges after attacking a Muslim woman at a Tinley Park grocery store 2 days after the Fort Hood shooting.

“It gives her an opportunity to learn from her mistake,” said Christina Abraham of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “And we think this does send a message to the greater community that hate crimes are not going to be tolerated and that this sort of behavior is wrong.”

An official with the Chicago-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, which became involved in the case, said the backlash against Muslim-Americans had spiked somewhat in the days immediately following the Fort Hood shooting but has subsided.

“We try to rally community support for (victims and their families) and to make sure the state’s attorney is pursuing the case with the utmost importance,” said spokeswoman Christina Abraham.

I was pleasantly surprised to find myself in complete agreement with Neil Steinberg’s column, “Before you generalize about the major.”

“I would love the opportunity to talk about my faith proactively when there isn’t something terrible happening. And everyday, good things are going on, but the one day that something bad happens, that’s when people become interested in our faith and that is troublesome,” said Ahmed Rehab, CAIR-Chicago Executive Director.

CAIR-Chicago’s Executive Director, Ahmed Rehab, talks to Al Jazeera’s Riz Khan about how the tragedy of Fort Hood will impact Muslim communities in the US.

CAIR-Chicago’s Ahmed Rehab, as a live guest on WGN News, responds to bigoted sentiments being expressed by some Americans after the unfortunate shooting at Fort Hood.

Christina Abraham speaks as a live guest on WGN News and discusses the Muslim community’s fear of backlash in the wake of the Fort Hood shooting while acknowledging that the vast majority of Americans are trusting of their Muslim neighbors. Abraham also criticizes those who overemphasize the perpetrators religious affiliation, citing double standards that allow crimes committed by Muslims to be unfairly associated with Islam.