
COUNCIL ON AMERICAN-ISLAMIC RELATIONS - CHICAGO | DEFENDING CIVIL RIGHTS. FIGHTING BIGOTRY. PROMOTING TOLERANCE
In a controversial legal step taken by the Dutch Parliament, the Cabinet has proposed to pass legislation that bans the traditional Muslim garments, the niqab and burqa, by 2013.
Executive Director Ahmed Rehab will be speaking at the Islamic Center of Naperville at Ogden on Friday, January 27. He will be discussing Islamophobia, focusing on origins and practical solutions for tackling Islamophobes and anti-Muslim ideologies.
Amina Sharif is the communications coordinator for the Council on American-Islamic Relations Chicago Chapter. She speaks with Vocalo’s Shantell Jamison about the recent Lowe’s decision to pull ad space from TLC’s “All American Muslim” program and what this says about the American sentiment of Islam.
CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab talks to WGN Radio’s Jonathon Brandmeier about how the home improvement chain, Lowe’s, gave in to anti-Muslim bigotry when it decided to pull its ads off the show ‘All-American Muslim’.
“It’s a stupid decision morally and a stupid decision economically,” said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Council on Islamic-American Relations Chicago. “They need to acknowledge their error and that they got duped by right-wing bigots, apologize and resume their ads.”
Ahmed Rehab discusses the ridiculous decision by the chain store Lowe’s to pull it advertisements from the show ‘All-American Muslim.’ “Imagine if a major American advertiser were to pull its ads off of ‘Jersey Shore’ because they received objections that the show, while portraying a group of Italian-Americans, made the glaring error of excluding Mafiosi,” writes Rehab.
“We were really disappointed and stunned that Lowe’s, a major corporation, would take such a stupid decision to side with bigotry,” said Ahmed Rehab, executive director of CAIR-Chicago. Rehab called the group’s action a step in the wrong direction and an insult to the Muslim community.
Chicago activist, Ahmed Rehab, said a conference call was planned with Muslim groups and other groups to craft a response. He said it is not too late, however, for Lowe’s to fix things. “There will be room for reconciliation,” he said. “We would call on Lowe’s to do the right thing and apologize for their really insane action and to reverse the decision to pull out.”
“What we’re being told here essentially is that it is too controversial to have a show with Muslim characters that are not portrayed as terrorists,” remarked CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab.
It’s hardly breaking news: the far-right Anti-Muslim website FrontPageMag today did what it was created to do: lie about Muslims. Now they are claiming that Illinois Governor Pat Quinn supposedly appointed the “Muslim Brotherhood” to his newly created Muslim Advisory Council.
“Frontpagemag is a joke,” said Ahmed Rehab. “No one I know takes it seriously. It’s a tool of David Horowitz, the Grand Wizard of Islamophobia, the purveyor of other anti-Muslim platforms as the notorious JihadWatch run by his minion, Robert Spencer.