On December 31st, 2011, President Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law – allowing the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens around the world.

On Thursday December 15th, 2011 – the 220th anniversary of the signing of the Bill of Rights into law – CAIR-Chicago’s deputy director Sufyan Sohel, along with members of the interfaith community, spoke at a rally in Federal Plaza in downtown Chicago to oppose new provisions introduced as part of the National Defense Authorization Act.

I read Neil Steinberg’s Oct. 3 column, “Suddenly they trust Obama to kill people.” I appreciate that he pointed out that the murder of Anwar al-Awlaki’s violates the Constitution.

Ahmed Rehab is the Executive Director of CAIR Chicago: the Council on American-Islamic Relations. He said the President sugar-coats the US demands on Israel. “Would you please do this, pretty please do that? That’s not the message the United States should have. We need to be a lot more courageous and bold and demanding of the right thing.”

“I think the President realizes that this is a historic opportunity for us to shift our foreign policy towards the Arab world, towards acknowledging the fact that it is the millions in the street calling for democracy and freedom, that are the real voice of that part of the world – and not the sporadic, peripheral, marginal, militant radical groups,” said Ahmed Rehab.

“We’ve politicized 9/11, we’ve had costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with surges, military personnel, with trillions of dollars spent. And then at the end of the day it takes what we’ve been saying all along – good, hard intelligence and a committed group of surgical strikes,” says Ahmed Rehab.

“The American Muslim community was relieved, there’s a sense of vindication. This has been a long time coming,” said Rehab.

“We are relieved that justice has not been denied even if it has been delayed,” said Ahmed Rehab. “This goes to show that the way to fight terror is through good intelligence operations, and not military surges abroad, or the choking of civil liberties at home.”

Ahmed Rehab talks to MSNBC from Tahrir Square as Egyptians, and the whole world, wait for Mubarak’s resignation.

“He gave a 50,000-word speech that didn’t include the only word people wanted to hear, which is goodbye, said Ahmed Rehab, a democracy activist from Chicago in Egypt to join the protests. “Everybody was just sitting there not listening except for that word and when they didn’t hear it, that’s it, they were done. They didn’t want to hear anything else.”