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.

Yesterday, the National Defense Authorization Act was received by the White House for President Obama’s official signing. Call the White House today and demand a veto!

CAIR-Chicago is urging American Muslims and other people of conscience to contact President Obama and urge him to veto the National Defense Authorization Act (H.R.1540), which authorizes the military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens suspected of terrorism without charge or trial.

On Thursday, December 8, civil rights and interfaith leaders held a press conference at the CAIR-Chicago office to condemn the controversial new provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1867) which passed in the Senate last week. SEE PHOTOS

On Thursday, December 8, the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Chicago), along with other civil rights and interfaith groups, will hold a press conference calling on Congress and President Obama to reject the U.S. Senate’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act (S. 1867).

Contact your Senators and demand the removal of provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act which will allow the indefinite detainment of American citizens without charging them for any crime or giving them a fair trial.

“Erickson’s faux patriotism flies in the face of the basic freedoms enshrined in our constitution, threatens our commitment to pluralism, and undermines our culture of meritocracy, by seemingly mistaking the U.S. for a religious state that privileges her chosen faith over those of other Americans,” said Ahmed M. Rehab, Executive Director, CAIR-Chicago.

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.