The Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company has invited CAIR-Chicago’s Sensitivity Training Coordinator, Veronica Zapata, and Outreach Coordinator, Gerald Hankerson, to share a presentation on Islam and Ramadan with its employees.

Throughout Ramadan, Muslims break a 12-hour fast with an Iftar meal, which in many Muslim countries is a time to see extended family or to celebrate with close friends. But for taxi drivers who work shifts late into the night, the meal is more functional, a short break from the day’s work when there isn’t time to meet up with one’s family.

Call it Iftar-on-the-go, but definitely don’t call it fast food.

An agreement between Muslim workers and a Nebraska meatpacking plant reached late Tuesday could be an outline for an accord in a similar dispute in Greeley, people involved in the discussions say.

But a major hurdle in any agreement over Muslim prayer times will be whether 103 workers who were fired for walking away from the JBS Swift & Co. slaughterhouse in Greeley are rehired, said Christina Abraham, civil-rights director at the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Chicago.

A volunteer attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations said Wednesday thatCAIR has been negotiating for a year with JBS Swift & Co. about break times for Muslim workers.

CAIR-Chicago was recently recognized at the Mosque Foundation’s 13th Ramadan Community banquet in Bridgeview. The annual banquet celebrates the teamwork of individuals, organizations, and public officials who serve the Bridgeview community.

A civil-rights group holds little hope that a week-old dispute between Muslim workers and their bosses at a Greeley slaughterhouse will end quickly, based on the company’s recent response in a similar standoff in Nebraska.

CAIR-Chicago PILI Fellow Elisa Jillson represented a woman in a complaint against a local suburban library. The woman contacted CAIR-Chicago after she was denied permission to put up an informational display on Ramadan despite the fact that displays on Ramadan and other religious holidays have been permitted in the past.

During the blessed month of Ramadan, CAIR-Chicago’s Ramadan Outreach effort ended successfully after having met with various mosques and Islamic centers in the Chicagoland area and beyond.

I guess when you don’t have the guts to call someone a terrorist, anti-American grinch will do.

Elizabeth Zahdan might as well have been burning the flag or an effigy of President Bush when she hung up Ramadan lights at an Oak Lawn elementary school a few days back, prompting outrage from other parents and subsequently forcing Ridgeland School District 122 to consider a ban on Christmas and Halloween parties.

CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab discusses the challenges surrounding the recent accommodation of Ramadan along with Christmas and Halloween in an Oak Lawn, Illinois public school and the continued need to patiently stand for truth, justice, and knowledge.