Communications Intern, Dima Ansari, discusses Islamophobic FBI Training Materials

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.

CAIR-Chicago Litigation Director Kevin Vodak presented the “Hate Crime and Bias Awareness” conference on September 15th, 2011 to discuss the ways in which law enforcement agencies can improve their procedures and techniques in addressing hate crimes.

Abu Dhabi Gallup Center and the Gallup Center for Muslim Studies conducted a groundbreaking poll which indicated that, contrary to the stereotype, the majority of Muslim Americans say they are loyal to the United States and optimistic about its future.

In the wake of the abhorrent events that occurred last Friday in Norway, information has come to light revealing connections between the terrorist suspect, Anders Brehing Breivik, to the anti-Islam movement in England, as well as to prominent Islamophobes in the US.

Christina Abraham, Civil Rights Director at CAIR-Chicago, debates anti-Muslim blogger Robert Spencer over Rep. Peter King’s Islamophobic hearings on “Radical Islam” in America.

The Council on American Islamic Relations is considering legal action regarding the ads. Ahmed Rehab, executive director of CAIR-Chicago, said organizations such as Geller’s are not qualified to lead domestic violence initiatives.

But Rehab suspects that’s not their primary goal. Instead, he said, they are intentionally creating an uncomfortable work environment for Chicago’s cabdrivers.

The Honor Killing Awareness Campaign responsible for the taxi advertisements is powered by the anti-Muslim group Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), run by Islamophobe bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.
Their overt connection between the Islamic faith and violence is not only incorrect and offensive, but short-sighted in that it fails to acknowledge the wider problem of violence against women in America.

“We are all about reconciling Islam and the West,” Rehab said. “We challenge those who attempt to drive a wedge between Muslim and being American. That’s really the life cause of Tariq Ramadan as an academic and philosopher and media personality. He often says that he’s culturally Western, nationally Swiss, ethnically Egyptian and religiously Muslim. For him and for us as well, there is no inherent schism between being Muslim and being American.”

Comments on this blog regularly reveal some persistent and false stereotypes about Islam. Monday’s arrest of seven suspected terrorists in North Carolina allegedly plotting violent jihad is sure to spark more.