CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab Defends Equal Representation of Ramadan on The O'Reilly Factor

Standing in front of Muslim high school students, Ahmed Rehab asked the girls at Universal School in Bridgeview what non-Muslims might think when they see them at the shopping mall in their hijabs, or headscarves.

Kahanist and amateur blogger, Joe Kaufman, is a strange character that lies somewhere between the disturbing and the comical. Styling himself as a gumshoe detective out to expose the nefarious fifth column activities of American Muslims, he sees enemies and conspiracy theories at every corner and in every American Muslim organization.

For nearly 13 daylight hours during Ramadan, Muslims abstain from eating, drinking and other sensual pleasures.Many Muslims use the Islamic holy month to temporarily give up a vice -- smoking. Now, three area Muslim organizations, including physicians groups, are urging smokers to kick the habit for good.

A TERRIBLE hate crime against an Iranian American woman on New York’s Long Island has thrown a spotlight on the tide of racism toward Arabs and Muslims that has accompanied the U.S. government’s wars overseas.

Aaron Siebert-Llera would wake up wearing the Star of David one day and a cross the next. But the religion he eventually chose was neither his father's Jewish faith nor his Mexican-American mother's Roman Catholicism.

But the religion he eventually chose was neither his father's Jewish faith nor his Mexican-American mother's Roman Catholicism.

He chose Islam.

WASHINGTON, 14 September 2007 — Rudy Giuliani, the Republican presidential candidate, is working hard to claim his place as the Republican’s leading hawk.

CAIR-Chicago Senior Outreach Coordinator Dina Rehab discusses CAIR-Chicago's recent blood drive held at the Downtown Islamic Center in partnership with LifeSource as a part of a nationwide summer-long campaign, "Muslims Care" with Radio Islam host Hiba Abdul-Rahim. She discusses the role of charity at the heart of Islam and her work to increase community service participation by Chicagoland Muslims.

CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab discusses the controversy surrounding Khalil Gibran International Academy in New York as the first Arabic language public school in New York on the Santita Jackson Show on Chicago's WVON 1690 radio. Santita discusses the contributions that author Khalil Gibran made to American pop culture including the adage "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." The school was named after Gibran, who was a Christian, arabic-speaking author of "The Prophet," one of America's all-time best selling books.

"Pipes is wedded to his personal political agenda to such a point that it dominates his worldview invalidating his ability to act as a neutral scholar on Muslim-related topics. Concerned with the interests of Israel above all else, he consistently defines Muslim-Americans exclusively as a function of their position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Ahmed Rehab of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Chicago discusses the removal of six Iraqi men from an American Airlines flight flying from San Diego to Chicago.

A woman who complained that some fellow passengers spoke Arabic and "had odd behavior" prevented a Chicago-bound American Airlines flight from departing San Diego, police said Wednesday.

Beefed-up airport screens target anyone with a head covering -- cowboy hats, turbans, hijabs and all. A Chicago-bound flight is grounded because six men speaking Arabic concerned a passenger.

Such realities confront more than 400,000 Muslim-Americans in the Chicago region alone who struggle to meld their faith and nationality. They are among more than 6 million and growing Muslims nationwide

-- Repeated complaints by a woman passenger concerned about six men speaking Arabic on a San Diego to Chicago American Airlines flight prevented take-off.

In many Western cities, plans to erect mosques often stir more passion than any other local issue—and politicians are leaping into the fray

It was an American airline’s flight from San Diego. Officials say a woman passenger complained to the crew that several men were speaking Arabic and she wanted off the plane. It was late at night. The plane returned to the gate and the men were questioned. Everything was okay but it was now past San Diego’s takeoff curfew, so everyone had to wait until yesterday afternoon to fly to Chicago.

When asked about the challenges of finding time at work to pray, Jamil Khourshad is dismissive of the difficulties created by the Muslim religion's daily prayer times.

Some newspaper editors think a satirical political cartoonist who often tackles taboo topics might have crossed a line when he incorporated a sexual innuendo into a comic strip about a character’s conversion to radical Islam. But it’s not the first strip by the artist to poke fun at religion.

CAIR-Chicago Executive Director Ahmed Rehab discusses the removal of six Iraqi-American men from an American Airlines flight from San Diego, California to Chicago, Illinois. The men had received certificates for a completed training mission for the U.S. Marines. Rehab says that “the larger concern is that suspicion is no longer based on what you do, but on a person’s language and race.”

"One of the most enduring qualities of America is its ability to bring together different cultures and allow them a space to settle into the fabric of this nation. It is the secret of our success as a nation, yet it is increasingly under attack from those who espouse a mono-cultural America. We need to take a shared responsibility and give voice to a consistent message, that hate speech and marginalization of any group must not be tolerated."