The Obama campaign finally tapped an Arab-American and Muslim-American coordinator July 26 -- Chicago lawyer Mazen Asbahi. Monday, he stepped down after questions were raised by the Wall Street Journal about his brief tenure on the board of an Islamic investment fund. The episode exposes the Obama team's struggle to woo Muslim voters while denying Obama ever embraced the faith and as he looks for Jewish support.

There are many words I can use to describe Mazen Asbahi’s fresh resignation from his position as the Obama campaign’s national liaison for Muslim American affairs, and the circumstances behind that decision. But I will suffice with one that I think says it best: “sad.”

From Republican contender John McCain's Jul. 25 meeting with the Dalai Lama in Aspen, Colorado to Democratic candidate Barack Obama's visit to Jerusalem's Western Wall the same day, the intersection of religion, politics and the "war on terror" has been a recurrent theme in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

CAIRO — Coming from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, a group of American Muslim women are forming the country's first only-women law firm to dispel stereotypes about Muslim women. "They are defeating stereotypes on multiple levels," Ahmed Rehab, executive director of theChicago office of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), told the Chicago Tribune on Friday, August 1.

In what may be the nation's only law firm composed solely of Muslim women, the attorneys represent the ethnic and religious diversity within the Islamic faith: Some cover their hair, some don't. Some are Sunni; others are Shiite, and at least one is happy to be secular.

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a lawsuit by conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage against a Muslim rights group that reprinted his attacks against Islam and called for an advertising boycott.

Chicago - Barack Obama should be able to count on heavy support from US Muslims in the November election, if polls are correct, but he risks offending some members of that faith by having to explain he is not one himself.

A federal judge in San Francisco on Friday dismissed a lawsuit filed by conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage against a Muslim civil rights group. Savage claimed the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations violated his copyright when it posted on its Web site a four-minute excerpt of anti-Islamic comments by Savage. The council accompanied the excerpt with a critique of Savage's words.

An e-mail sent by Frankfort Township assessor Paul Ruff to many in the Frankfort/Mokena area is filled with anti-Muslim sentiments.The e-mail, circulated in June, said America should follow the lead of Australia's former prime minister John Howard, who said Muslims who want to live under Islamic Sharia law should get out of Australia.

A former Kane County jail guard claims he lost his job because of his Muslim beliefs, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week in Chicago.

From CNN's Glenn Beck to Comedy Central's Daily Show, and from The Weekly Standard to The Nation, America’s political pundits hold wildly varying opinions on almost everything. But when it comes to Islam and Muslims, both ends of the political spectrum are too often equally comfortable with simplistic two-dimensional treatments that end up reducing Islam’s more than one billion followers to caricatures and stereotypes.

The cartoon on the cover of the latest New Yorker magazine depicting Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as militant radicals drew the ire of the presidential candidates Monday and posed the question of how satirical journalism affects voters during an election season.

Barack Obama's campaign recently launched a new Web site called "Fight the Smears," dedicated to dispelling damaging and inaccurate rumors about the Democratic presidential candidate.One so-called "smear:" that he is a Muslim.

When Zahir Mian's prayer clock rings to announce the sunset prayer, he politely excuses himself and performs his ritual pre-prayer ablution, unfurls a prayer rug towards Mecca, and prays like any Muslim.Not all followers of Islam, however, would consider Mian a fellow Musli

A former Florida professor who had pleaded guilty to aiding a terror organization was indicted yesterday on criminal charges that he refused to testify before a grand jury investigating whether Islamic charities in Northern Virginia were financing terrorists.

Maybe I'm hyper-jaded or have been in this business too long. But when I learned some of Barack Obama's volunteers kept Muslim women in "hijab" or the traditional Islamic head scarf from sitting behind the Democratic presidential candidate at a campaign rally last week, my irritation was laced with a yawn.

A UIC professor applied to become a citizen in 2002—then spent years battling the government Mohammed Reza Ghaffarpour believed his path to citizenship would be smooth after he aced his 2003 English and U.S. history exam and received a letter saying he was being recommended for approval.

CAIR-Chicago Communications Coordinator Reem Rahman discusses the recent discrimination against Muslims at an Obama Rally in Detroit. Media reports indicate the women were kept from the podium area because campaign volunteers did not want the candidate associated with the Muslim women's head scarves, or hijabs. Campaign officials and Obama later apologized to the women.

CAIR-Chicago’s Civil Rights Director Christina Abraham discusses the work of the "Coalition to Ground Boeing Torture Flights" with radio host Leslie Marshall. Allegedly, flights have been used to transport CIA detainees suspected of terrorism to secret prisons in different countries where they are then subject to torture. CAIR-Chicago is a founding member of the coalition and its ongoing efforts.

CAIR-Chicago’s Civil Rights Director Christina Abraham discusses the work of the "Coalition to Ground Boeing Torture Flights" with radio host Leslie Marshall. Allegedly, flights have been used to transport CIA detainees suspected of terrorism to secret prisons in different countries where they are then subject to torture. CAIR-Chicago is a founding member of the coalition and its ongoing efforts.