CAIR: Oregon’s Fashion Police (Newsweek)
Should your child’s teacher wear a turban, a hijab, a kippah or other “religious dress’? The state of Oregon doesn’t think so. The Oregon Workplace Religious Freedom Act, now awaiting the governor’s signature, requires all employers to let workers wear religious items with one exception: “No teacher in any public school shall wear any religious […]
CAIR-NY: Call for Eid to Be on School Calendars
NEW YORK // On Eid al Adha last December, Isabel Bucaram-Belguet did not want Huyam, her then six-year-old daughter, to miss the family festivities. So it was with a heavy heart that she wrote to Huyam’s teachers explaining why her little girl would have to skip school and a scheduled field trip.A grassroots campaign for […]
CAIR: Ellison a ‘Good Example of What America Is and Can Be’
Keith Ellison is what he is — the first Muslim elected to Congress, the first African American to represent Minnesota — while trying not to be too much of what he is. But not too little, either.Quietly devout, he unrolls his prayer rug in the privacy of his office in the Longworth House Office Building, […]
FL Imam Faces Deportation for Not Becoming Informant
As the political crisis in Iran turns toward a slow boil, a North Miami Beach imam is closely watching events unfold there. U.S. authorities could deport him at any moment to the Islamic republic, a country he has never visited. Foad Farahi, 34, a doctoral student at Florida International University, will be part of a […]
CAIR: Muslim Leaders Seek Government Stance Against Islamophobia
Since President Obama’s inauguration speech, and especially after his Cairo address to the Muslim world, Muslims around the world have been waiting for concrete steps to improve U.S.-Muslim relations. A group of scholars, diplomats and American-Muslim leaders are recommending practical steps to achieve that goal. Since the September 11th attacks, U.S. relations with the Muslim […]
CAIR-IL: The Islam-Basher and the Librarian Kerfuffle
A controversy erupted last week in Chicago after it was publicly revealed that a noted anti-Islam blogger, Robert Spencer, had been invited to an American Library Association panel advertised as “dispelling stereotypes about Islam.” Ultimately, the panel was canceled after all the other panelists withdrew. I’ll get into that in a minute, but first, who […]
Obama & Muslims After ‘The War on Terror’
“What if they gave a war and no one came?” read a bumper sticker popular during the Vietnam War. Today’s version might ask, What if they gave a war on terror and no one came? President George W. Bush first used the fateful phrase “war on terror” in an address to Congress on September 20, […]
CAIR: Muslim Americans Encouraged, Hopeful after Obama
Iraqi Americans Wasan Alqaisi and Sumer Majid made a Fourth of July family picnic of kebab — served on hamburger buns with slices of American cheese.Celebrating Independence Day in the U.S. capital, the two Muslim women were doing what generations of Americans have done before them: blending their faith and lifestyle with a U.S. national […]
CAIR-IL: Panel Dropped after Invitation of Islam Critic
The American Library Association has canceled a panel discussion on Islam planned for its annual conference over the weekend, after three speakers withdrew in protest at the inclusion of the fourth, a controversial critic of the Muslim religion.The critic, Robert Spencer, who runs the blog site JihadWatch.org, told The Washington Times that he learned of […]
A Thank You, and a Koran, for Obama
President Obama will soon receive a thank-you gift for his speech to the Muslim world in Cairo. Inspired by the address, in which Mr. Obama quoted the Koran, the Council on American-Islamic Relations plans to distribute 100,000 copies of the Koran to national, state and local leaders.The council’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said at […]