Chicago Group Aims to Counter Anti-Islam Sentiment

The New York Times

February 23, 2012

By David Lepeska

As anti-Muslim rhetoric rises locally and nationally — some of it fueled by the presidential campaign — a group of Chicago-area Muslims is battling back, using tactics including a television ad campaign and public forums against bigotry.

Gain Peace, an Islamic outreach organization based in Chicago, spent $40,000 in December to counter negative portrayals and produce two television ads intended to promote Islam as a just faith. The spots, which will run through March in the Chicago area on Fox, CNN and TNT, depict friendly Muslim students and professionals and display a phone number and a Web site for more information.

“This is an election year and in the Republican primaries and elsewhere, generally we have seen more discrimination, hate and misunderstanding about Muslims,” said Sabeel Ahmed, director of Gain Peace. “We wanted to take it up a notch.”

During a political engagement workshop for immigrants on the near West Side early this month, Ahmed Rehab, the head of a Muslim advocacy group, urged attendees to fight attacks on Islam with accurate information about the Muslim faith.

“What’s worse than ignorance is misinformation, and that’s what I find Islamophobia normally falls under: It’s a process of miseducation,” said Mr. Rehab, executive director of the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “But what can be done, can be undone.”

That un-do list has been growing. Last November, Pat Brady, the Illinois Republican Party chairman, urged the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the state’s leading immigrant support group, to expel CAIR-Chicago from its list of affiliated organizations. He cited “CAIR’s reported ties to Hamas terrorist supporters, its anti-Israel organizing and its tolerance for anti-Semitic discourse.”

The coalition declined and called Mr. Brady’s request “a descent into anti-Muslim hysteria.”

In the presidential race, both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have depicted Islamic Shariah law as a potential threat to United States sovereignty. One of Mitt Romney’s foreign policy advisers, Walid Phares, regularly warns that Muslims aim to take over American institutions and impose Shariah, a legal code based mainly on the Koran that can involve punishments like cutting off the hands of a thief.

Republican-sponsored bills in more than 20 states, including Michigan, Indiana, Iowa and Missouri, would ban courts from recognizing foreign laws, legislative shorthand for Shariah. Yet no United States Muslim organization is calling for the institution of Shariah.

Kent Redfield, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield, said the rhetoric might become more heated during the coming primary battles in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Missouri and Wisconsin. “In reaching out to your base, there’s a tendency to throw red meat out there,” he said.

The effect of these verbal attacks may go beyond the political. Hate crimes against Muslims increased nearly 50 percent in the United States in 2010, according to a Federal Bureau of Investigation report released in November. That month, officials at O’Hare Airport fired a baggage handler who was accused of writing “Burn Islam” and “Filthy Muslim” on his Facebook page.

Officials from CAIR-Chicago plan to address anti-Muslim attacks from far right groups at their annual banquet next month. Leaders of the Nation of Islam are expected to respond to Muslim discrimination during the group’s convention at the United Center this weekend.

Gain Peace, which produced the television ads, is part of the Islamic Circle of North America, an Islamic education organization based in Queens, N.Y., accused by conservative groups of extolling terrorism.

“These TV ads are out there to fool people into thinking that Muslims are just like us,” said Constance Gavras, head of a Chicago-area chapter of Act! For America, a grass-roots anti-jihadist organization.

Mr. Ahmed, of Gain Peace, dismissed any connection between Islamic Circle and terrorism. “There is always a link people try to make,” he said. “But there is no proof.”

Mr. Redfield, of the University of Illinois at Springfield, said he thought the Muslim groups were smart to combat anti-Muslim rhetoric. “In politics, if you don’t define yourself someone else will,” he said. “They have to be proactive in terms of trying to neutralize ignorance and willful manipulation of negative opinion.”

Islamic Circle hopes to distribute the television ads nationwide.



--------
www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/us/gain-peace-in-chicago-aims-to-counter-anti-muslim-sentiment.html

Preparing for 2012, Chicago Police Create Counter-terrorism Unit

By David Lepeska
September 9, 2011, NY Times

As the city prepares to host two international summits next year, and with the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks approaching, the Chicago Police Department is creating a counterterrorism unit, which will bolster security and incorporate lessons from academic research and from New York City’s counterterrorism tactics.

The threat of terrorism is a real concern for Chicago officials, with world leaders expected at both the Group of Eight and NATO summits here next year. The city has been home to violent extremists and the target of terrorist plots: David C. Headley of Chicago helped to plan the deadly November 2008 attacks in Mumbai, and documents taken from Osama bin Laden’s compound in May included plans to attack the city.

Last month, the police department quietly started the counterterrorism unit, which is expected to be fully operational by the end of the year,. The move is the brainchild of Garry McCarthy, the city’s new police superintendent, who was in New York with Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on Sept. 11, 2001, and later helped develop the New York Police Department’s counterterrorism strategy.

Mr. McCarthy intends to bring various counterterrorism functions under a single unit, a spokesman for the department said. The new unit will also act on intelligence from the regional Joint Terrorism Task Force.

Mr. McCarthy hopes to take a page from New York’s innovative program, though on a smaller scale. The New York Police Department has more than 1,000 officers working on terrorism, with detectives in foreign cities and with officers who speak Pashto, Arabic and other languages monitoring communication channels. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he had added nearly 750 additional officers, yet the department still has 700 fewer officers than five years ago, according to city records.

A 2008 report from the RAND Corporation, a policy institute, said local police were the most effective units in fighting terrorism because their relations with local Muslim communities could enable them to gain information and foster cooperation.

Muslims in Chicago seem willing to work with the police and to help avoid early mistakes that could undermine the new unit’s efforts. Muslims for a Safe America, a Chicago group led by Kamran Memon, seeks to address tensions within Muslim communities about American policies in this country and abroad. And the Chicago chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the largest advocacy group for American Muslims, is active here.

The city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication is spearheading security planning for the NATO and G8 summits, scheduled for May 15-22, and the new Chicago Police Department counterterrorism unit is likely to play a key role. Antiwar activists have already called for protests during the gatherings, and the police department has begun training thousands of officers in tactics for mass arrests and containment.