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The Islamophobia that is alive in this country – from the anti-Muslim legislation to the illegal spying by the NYPD – casts a wide net on Muslims, citizens and non-citizens, similarly to the way it is casted on immigrants.

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“Massacre in Wisconsin,” screams the large headline on the cover of the winter edition of the “Intelligence Report,” a magazine published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a prominent civil rights group fighting the influence of hate groups in America.

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By Samuel Burke and Claire Calzonetti, CNN
Aasif Mandvi’s job title as a TV correspondent is both a complete joke and utterly realistic: Senior Muslim Correspondent.

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Earlier that morning, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly spoke to Fox 5 New York, acknowledging some of the criticism but saying it doesn’t reflect the relationship his department has with Muslim residents.

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“There was an American wedding going on in the same place as our Pakistani wedding,” Malik said. “A guest from the American wedding saw me and had a really strong response to my veil. It got really ugly very fast. I knew afterward that I wanted to write about it.”

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Muslims, This is how some Muslim New Yorkers have grown accustomed to opening meetings, on campus and at mosques from Steinway Street in Queens to Fifth Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Their assumption is that someone is always listening for hints of frustration and anger and disloyalty.

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Many at the ADAMS Center mosque in Sterling recall the pride and hope they felt when they heard President Obama’s first major address to the Muslim world last year. Some quote parts of it by memory: “Let there be no doubt: Islam is a part of America.”

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Following Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s recent visit to the United States, our Higher Education Ministry offered to send experts in Islamic studies to the United States to help counter Islamophobia by giving the people lessons on Islam.

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Joy Levitt, executive director of the Jewish Community Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, remembers her first conversation with Daisy Khan around 2005, years before Ms. Khan’s idea for a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan morphed into a controversy about Sept. 11, Islam and freedom of religion.