Facing down Islamophobia: interview with Zahra Billoo

The majority of the estimated 79 million Egyptians identify themselves as Muslim. Here in the U.S., Muslim population estimates vary from 2.5 to 7 million Muslims. American Muslims were just another ingredient in the melting pot ... until 9/11. After that day, suspicions of terrorism and radicalization grew, racial profiling increased, and hate crimes were on the rise. The media even coined a word to describe the trend of anti-Muslim rhetoric and behavior: Islamophobia. Next month, Congress is scheduled to consider the issue, as republican Representative Peter King from New York has called for hearings on, among other things,"radicalization of the American Muslim community and homegrown terrorism." Here’s Congressman King speaking with Politico’s Dan Riley. REPRESENTATIVE PETER KING (R-NY): Unfortunately, we have so many mosques in this country. There’s too many people sympathetic to radical Islam. We should be looking at them more carefully. We should be finding out how to infiltrate. We should be much more aggressive in law enforcement. Obviously we have to look out for civil liberties violations, but I think there are cautions and procedures in place, and to me, just using the 2004 Republican convention as an example, the police acted in an exemplary way. A letter signed by dozens of Muslim organizations and others condemned the planned hearings, saying, “Singling out a group of Americans for government scrutiny based on their faith is divisive and wrong.” One of the signatories was CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. KALW’s Hana Baba visited CAIR’s Bay Area offices in Santa Clara and talked with director Zahra Billoo. Baba asked Billoo if she believes Islamophobia is on the rise.