CAIR-Philadelphia

Last week, the Pennsylvania chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations sponsored an event for community members to tour the mosque, learn about the faith, observe evening prayers and share dinner. "If you get to know your neighbors, you are less inclined to be fearful of them," CAIR-PA Executive Director Moein Khawaja said.

Moein Khawaja: Open discourse and the freedom of conscience and speech is an absolute requirement for Islam to flourish. Extremism emerges where freedom is suppressed. Islam is a religion and not a government system; it flourishes in communist China, in the repressive monarchy of Saudi Arabia and in the democracy of America. Islam is healthier and reaches its full potential when practiced within the political context of a democratic culture.

CAIR-PA Executive Director Moein Khawaja debates the lower Manhattan mosque with Tea Party activist and constitutional law professor on NBC10's @issue.

"They said that Islam is a false religion, and it really disturbed a lot of the people that were inside," said Rugiatu Conteh, with the Philadelphia office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR. She was at the mosque during one of the incidents. "If they knew how much we had in common, they wouldn't do acts like that."

"Muslim Americans feel so muted today, drowned out by the hysteria in the mainstream media," lamented Moein Khawaja, director of the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations(CAIR), at a special iftar, or meal breaking the Ramadan fast, last week. "We're only about six million people in the U.S., and for the past nine years we've been on the defensive. We have to be proactive and produce our own media that's more representative of our experiences: media that's more positive; that shows the multitude of Islamic voices."