Silence on the part of public officials at the national level only serves to empower Islamophobes.

We've seen a tremendous rise in the level of anti-Muslim bigotry in our society - and against minorities of all kinds - but we've also seen a tremendous rise in support.

Researchers looked at news programs on major broadcast and cable networks between 2008 and 2012 and found that of those labeled as domestic terrorists, 81% were identifiable as Muslims - this despite the fact that FBI reports from the period studied revealed that only 6% of domestic terrorist suspects were Muslim.

We have expressed the Muslim community's concerns about a variety of images of the Prophet Mohammed, whether it be in textbooks, editorial cartoons or even in the Supreme Court.

We want to discuss the implications and impact of the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed and try to come up with initiatives to help calm the situation.

We had another report of a Sikh man being pulled off a train, I think between here and New York, just because of his looks,