Excerpt:
The day US President Barack Obama reached out to Muslims around the world through his speech at the Turkish Parliament, saying the United States "is not and will never be at war with Islam," Muslim Americans described what looked like a war on their community in the US. The American Muslim Taskforce (AMT) on Civil Rights and Elections, a coalition of major national Islamic organizations, discussed their concerns at a briefing at the National Press Club on April 6.
"This is a very important message to the American people, to the West and to the Muslim world in general," said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). "We appreciate Obama's efforts to bring peace and justice to the Muslim world and American Muslims are not only willing but they are ready to help," he said.
Obama needs to improve Washington's relations with six to seven million American Muslims — relations badly damaged in the previous administration's "war on terror" and by its invasion of two Muslim countries.
"We support and we do encourage the president to reach out to the Muslim world," added Mahdi Bray, executive director of the Muslim American Society's Freedom Foundation, "but as my grandmother used to say, charity begins at home."