“It is our belief that greater access to Islam’s holy book will help foster a better appreciation and understanding of Islam by ordinary Americans,” Awad said.

WASHINGTON, May 18, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – A leading US Muslim civil liberties group launched a campaign offering free copies of the Noble Qur'an to the American public, in an effort to promote a better acquaintance with the Muslims’ Noble Book.

The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said in a statement, a copy of which was sent to IslamOnline.net Tuesday, May 17, the campaign, under the title Explore the Qur’an, comes in response to the controversy generated by press reports that the Noble Qur'an was desecrated by US interrogators in Guantanamo detention camp.

“We are initiating this campaign as an attempt to turn a negative incident into something more positive,” said CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad.

“It is our belief that greater access to Islam’s holy book will help foster a better appreciation and understanding of Islam by ordinary Americans.”

In its May 9 edition, the mass-circulation Newsweek said, quoting an “a knowledgeable US government source”, that investigators probing abuses at the US military prison in Cuba found that interrogators “had placed copies of the Noble Qur'an on toilets, and in at least one case flushed a holy book down the toilet.”

The Muslim liberties group said its campaign involves the community-sponsored distribution of Islam’s revealed text to Americans nationwide.

The Newsweek report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan, Indonesia and Gaza.

It further drew ire from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, the Arab League and a cohort of international Muslim organizations.

In the face of widespread protests, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice branded any desecration of the Noble Qur’an as “abhorrent” and promised that any offenders at Guantanamo would face “appropriate action.”

The US weekly retracted the anonymously sourced story Monday, May 16, after first admitting that parts of it were wrong.

Last week, CAIR called on the Bush administration to launch a public probe into reports of the Qur'an-flushing by US interrogators.

CAIR is America’s largest Muslim civil liberties group, with 30 offices and
chapters nationwide and in Canada.

A recent report released by CAIR May 11, showed that the anti-Muslim hate crimes, discrimination and harassment in the United States have increased by half over the past year.

On the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Amnesty International said in a report that Racial profiling by US law enforcement agencies has grown over the past three years to cover one in nine Americans, mostly targeting Muslims.

A new nation-wide poll, conducted by the Cornell University and posted on its Web site, showed that at least 44 percent of the American society back curbing Muslims’ civil rights and monitoring their places of worship.

A May 2004 report released by the US Senate Office Of Research concluded that the Arab Americans and the Muslim community in the United States have taken the brunt of the Patriot Act and other federal powers applied in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.