CAIR

About

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is the largest American Muslim civil-rights and advocacy organization, founded in 1994. Its journalist’s guide (2021) walks reporters through Islamic terminology, commonly misused terms (jihad does not mean “holy war”; fatwa is a legal opinion, not a death sentence), myths about Islam, and practical etiquette for interacting with Muslim communities.

On the commons’ source spectrum this is an identity-journalism accuracy guide written by a community advocacy organization: closer in purpose to the Religion Stylebook than to a progressive equity guide, but with the community’s own voice on which mischaracterizations matter most. Readers should note that the guide quotes scripture and third-party sources (the AP Stylebook, UN documents) within its own text; the commons cites CAIR for CAIR’s guidance and goes to the primary sources for theirs.

In the commons it contributes to the Faith & Religious Identity chapter, as a source for muslim, islam, islamophobia, and nation-of-islam.

Access

The guide is a free public PDF on CAIR’s site (linked above) and was live as of the last check: the archived copy is byte-identical to the live file. Host posture is private-mirror-link-out: the commons keeps a private preservation copy for citation verification and links readers to CAIR’s authoritative version. Quotes are held within fair-use limits.