The Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab discrimination remain elevated, even as the pace has leveled off slightly from a year ago, according to reporting by CBS News Chicago.
CAIR-Chicago, which has handled civil rights cases in the region for more than 20 years, tracked 845 cases between September 2025 and August 2026. That’s close to the 876 cases the office logged over the same period a year earlier, but it marks an increase of roughly 40% compared with 2024, when the office handled 518 cases.
The complaints span a range of categories, including travel, immigration, employment, asylum, defamation, housing, government interactions, encounters with the FBI, and schools. According to CBS, the top categories are travel (233 cases), immigration (187), employment (83), and asylum (54), with employment discrimination cases on the rise.
CAIR-Chicago executive director Ahmed Rehab told CBS News Chicago that the discrimination his organization tracks isn’t happening in a vacuum. “The cause is, in my opinion, this is not an organic reaction,” he said, describing American Muslims as established, educated and integrated into the country. He characterized the hostility directed at the community as “engineered and curated” to advance a “special interest” agenda tied to support for wars abroad.
Rehab also pointed to a rise in “public accommodation” complaints — incidents where people report being treated differently at everyday places like gyms or grocery stores.
The Chicago numbers track with CAIR’s national findings. The organization’s 2026 civil rights report, released in March, found that complaints of discrimination and bigotry against Muslims nationwide remained at a record high for a third consecutive year, driven in part by federal policy and rhetoric the report said increasingly treated Muslims — particularly those speaking out on Palestinian human rights — as suspect.
