This audio is brought to you by Muslim Central.com. I'll begin with a traditional Arabic praise that is customary for Muslims to do when they speak.

The purpose of it is to bless any speech that we do and produce good out of it.

And that is a Mahmoud al-Dil al-Ili al-Ihi and al-Ahi, al-Ihi, Roman-Wada.

I was asked to speak to you folks for 30 minutes which seems to me like a daunting task, but I will try and speak to you and the topic that was given to me

rather scary, it was called Islamophobia, which if you may not know what that is, it's essentially

an irrational fear of Islam. Muslims that are in this

audience are probably more sensitive to that reality than non-Muslims are of how that fear

has grown over the years and how just the way we're perceived generally

in society has changed.

You may not have realized how that perception has changed if you're non-Muslim, but certainly

as Muslims we have seen a very strong

or very rapid exponential progression in how Muslims are perceived.

I happen to travel quite a bit.

It's slowed down now to once a month, but I practically

traveled every weekend for the last six or seven years. So I've had my share of airport

adventures over the last six or seven years and my share of strange looks is like bored planes and things like that

But I'd rather talk to you today about some very fundamental basic things and present my thoughts in an organized fashion so when we do get

to the questions and answers I hope to address some of my thoughts that you may like to

get further clarification on and essentially I'd like to break up our understanding of Islam into a few things.

And the first distinction I'd like to make is Muslim behavior versus Islam. And that is essentially true of any ideology or any faith

system that there has to be a distinction made between behaviors of people and the actual teachings of religion

itself, the ideals, the text, whatever you may have, the sources you may have, they may be

...