With G-d's Name, The Merciful Benefactor, The Merciful Redeemer

(CLEVELAND, OH, 7/17/16) – With the Republican National Convention being held this week in Cleveland, a prominent Muslim advocacy group has announced it will challenge the GOP and party officials during the convention.

On Monday, July 18, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, will hold a news conference at the site of the , to challenge the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim stance of the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump and of other party officials and representatives.

The news conference, which will be held on "Mall A" in downtown Cleveland, will confront GOP leaders on what organizers are calling "Republican Party Islamophobia."

National and local Muslim leaders, including CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad; CAIR National Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw; CAIR-Cleveland Executive Director Julia Shearson will headline the news conference, which is scheduled to begin at 10:30am.

“It is time the GOP and its presumptive presidential nominee repudiate Islamophobia and the politics of fear targeting Muslims and other minority groups,” said CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad.

On Friday, CAIR condemned the recent terror attack in France and also condemned a suggestion by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich who responded to the attack by calling for Inquisition-style religious “testing” and possible deportation of “every person here who is of a Muslim background.”

SEE: CAIR Condemns Terror Attack in France, Newt Gingrich’s Call to ‘Test’ and Deport American Muslims

Since yesterday’s attack in France, CAIR has received reports of a number of hate incidents targeting American Muslims and their institutions.

CAIR recently demanded that Donald Trump “stop the bigotry” after he falsely claimed on Fox News that assimilation of American Muslims is “pretty close” to nonexistent and that a “percentage” of American Muslims “want to do what this maniac did in Orlando.” Trump also repeated his call for surveillance of American mosques.

Earlier this year, CAIR said Donald Trump’s continued use of a debunked myth about U.S. Gen. John Pershing executing Muslim prisoners in the Philippines using bullets dipped in pig’s blood was endangering ordinary American Muslims who were already facing a surge in hate.

CAIR has previously stated that Trump’s pig’s blood claim and other instances of his Islamophobic rhetoric, including his calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, his false claim that “Islam hates us,” his refusal to rule out special IDs for American Muslims, and his willingness to consider closing down American mosques place millions of innocent, law-abiding citizens in the American Muslim community at risk.

CAIR has reported an unprecedented spike in anti-Muslim incidents nationwide since the Paris terror attacks, the San Bernardino shootings and Trump’s bigoted call for a complete ban on Muslims entering the United States.

At the press conference, CAIR says it will distribute free packets of “Islamophobin,” a mock-medicine designed to “cure” Islamophobia. The packets will actually contain sugar-free-chewing gum.

The Washington-based Muslim civil rights group is also asking Muslim community members to report any bias incidents to police and to CAIR's Civil Rights Department at 202-742-6420 or by filing a report on their website.