Excerpt:
The Council on American-Islamic Relations — a national civil rights and advocacy group for Muslims — is opening a chapter in Oregon. It's unfortunate that one of the factors driving this is a spate of hate crimes against Muslims, including a well-publicized attack in Portland.
The Muslim population in Oregon is tiny. A 2014 Pew Research Center study put it at 1 percent of the state's population, the greatest number of whom — CAIR estimates about 40,000 to 50,000 people — live in the Portland area.
It's an unusually diverse population, CAIR-Oregon Representative Zakir Khan says, including Somalis, Syrians, Arabs, Pakistanis, Jordanians and others — including native-born Americans.