AIC focuses on advocacy, engagement, and education, representing the American Muslim constituency on Capitol Hill and supporting legislation that promotes international religious and civil freedoms.
Project Nur
Project Nur is a student-led initiative with more than 70 chapters on campuses across the nation. The chapters work to combat stereotypes and promote inter-faith understanding on college campuses. Project Nur, in cooperation with the John Templeton Foundation, hosts the Science and Islam dialogue series, which explores the intersection of Muslim faith and science.
International Programs
In Egypt, AIC hosts the Cairo Human Rights Film Festival and conducts a civic education prohectm Fahem Haqi (I Know My Rights). AIC has also translated and distributed "The Montgomery Story," a Martin Luther King comic book that describes the 1958 bus boycott and the power of non-violence. The comic book was influential during the events of the Arab Spring.
In 2008, AIC, in collaboration with CureViolence, began the Ambassadors for Peace program in Iraq. The program aims to peacefully resolve conflicts through the mediation of local outreach workers.
In June 2010, AIC launched a blog focusing on women's right in the Middle East. The blog, called "Drafting a New Story: Women's Rights in the Middle East" features new stories, political cartoons, video interviews, and artwork with an emphasis on women's rights.
AIC began working in Tunisia in 2011 with the social entrepreneurship program Tune in Tunisia. The program offers young social entrepreneurs microgrants to lead civil society projects in their local communities.
AIC also holds an annual essay writing contest focused on civil rights in the Middle East, the Dream Deferred Essay Contest. In May 2012, the best essay submissions from the Middle East and North Africa were published in an anthology called Arab Spring Dreams.
AIC advocates for religious and civil freedoms at large in the Middle East. In 2007, when Haleh Esfandiari was imprisoned in Evin Prison in Iran, the American Islamic Congress created the site freehaleh.org to petition for her release.