The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a leading Muslim civil rights organization, occupies one floor of a red-brick office building on Capitol Hill. Visitors must use an elevator pass code to reach the suite, the only one in a building of tenants that is secured against attack.
On the wall of its conference room hangs a framed front page of a newspaper showing a U.S. president, standing shoeless in a mosque and reaching out in dramatic fashion to Muslim Americans.
