Source: CivilRights.org

http://www.civilrights.org/issues/enforcement/details.cfm?id=39576

On January 18, 2006 CivilRights.org reported, "A new flyer campaign equating the wearing of a turban with terrorism has outraged Arab-American and civil rights groups, who have decried the move as 'baseless and reprehensible.' The flyer, by the Nutritional Health Alliance (NHA), depicts Sen. Richard Durbin, D. Ill., wearing a turban with the words, 'Get a Turban for Durbin! Keep Congressional Terrorism at Bay,' on it. It was sent out last month to more than a million vitamin and nutritional supplement consumers. 'The turban is a sign of respect, dignity and humility and must not be associated with terrorism or terrorist activity,' said the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in a letter signed by more than 100 local, state and national organizations, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Asian American Justice Center. The letter states that the NHA's depiction of the turban 'serves as nothing more than hatemongering and uses stereotypes to support its point of view'... The flyer, part of NHA's campaign against supplement regulation, was designed to attack Sen. Durbin for his interest in requiring dietary supplement manufacturers to report side effects of their products."