Joplin mosque burnes to the ground after suspected arson attack in August last yearAmong those assisting the Rebuild Joplin effort starting Monday will be Muslim and Jewish volunteers.

The volunteers will be from ICNA Relief, part of the Islamic Circle of North America; the Jewish Disaster Relief Corps; and Bridges, a Muslim-Jewish interfaith dialogue composed of New York University students. Shahid Farooqi, outreach director for ICNA Relief USA, said the groups are joining forces in a show of unity.

ICNA volunteers most recently have been volunteering to provide relief to victims of Superstorm Sandy. The group recently was named New Yorker of the Week by New York cable channel NY1. "Here in New York, they've been very active," said ICNA publicist Gail Tweedy. "They've handed out thousands of blankets and heaters. They've provided free health care services. They've cut down trees. They've provided grief counseling."

Farooqi said ICNA has worked with the JDRC on disaster relief projects in the past. He said ICNA came to Joplin following the May 22, 2011, tornado in Joplin. Its volunteers slept in the Islamic Society of Joplin mosque, which was destroyed in a suspicious fire on Aug. 6, 2012. Officials with ICNA also responded to the mosque fire.

"We helped to clean up debris," Farooqi said of the first visit. The initial post-tornado effort included Muslim volunteers from New York, Kansas, Oklahoma and St. Louis. "When a disaster happens, we help people based on their need, regardless of their religion or skin color," Farooqi said.

Mohammed Arif, assistant executive director for ICNA Relief, said he agreed. "Whoever helps another human being, God will help him on the day of judgment," Arif said. "This is inspiration to us."

He said when the Muslim and Jewish groups have worked together on relief projects, it has been a satisfying and rewarding experience. He said world politics don't come into play when people relate on a personal level. "There is no animosity," Arif said. "This demonstrates very clearly we are all Americans."

Farooqi said the volunteers will be traveling Saturday and Sunday and begin their work on the Rebuild Joplin houses on Monday. He said he didn't know how many volunteers there would be with each group.

Joplin Globe, 18 January 2013

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Jewish, Hindu and Muslim leaders from Queens gathered with lawmakers to denounce the possible hate crime committed at a Kew Gardens Hills Mosque earlier this month, and city Comptroller John Liu suggested some of the NYPD's policies could make bias crimes more common.

"An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us," said Imam Shamsi Ali, of the Jamaica Muslim Center, who gathered religious leaders from around Flushing in the wake of the Nov. 18 attack.

At about 5 a.m., 57-year-old Bashir Amad was opening the doors of the mosque for morning prayers when he was beaten, bitten and stabbed by a suspect police described as a 6-foot white man between the ages of 35 and 45 and weighing 180 pounds. According to the NYPD, the man shouted anti-Muslim statements before ambushing Bashir outside the house of worship, at 72-55 Kissena Blvd. As of press time Tuesday no arrests had been made.

Liu condemned the incident and called for justice, assuring everyone that the NYPD was following all possible leads to find the attacker. But he also contended that policies, like the NYPD's practice of monitoring Muslims or barring Sikhs from wearing religious headwear while on the job, sends the message that it is acceptable to discriminate against these groups.

"Unfortunately, when Muslims are singled out for profiling, surveillance and other discriminatory actions, hate crimes such as this are more likely," he said. Liu was referring to the NYPD's controversial practice of infiltrating and monitoring mosques and student and business groups, even though the intelligence did not produce any indictments. The Police Department and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly have defended the practice as essential to protecting the city from terror attacks.

To show solidarity after the Kissena Boulevard attack, Ali called leaders from other houses of worship who gathered to decry the possible hate crime.

"Let's not pretend we are all the same," said Dr. Uma Mysorekar, of the Hindu Temple Society of North America. "We are different, but let's respect those differences."

Mysorekar stood with Amad and other members of the mosque, along with Rabbi Michael Weisser, of Flushing's Free Synagogue, who also encouraged tolerance and understanding between the different faiths. "No act like this will drive us apart – eventually that will only draw us closer together," he said.

TimesLedger, 28 November 2012

Update:  See also "Cops offer $2G reward for mosque hate attack suspect", Queens Gazette, 28 November 2012

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Some national Jewish organizations joined a coalition of religious groups calling on the Washington Metro system to donate profits from an anti-Islam ad to charity.

"The placing of offensive, anti-Muslim ads in the D.C. Metro system is an important opportunity to affirm our commitment both to free speech and to a society that deplores hate and hate speech," said Rabbi Batya Steinlauf, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington's director of social justice and interfaith initiatives, and president of the Interfaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington. "We are all part of one community," she said.

The ad, currently running in four train stations throughout the Washington area, reads, "In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad." It was sponsored by the American Freedom Defense Initiative.

Monday's news conference was organized by the 28-member Shoulder-to-Shoulder: Standing with American Muslims, Upholding American Values and United Methodist Women. The coalition of Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups released a letter signed by 168 religious clergy members.

The letter states that the "ads espouse inaccurate and inflammatory stereotypes about American Muslims. These ads equate generalized 'savages' with 'jihad,' dangerously painting all Muslims as savages and suggesting that these generalized 'savages' must be defeated."

Major Jewish organizations participating include Rabbis for Human Rights-North America, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and the Union for Reform Judaism.

JTA, 16 October 2012

See also Jack Moline and Clark Lobenstine, "Anti-Jihad Metro ads: An interfaith response to hatred", Washington Post, 15 October 2012

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French far-right leader Marine Le Pen called Friday for a ban on wearing Muslim veils and Jewish skullcaps in public, adding to religious tensions sparked by cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.

In an interview with the Le Monde newspaper, Le Pen called for religious headwear to be banned "in stores, on public transport and on the streets".

Asked if the ban should apply to the Jewish skullcap, known as the kippah or yarmulke, as well as Muslim headwear, she said: "It is obvious that if the veil is banned, the kippah is banned in public as well."

Le Pen, who shocked the French elite by winning almost 18 percent in the first round of this year's presidential vote, also repeated calls for bans on public prayers, kosher and halal foods in schools and foreign government financing of mosques in France.

President Francois Hollande denounced her comments, saying: "Everything that tears people apart, opposes them and divides them is inappropriate and we must apply the rules, the only rules that we know, the rules of the Republic and secularism."

France was on alert at home and abroad on Friday following the publication of cartoons of the Prophet by satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday.

Muslim leaders were calling for calm and urging militants not to defy a ban on protests in France over the cartoons.

AFP, 21 September 2012

"Veil" (voile) in this context means hijab – French Muslim women are of course already banned from wearing face-veils in public. Le Pen's call for a ban on the kippah is significant. She had previously tried to distance herself from the aggressive attitude towards the Jewish community that characterised the Front National when her Holocaust-dismissing father Jean-Marie was party leader, but now it looks as though it's back to antisemitism for the FN.

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An article on illegal boat people by the publisher of Australia's main Jewish newspaper has ignited a storm of protest, with some critics savaging it for "vilifying Muslims" and promoting "xenophobic, Islamophobic and heartless sentiments."

Titled "Curb your compassion," Robert Magid's article published in last Friday's Sydney and Melbourne editions of the Australian Jewish News argued that illegal Muslim boat people are queue jumpers who deprive sanctuary to legitimate refugees.

"The Jews who fled the Holocaust fled certain death," he wrote. "I doubt whether there is a single boat person in that position. Some may have fled a war zone or limited economic opportunities while others are seeking an easy life."

Magid, a multimillionaire property developer who bought the newspaper in 2007, also accused illegal immigrants of "destination shopping" and suggested – despite the "collective memory of Jews' attempts to escape the Holocaust" – that Jews curb their compassion toward boat people.

He also linked asylum seekers to terrorism, suggesting that Muslim boat people could increase the risk of potential terror attacks. "If al-Qaida or another jihad organization wished to create a network of terrorists in Australia, undocumented illegal immigration would ensure the Australian authorities had no way of verifying their bona fides," he wrote.

The backlash to Magid's article exploded in the blogosphere, with the vast majority of comments blasting what David Zyngier, whose mother survived Auschwitz and arrived here with no papers in 1949, described as Magid's "anti-Jewish sentiments."

On Monday, an open letter initiated by the left-wing Australian Jewish Democratic Society accused Magid of engaging in "group vilification and dog whistle politics" against Muslims. The letter called for an apology "to all the victims of persecution who arrived by boat."

An online petition accrued more than 375 signatories as of Tuesday, along with a deluge of withering comments such as "anti-refugee sentiments have no place in my Jewish identity" and Magid used "fear, misinformation and biased language to vilify."

JTA, 7 August 2012

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French Jewish leaders are calling the tossing of two pig heads into a mosque not far from Toulouse "an odious desecration."

Worshippers at the Salam mosque in Montauban in southern France discovered two pig heads at the entrance to the building yesterday.

The CRIF, the umbrella organization of French Jewish communities, called the incident "an odious desecration" and said it "identifies with the outrage of the Muslim community, which was deeply offended by the act perpetrated during Ramadan."

The Jewish communities of France convey their "sincerest sentiments of friendship" to the Muslim community, the statement said.

France's Union of Jewish Students also said in a statement that it was appalled by an incident that had occurred in a "worrying climate of hatred."

JTA, 3 August 2012

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A Southern California interfaith coalition today expressed "deep shock and alarm" over the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles' decision to offer a platform to the leader of an anti-Muslim hate group.

Pamela Geller, who will deliver a lecture this morning on "Islamic Jew-Hatred: The Root Cause of the Failure to Achieve Peace," is co-founder of Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), an organization designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), and author of a book offering step-by-step instructions on how to stop mosque construction in America.

The interfaith coalition released the following statement:

"We are extremely shocked and alarmed to see a mainstream Jewish organization associating itself with one of the nation's leading Islamophobes who doesn't hesitate to share the podium with European racists and whose admirers apparently include Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik. Religious leaders and institutions have an increased and urgent responsibility to promote tolerance and mutual understanding among all Americans, instead of giving aid and comfort to fear-mongers like Geller. Imagine how hurt Jewish community members would be, and rightly so, if they discovered American Muslims hosting an anti-Semitic speaker."

CAIR press release, 23 June 2012

See also Richard Silverstein, "Los Angeles Jewish Federation hosts, endorses Pam Geller's Islamophobia", Tikun Olam, 23 June 2012

Via Loonwatch

Update:  Good news! See "Jewish surrender: LA Jewish Federation submits to Hamas-linked Muslim groups, cancels Geller event", Atlas Shrugs, 24 June 2012

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A new covenant aims to allow Jews and Muslims to continue to perform ritual slaughter of animals while answering the broadly supported call to prevent animal suffering.

After years of heated argument and increased polarization, the parties sat down in front of invited journalists to sign a carefully agreed covenant. The Jewish and Muslim representatives shook hands and, relieved, signed their names to the document.

In this case, Jews and Muslims were on the same side. The covenant they signed, along with Deputy Minister of Agriculture Henk Bleker, is a compromise that will allow Jews and Muslims in the Netherlands to continue the practice of ritual slaughter.

RNW, 6 June 2012

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This is the headline to a Toronto Star report giving publicity to Jewish Defence League-Canada leader Meir Weinstein, who has attacked the Toronto Transit Commission for allowing the Walk-In Islamic Infocentre to take out an advert declaring that "There is no god but Allah". (To avoid misunderstanding, the WIIC has since amended the ad to read "Your God is but One...the Merciful, the Compassionate".)

The so-called "pro-terrorism Muslim speaker" is Zakir Naik, and his connection with the WIIC is that their website provided a link to his Islamic Research Foundation. As for Meir Weinstein, the supposed opponent of terrorism, this is the same Meir Weinstein that invited former EDL Jewish Division leader Roberta Moore to head the JDL's UK chapter, whose website currently features an article expressing sympathy and admiration for Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

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