(Washington, DC, 12/30/2019) – The US Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO) expresses its heartfelt solidarity with Jewish community in the face of the alarming rise of anti-Semitism and hate violence in America they now endure; and sends its prayers of condolence and for recovery on behalf of the victims, families, and loved ones of the recent horrific stabbings during Hanukkah celebrations in Monsey, New York and the spate of other assaults perpetrated against members of the Jewish community and their religious institutions.
In New York this month alone, 13 anti-Semitic attacks and incidents have aimed to intimidate and terrorize the Jewish community. The Hanukkah attacks in particular remind us that two millennia after God delivered Jews from the army of the day, the evil of religious persecution and hate not only persists in our own society but is gathering an ugly and frightening momentum.
We, therefore, must level the strongest possible condemnation not only against this savagery, but also against the hate-filled speech that fuels it, which has the blatant self-serving intent of dividing our society by scapegoating some in order to aggrandize the personal and political gain of a few others.
Empty expressions of dutifully uttered “thoughts and prayers” have no value or meaning in the face of the political, legal, and cultural assaults that increasingly define American public life and society, which seek to divest targeted religious communities of their very humanity, their God-given rights to believe and adhere to their religions freely, and their most basic human rights to equality, personal and communal security, expression, mobility, privacy, and protections against arbitrary attack and victimization.
We remind again of a warning by the president of the American Psychological Association in a previous mass attack: “Psychological science has demonstrated that social contagion – the spread of thoughts, emotions and behaviors from person to person and among larger groups – is real.”
The US Council of Muslim Organizations strongly calls for an end to the culture of racialization and intolerance that has poisoned our politics and contaminated our civic life and for the creation of enforceable mechanisms that bring to due account public officials and partisan agitators who stigmatize groups and communities and subject them to physical harm, social injury, and insidious psychological damage.
We ask God’s mercy, protection, and guidance for His worshippers from every path and for American society.
