Looking to safeguard mosques, U.S. Muslims turn to Jewish community for help
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haaretz.com
With Islamophobic hate crimes on the rise, Muslim leaders are working harder to secure their mosques and institutions. Some are turning to Jewish experts for assistance.
A few Jewish
organizations have partnered with local and national Muslim groups to
advise them on best security practices and advocate jointly for stronger
hate crime legislation. Cooperation between the two communities,
which was growing late last year, is turning toward the particulars of
staying safe in a nervous climate — how to prevent attacks and handle
hate crimes.
“When people start to
feel unsafe in Sabbath or Sunday or Friday services, that can make for a
very complicated and challenging set of circumstances,” said Paul
Goldenberg, director of the Secure Community Network, which advises
Jewish groups and institutions on security and has worked with Muslim,
Sikh and Christian institutions on composing security plans. “Extremist
groups have come to realize our houses of worship are an Achilles’
heel.”
Goldenberg has worked with
Muslim groups for years, coaching them on everything from forming
relationships with local law enforcement to receiving grants from the
Department of Homeland Security to making sure staff know what to do in
the event of an attack or threat. The ADL and American Jewish Committee
have also worked with Muslim leaders and institutions on reporting,
preventing, responding to and prosecuting hate crimes.
Muslims and Jews
appear to have good reason to be vigilant. The Anti-Defamation
League reported a 34 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in 2016
versus 2015. Islamophobic attacks went up 67 percent from 2014 to 2015,
according to the latest FBI statistics, and the number of anti-Muslim
hate groups has nearly tripled in the past year, according to the
Southern Poverty Law Center.
Both
communities have suffered high-profile hate incidents in the past few
weeks. A Minnesota mosque was bombed in early August, and the recent
white supremacist rally in Charlottesville targeted Jews with neo-Nazi
slogans. Brandeis University, a nonsectarian Jewish school, received a
bomb threat Thursday, though it’s unclear whether the threat was
explicitly anti-Semitic.
Some
Jewish institutions began forming security plans following the 9/11
attacks in 2001, and SCN was founded three years later. Jewish
institutions nationwide have received more than 100 bomb threats in
2017, most of which came in waves early in the year. The identity of the
main hoaxer in those threats, a 19-year-old Israeli-American man,
wasn’t known for months, leading the institutions to beef up security,
including some that hired guards or restricted entry to their buildings.
Muslims now hope to do the same for their mosques and facilities.
Salam Al-Marayati,
president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, has been consulting with
Goldenberg on security since 2011, though he said that work has picked
up since the presidential election in November. This year, Goldenberg
provided the Los Angeles-based council with a plan to secure area
mosques, including best practices on coordinating with law enforcement
and procedures to follow during an emergency.
“All of that was
unknown to the community, and with the help of Paul it became known,”
said Al-Marayati, regarding security procedures. “That’s my goal in
life: to find Paul’s counterpart in the Muslim community. He’s served
that role for the lack of a security specialist.”
The ADL’s regional
offices also provide local mosques with consulting similar to SCN’s —
how to build relationships with law enforcement, how to monitor who
enters and exits buildings, and the best ways to spread information
about a threat or attack.
Over the past year,
the ADL’s Houston office has held two briefings with the local Muslim
community — one for schools, the other for community institutions. In
addition to security best practices, the school briefing introduced
administrators at the six participating schools with local law
enforcement officers.
“Jewish institutions
will spend a little more time on specific things that might happen on
specific holidays, but any religious institution can be a target,” said
Dena Marks, associate director of the Houston office. “So a lot of what
we would tell the leaders of Jewish institutions we would tell the
leaders of Muslim institutions, Christian institutions.”
Elise Jarvis, who
heads the ADL’s community security efforts, said one of the best ways to
improve security would be for Muslim communities to increase reporting
of hate crimes to police. Jews currently suffer the most hate crimes of
any religious group in the U.S., according to the FBI, but Jarvis said
Muslims may avoid reporting hate crimes due to a lack of trust in law
enforcement. Al-Marayati said many Muslims resent “being treated as
suspects.”
“There’s
underreporting across the board,” said Jarvis, who said that if
communities make sure to report incidents, “law enforcement are able to
respond and identify those behind hate crimes.”
The Muslim-Jewish
Advisory Council, a group of religious and communal leaders formed
around the time of the presidential election by the American Jewish
Committee and the Islamic Society of North America, has been pushing
for stronger hate crimes legislation federally and at the local level.
Robert Silverman,
U.S. director of Muslim-Jewish Relations for AJC, said the advisory
council’s newly formed Dallas chapter will be examining how to oppose
members of private militias who regularly stand outside synagogues and
mosques brandishing their weapons — something that also happened in
Charlottesville on the day of the far-right rally. The chapter hopes to
advance legislation or regulations that would discourage such behavior.
Silverman said a law
increasing punishments for hate crimes would deter bigots from moving
from intimidation to violence. The advisory council supports federal
legislation to define attacks or threats on religious communal
institutions as hate crimes.
“If you go vandalize
the synagogue, and instead of a misdemeanor, that will become a
five-year prison sentence, that will send a strong message that people
will take this more seriously,” Silverman said. “We don’t all consider
ourselves victims. We’re organizing.”
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