This past Saturday night, March 11th, nearly a thousand CAIR supporters, Muslim community leaders, Jewish and Christian clergy, and elected officials, including Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf, joined together at our sold-out Eleventh Annual Banquet to celebrate the accomplishments of CAIR-Philadelphia. With a theme this year of "Revelation and Resistance," the 2017 banquet stressed the deep connection between our spiritual lives and the movements for social justice.
Last week, Pennsylvania's Jewish community received numerous bomb threats after white supremacists desecrated a Jewish cemetery in Northeast Philadelphia. Numerous mosques around America have received similar threats in recent weeks.
Yesterday, Donald Trump signed another Executive Order, aiming to ban Muslims from entering the United States. This order is a scaled-back version of the president’s first Muslim ban that prompted an inspiring wave of solidarity from American civil rights defenders of all backgrounds. Packed town halls, marches, and advocacy from the people pressured the government to protect our rights as Muslims. Eventually, the courts stopped the last ban in its tracks. To those who continue to stand for our rights, the rights of all the oppressed, and refugees fleeing violence, thank you.
President Trump’s executive order "do-over," derided by critics as “Muslim Ban 2.0,” is drawing fire despite the tweaks.
“Muslims still feel harassed, ridiculed, and persecuted in their traveling,” said Jacob Bender, director of the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Just recently, Muhammad Ali’s [Philadelphia-born] son was detained” and questioned about his religion, Bender said. “Religious screening should remain out of bounds in a multireligious, multiethnic society such as ours.”
Ryan Houldin of the Council on American-Islamic Relations finds it ironic that the new order comes on the anniversary of the reviled Dred Scott decision that denied citizenship to African-Americans. “It’s very unfortunate that 160 years later we haven’t really learned any lessons, and we’re just targeting another group of people at this point in time,” Houldin said.
The 100 headstones toppled over at Mount Carmel’s cemetery in Frankford happened sometime on Saturday night. It came a day before dozens of Jewish centers along the East Coast received bomb threats, including 11 in Pennsylvania. Local leaders of all faiths have deplored the Mount Carmel incident, with some openly connecting the rise in hate crime-related incidents, including those in Philadelphia, to the election of President Donald Trump.
Jacob Bender, Executive Director of CAIR-Philadelphia said, “As both an American Jew and the head of one of 30 local chapters of the nation’s leading Muslim civil rights organization, I am deeply affected by the sight of broken Jewish tombstones at the Mount Carmel Cemetery. This act of hate is another clarion call for Jews, Muslims, and all people dedicated to justice, equality, and pluralism, to join together to defeat the extremist elements now on the rise throughout our nation, including some at the highest echelons of our national government.”
“Even before this new [Trump] administration took over, there was a long history by supporters of Israel to equate criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism. That’s unfortunate and wrong-headed, because many Palestinian speakers have been silenced,” said Bender, who heads the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Philadelphia.
