Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Evangelical
The Need to End Islamophobia and Antisemitism Is Urgent – and the Responsibility Lies With All of Us

The Need to End Islamophobia and Antisemitism Is Urgent – and the Responsibility Lies With All of Us

Last updated on: October 23, 2023 at 4:57 pm by Melissa Borja

0 Comments

The Need to End Islamophobia and Antisemitism Is Urgent – and the Responsibility Lies With All of Us 2023-10-23T16:57:35-04:00 Melissa Borja

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Refugees/Immigrants Are Welcome! rally protesting Trump’s Muslim travel ban, BWI Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI), Baltimore, MD (Adam Fagan, via Flickr)

Last weekend, Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois, was stabbed to death in his home. The alleged killer was his landlord, who stabbed him 26 times with “a military style knife” while shouting “you Muslims have to die” and “you are killing our kids in Israel. You Palestinians don’t deserve to live.” His mother, Hanaan Shahin, had repeatedly asked the attacker, “let’s pray for peace”; she, too, was stabbed and seriously injured in the attack. According to the sheriff’s office, the boy and his mother were “targeted by the suspect due to them being Muslim and the ongoing Middle Eastern conflict involving Hamas and the Israelis.” Federal authorities are investigating the stabbing as a hate crime.

The gruesome attack against Wadea and his mother appears to be part of a larger trend. The past two weeks have witnessed alarming acts of violence, harassment, and intimidation targeting Jews, Muslims, and Arabs in the United States. In Boston, signs at the Islamic Seminary of Boston and the Palestinian Cultural Center for Peace were vandalized, and in San Francisco, anti-Israel graffiti was sprayed on a store front. In Brooklyn, police reported that two Jewish men assaulted two other men bearing Palestinian flags, and that same day, two teenagers fired pellet guns outside congregation B’Nai Yosef. The FBI, which tracks hate crimes, noted that it “has seen an increase in reports of threats against Jewish, Muslim, and Arab communities and institutions,” and the events of the past two weeks prompted the Department of Homeland Security to warn that “[t]argeted violence attacks may increase as the conflict progresses.”

Jewish, Muslim, and Arab Americans are afraid. “It feels like pure panic mode the community is in,” said Mitch Silber of the Community Security Initiative, a group that focuses on antisemitic activities, in the New York Times. And Linda Sarsour, a prominent Arab American activist, told CNN that Muslim and Arab Americans “are experiencing a lot of anguish, a lot of fear, and a lack of safety” and advising one another to take extra precautions. “One of the things that’s always the saddest for me is when people start giving each other advice about not going out alone,” she said.

There’s much to be said about violence and hate and fear in the Middle East–but that’s not my focus today. Instead, I want to talk about violence and hate and fear here in the United States. The rise in targeted acts of violence, intimidation, vandalism, and harassment–a trend that predates the start of the Israel-Hamas war earlier this month–is a longstanding problem that our nation must confront. According to FBI data released last week, over 11,000 hate crimes were reported in 2022, 7% more than in 2021 and more than double the number of hate crimes reported in 2014.

For the past three years, hate has been the focus of my research and community activism. In fact, it was the stabbing of another six-year-old child that spurred my work on this topic. In March 2020, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, this child, along with his sibling and his father, were attacked at a Sam’s Club in Midland, Texas. According to law enforcement, the assailant had targeted the family because they were Asian and because he saw them as a “threat,” believing they were “from the country who started spreading that disease around.” Shortly after, the FBI warned that the scapegoating of Asian people for the pandemic could trigger a rise in anti-Asian attacks, and that is indeed what happened: 2020 and 2021 witnessed an alarming surge in hate crimes against Asian Americans. And so, as an Asian American studies professor who was concerned about the safety of my community, I threw myself into researching this problem. Over the past few years, my research team has documented hundreds of anti-Asian incidents of violence, harassment, and discrimination reported in the news. I’ve heard the stories of many Asian Americans who feared for their safety when riding public transit, going to school, or visiting the grocery store. And I’ve spent just as much time talking with scholars, community activists, government officials about how we can make our communities more safe, just, and inclusive, not just for Asian Americans, but for all groups that have historically been targeted in attacks.

As we grapple with the surge in attacks against Jewish, Muslim, and Arab Americans, here is what I think we need to know, based on what I’ve learned in my research:

First, we need to recognize that specific events that draw negative attention to a particular group–for example, a war, a major political development, or a global pandemic–often coincide with attacks and threats against those groups. Philip Bump at the Washington Post made this point last week, showing, for example, that hate crimes targeting LGBTQ+ individuals increased after 2020, around the time that conservatives intensified their activism and rhetoric against them. The Israel-Hamas war, its utter brutality, and the polarization around the issue of Israel and Palestine are all a critical context for understanding why Jewish, Muslim, and Arab Americans are experiencing targeted attacks and are vulnerable in the current moment.

At the same time, we need a broader historical perspective about racial and religious hate in the United States. The attacks on Jewish, Muslim, and Arab American in the past two weeks are the latest chapter of a long and ugly history of antisemitism and Islamophobia in the United States. As I’ve regularly noted in my work on anti-Asian racism, the Covid-19 pandemic did not cause the problem of anti-Asian racism, but resuscitated and reformulated “yellow peril” fears that had existed in the United States for centuries. Similarly, antisemitism and Islamophobia are pervasive and deeply rooted in American culture: expressed in our nation’s policies, reinforced in the media, and propagated in the rhetoric of some of our nation’s most prominent leaders. And while many Americans may argue that the United States is more tolerant than it has been in the past, the progress, if there has been any, has not been linear. As FBI data shows, hate crimes against American Jews had declined during the pandemic but rose again between 2021 and 2022.

Putting the attacks of the past two weeks in a larger historical context is important not only for understanding the enduring problem of antisemitism and Islamophobia, but also for making sense of how Jewish, Muslim, and Arab Americans are navigating this particular moment. As Daniel Seidemann argued, attention to historical experiences of trauma is critical for understanding the current war between Israel and Hamas. “For both sides, the events of the past 10 days have evoked memories of their worst national suffering,” he wrote. Pointing to the Holocaust for Israelis and the Nakba for Palestinians, he noted that “this war has surfaced fears, always lurking just under the skin, that history could possibly repeat itself.” The lens of historical trauma is similarly useful for understanding events unfolding in the United States. For American Muslims, the killing of Wadea Al-Fayoume and other acts of Islamophobic violence, harassment, vandalism, and intimidation have brought back memories of the days after 9/11. Aber Kawas, a member of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, told CNN that “Palestinian Americans and Muslim Americans feel like they are experiencing the level of hate and Islamophobia that existed after 9/11 and during the Iraq war – some say it’s even worse.” And for American Jews, events in the United States during the past two weeks have rekindled the grief, fear, and pain associated with brutal attacks targeting their community, such as the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. Listing numerous instances of antisemitic violence, vandalism, and intimidation in her community and across the country, the Washington Post columnist Petula Dvorak expressed concern about what these incidents foretell of the future, saying, “these signs are terrifying. And I fear they’ll just increase.”

As a matter of principle, nobody deserves to live in fear. More practically, fear can often drive people to make decisions they would otherwise not make–decisions that might even undermine safety, even though safety might be the ultimate goal. To offer one illustrative example, let me return to the case of Asian Americans facing Covid-related racism. During the pandemic, Asian Americans began to buy guns in record numbers, often due to fears of racist attacks. Tsu-Yin Wu and Hsing-Fang Hsieh, researchers at Eastern Michigan University and the University of Michigan, found some disturbing patterns in Asian American gun ownership and their perceptions and experiences of racism: Asian Americans who experienced more racial discrimination were likelier to buy guns and more ammunition, and high percentages of these gun owners reported that they stored their guns loaded (43%) and unlocked (47%). Although it has only been two weeks since the Hamas attack, some early evidence suggests that American Jews, while generally supportive of gun control, are doing something similar and purchasing firearms at higher rates. Henya Chein, an Orthodox Jewish mother in Florida, told NBC News that she felt “forced” to take a firearms class at her synagogue “because Jewish people are not safe anywhere now.” Muslim gun owners fearing Islamophobic attacks have used similar logic when explaining their decision to acquire firearms. “We’re not gun owners because of Islam,” explained Hassan Shibly, executive director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, in a profile in the New York Times in 2018. “We are gun owners because of the violence perpetrated in this country against minorities.” Whether guns contribute to increased safety or danger is a topic for another day, but the point is this: Jewish, Muslim, and Arab Americans, feeling afraid in a climate of escalating tensions and violence, are turning to measures that they’ve often rejected in the past. Hate and fear are driving them to places they hadn’t expected to go.

In these fraught and fearful times, it is imperative that we all do our part to address the antisemitic and Islamophobic hate that continues to plague America. I don’t pretend to have any clear solutions to the alarming rise in acts of targeted violence and harassment, but I offer at least this starting point, which is informed by my research over the past three years: we need to begin by intentionally recommitting ourselves to the shared goal of cultivating safe and inclusive communities where our diverse neighbors do not have to live in fear. In our day-to-day lives, we must choose our words wisely and resist rhetoric that erases, diminishes, or dehumanizes others. We must be mindful of how we view one another and choose to recognize the shared humanity and the inherent worth and dignity of all of our community members. And we must do our part to care, support, and show kindness to our Jewish, Muslim, and Arab American neighbors who are grieving and afraid: offering to escort somebody if they’re concerned about going out in public, familiarizing ourselves with the ways to report hate incidents on our campuses and in our communities, taking a bystander intervention training so we’re ready to intervene if somebody is experiencing harassment.

Ultimately, if we want a safe and inclusive community that reflects our highest values and where our neighbors are treated with respect and dignity, we must all take responsibility to build it. In these dark days, when so much is being destroyed, can we create something different?

Previous Post

October 20, 2023

What About the Palestinians? Southern Baptists vs. Southern Baptist Missionaries, part 1

Next Post

October 24, 2023 American Secularization Hasn’t Followed the Script That Secularization Theory Would Predict

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"I love horror but would have to acclimate back to Lovecraft and especially Machen. Have ..."

Terry

Fairies, Witches, Folk Horror, and the ..."

"Very good point about MacDonald.I am certainly a Machen fan!"

philipjenkins

Fairies, Witches, Folk Horror, and the ..."

"The Scottish author George MacDonald integrated fairy world into his fiction in a way that ..."

Terry

Fairies, Witches, Folk Horror, and the ..."

"I like the idea that we can have different streams. The coffee analogy is genius."

Lisa Clark Diller

How Do You Take Your Evangelicalism?

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abolitionism Abortion Abraham Joshua Heschel Abraham Kuyper Abraham Lincoln Academia Activism Adam Renberg Advent Adventist africa African American Religion Agnes Howard Albert Camus American History American Religious History American Revolution American West Anabaptists Ancient History Andrea Turpin Andrei Tarkovsky Anglicanism Annales Ansley Lillian Quiros anti-Catholicism Antisemitism Anxious Bench apologetics Apparitions Arash Azizi Archaeology archives art Artificial Intelligence Asia Asian Americans Augustine Authors Bad Bunny Baptism Baptists Barack Obama Battle of Hastings Benjamin Franklin Bernard-Henri Levy Beth Allison Barr Beth Moore Bethany Mannon Bible Bill Cunningham Billy Graham Black Music Bob Dylan Body Boenhoffer Books Breastfeeding Bruce Springsteen C.S. Lewis Calvinism Cancel Culture Capitalism Carmelites Catholicism Cedric Robinson Cesar Chavez Charismaticism charity Charles Dickens Charles Lindbergh Che Guevara Chicago Children Chinese Christianity Chris Gehrz Christ Christian death Christian Higher Education Christian life Christian Nation Christian Nationalism Christianity Today Christmas Church life Church Practice cinema Civil Religion Civil Rights Movement Civil War civility Classics Climate Change Cold War Colonial Mexico colonialism Comer Communism community complementarianism Conference on Faith and History Congregationalism Conspiracies Conspiracy Conversion Narratives Coronavirus Costa Rica Council of Nicaea Covid-19 Creation Critical Race Theory Crusades Culture culture wars Daniel K. Williams David Barton David Swartz Death Ways death with dignity DEI democracy Democratic Party Devotion Digital Age Diplomacy discipleship diversity Donald Trump Drama Dua Lipa Early Church early modern Early modern Catholicism Easter Eastern Christianity economic exploitation Education elections Elie Wiesel Elizabeth II Elizabeth Taylor emotions Empire Engineering England enslavement Entertainment Episcopal Church Erica Ramirez eschatology Eurocentrism Evangelicalism Evangelicals Exegesis Family Feminism Film Flannery O'Connor folk music Food Foreign Policy founding fathers Franciscans Franciscus Junius fundamentalism Funerals G.K. Chesterton Gender Genocide genre geography George W. Bush George Washington George Whitefield Global Christianity Global church Grief Guadalupe guest post Guest Post gun control gun violence Gustavo Gutierrez Hamid Dabashi Harold John Ockenga Harvest Hate Hawaiian Christianity Healing health care Heather Cox Richardson Hell Heresy Hermeneutics Higher Education Hinduism Hippocratic oath Historical Fiction Historical Methodology Historical Profession Historical Profession Historical Theology Historical Thinking historiography Holidays Holocaust horror movies Human rights Humanitarian Work humanities Hummingbirds Hungary hymns Imago Dei Immigration Injustice Interviews Iran Islam Islamophobia Israel Ivan's Childhood Jacob Randolph James Bratt Janine Giordano Drake Japanese history Japanese Literature Jean Paul Sartre Jesse Miranda Jesus Jesus Christ Jimmy Carter Joan Baez Joan Didion Joanne Freeman João B. Chaves Joao Chaves Joey Cochran John Calvin John Fea John Tillotson John Turner Johnny Cash Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Tran Joseph Smith Josh Howerton Journalism Jr. Judaism Jürgen Moltmann Just War Justice Justin Brierley Karl Barth Katelyn Beaty koi ponds Kris Kristofferson Kristin Kobes Du Mez Latin American Religious History Latino Americans Lectio Divina Leisure Lent Leonard Cohen liberal arts liberalism Liberation Theology Linda Ronstadt Lisa Clark Diller Literature Lou Reed Lynchings Lynneth Miller Renberg Mainline Protestantism Malcolm Foley Marilyn Monroe Maritime history Mark Noll Marriage Martin Luther Martin Luther King Martyrdom Marxism Mary Masih Alinejad mass shootings material culture medieval Christianity Medieval Ethiopia Melissa Borja memory Mennonites Mental Health Mental Illness Methodism Mexican Americans Mexicans Mike Madrid Miles Mullin Min Jin Lee Miscarriage Missionaries Mister Rogers Mitt Romney modernity Monasticism Mormonism Motherhood Mothers of the Church Moving Music Musicals Nadya Williams Nahua Christianity Native Americans Natsume Sōseki New Contributor New England New Year New York Nico Non-Violent Protest Orthodoxy pacifism Paleo Evangelicals Palestinians Parenting Patti Smith Paul Kingsnorth Pedro Calderón de la Barca Pentecostalism Philip Jenkins Phillis Wheatley physician-assisted suicide pilgrimage Pilgrims pluralism Plutocracy Poetry Politics Pope Francis Pope Leo XIV post-modernism prayer preaching Presbyterians prosperity gospel Protest Public history Publishing Puritans purity culture Quakers race Race Massacres Racial Capitalism racial reconciliation racialization Racism Raha Bahloulipour Re-Enchantment reading Reformation Refugees religion and the university religion and war Religious Freedom Religious Nones Religious Pluralism Religious Symbols religious violence Republican Party Revival Rita Coolidge Ritual Roger Williams Roman Catholic church Royalty Russell Moore same-sex marriage Sarah Irving-Stonebraker Scandinavia Science Science and Technology Scopes trial Scriptural Interpretation secularism Selena Quintanilla seminary Seventh-Day Adventists sexual morality Sexuality Sikhs Silence slaveholders theology Slavery Slavoj Zizek social justice Social Media Southern Baptist Convention Southern Religion Spain Spiritual Autobiography Spiritual but not religious Spiritual Discipline Sports Stanley Hauerwas Suffering Summer Camps Sunday Night Odds and Ends Supernatural Supreme Court Syriac Christianity Tal Howard Taylor Swift Teaching Technology Television Thanksgiving The Beatles The Mission theater TheoBros Theology Thomas Dixon Thomas Jefferson Thomas Kidd Thomas Merton Tim Gloege Tim Walz Tom Holland Tourism tradition Tragedy Translation Transnationalism Travel Trump Ukraine Uncategorized Unitarians United Methodist Church US History Vanessa Chan Velvet Underground Verónica A. Gutiérrez Veronica Gutierrez Vikings Violence Virgin Mary Virtue Virtue ethics Visions Voting War WCTU Wendell Berry Westminster Assembly White Evangelicalism Wildfires Winnie the Pooh Witches women Women in Ministry Women's and Gender Studies Work Worship writing Yasunari Kawabata Zena Hitz

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who had a colorful coat from his father?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Isaac Daniel Joseph David