Muslims and Jews, Uniting Against Hate

“Our Doors Are Always Open to You”

This week, we hear how Muslims and Jews are combatting an uptick in religion-based hate crimes — by standing up for one another. We start with the story of Dr. Gary Branfman, a surgeon and one of a handful of Jews in Victoria, Texas. When the town’s only mosque was torched by vandals, he drove over to the house of the mosque’s president, fellow surgeon Dr. Shahid Hashmi, and handed him the keys to his synagogue.

It’s Difficult to Hate Up Close

Sahar Khamis and Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer are members of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom.  Two women, one Muslim, one Jewish, tell us why the “conflict narrative” between these two groups doesn’t tell the whole story. We also hear from Salaam Bhatti, an attorney and deputy spokesperson for the Ahmadiya Muslim Community, USA, who offered help at a Jewish cemetery near Philadelphia as soon as he heard it had been desecrated. He tells us the Quran inspired him to act.

Mo Asumang: Confronting Hate

Filmmaker Mo Asumang is a biracial woman in Germany, a country that is home to few people of color.  She says if you really want to get inside the head of someone who hates you because of your race or religion, you have to go out there and meet them, face-to-face. She makes documentaries, such as The Aryans, in which she goes up to the people who say they hate her…like the KKK...and asks them why.  This segment comes from the Voices on Antisemitism podcast at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

A Peace Ring After a Shooting

Niddal El-Jabri is a Danish Muslim. In 2015, when a Jewish security guard was killed in a hate crime at a synagogue in Copenhagen, El-Jabri helped organize a group of hundreds of people to stand hand in hand around the building, in a gesture of fellowship.  Our segment comes from the 100 Days to Inspire Respect program at the USC Shoah Foundation.

The Holocaust Through Muslim Eyes

Mehnaz Afridi is Director of the Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center at Manhattan College and author of Shoah Through Muslim Eyes.  She is the first Muslim scholar in America to run a Holocaust studies program. She teaches courses on both Islam and the Holocaust, bridging the sometimes troubled divide between Jews and Muslims. And she tells us that Antisemitism and Islamophobia sometimes draw from the same well.


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