American Muslims raise money to repair vandalized Jewish cemetery

Muslim community leaders launched a fundraising campaign to help repair a historic Jewish cemetery that was vandalized over the weekend. Donors surpassed the initial goal of $20,000 within just three hours.

|
Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP
Sally Amon and her son Max Amon of Olivette, Mo., react as they saw toppled gravestone of her grandmother Anna Ida Hutkin at Chesed Shel Emeth Cemetery in University City, a suburb of St. Louis on Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2017.

Amid a flurry of anti-Semitic incidents in recent weeks, many American Muslims are stepping forward to support the Jewish community.

The most recent effort, a fundraising campaign started by Muslim-American activists to help repair a vandalized historic Jewish cemetery, had garnered more than $65,000 donations as of Wednesday morning – more than triple the initial goal.

The raised funds, which surpassed the initial goal of $20,000 within three hours, will now also be used towards supporting other vandalized Jewish centers across the country, according to organizers Linda Sarsour and Tarek El-Messidi.

“Through this campaign, we hope to send a united message from the Jewish and Muslim communities that there is no place for this type of hate, desecration, and violence in America,” they wrote on the crowdfunding website Launch Good. “We pray that this restores a sense of security and peace to the Jewish-American community who has undoubtedly been shaken by this event.”

More than 170 headstones at the Chesed Shel Emeth Society cemetery in the St. Louis, Mo. suburb of University City were damaged and toppled this weekend. The incident comes as a growing number of Jewish Community Centers nationwide have become the targets of bomb threats: In the first two months of 2017 alone, the Jewish Community Center Association reported 68 incidents at 53 centers in 26 states and one Canadian province, all of which proved to be hoaxes.

The wave of threats prompted President Trump to speak out on the topic for the first time on Monday, after repeated calls for him to address anti-Semitism.

“The anti-Semitic threats targeting our Jewish community and community centers are horrible, and are painful, and a very sad reminder of the work that still must be done to root out hate and prejudice and evil,” he said, according to The New York Times.

While police are still investigating the incident at the St. Louis cemetery, some have suggested that Muslims are the culprits behind these incidents.

"If you look at the fact, the people who are responsible for a lot of this anti-Semitism that we're seeing, I hate to say it, a lot of it is coming from the pro-Palestinian or Muslim communities," former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum told CNN's Chris Cuomo on Tuesday. "So let's just lay out that fact."

Ms. Sarsour and Mr. El Messidi hope their fundraising efforts will help to dispel that perception. Citing a story of the prophet Muhammad, the organizers said they were inspired by “the message of unity, tolerance, and mutual protection found in the Constitution of Medina,” a treaty between the Jews of Medina and the first Muslim community.

As more Muslim organizations step up to help Jewish communities, El-Messidi hopes this campaign can bring two communities together.

“But out of this horrible election cycle, something beautiful has come out of it and [Muslims and Jews have] bonded together to support each other and stand up to this hate,” he told The Washington Post. “Politics can get in the way of our basic humanity; I hope this breaks through all those walls, no pun intended, to help bring us closer together.” 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to American Muslims raise money to repair vandalized Jewish cemetery
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2017/0222/American-Muslims-raise-money-to-repair-vandalized-Jewish-cemetery
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe