Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Jews Join Interfaith Push To End Muslim ‘Marginalization’

Three Jewish organizations joined 15 other interfaith groups to express concern that the White House is marginalizing American Muslims.

Bend the Arc: a Jewish Partnership for Justice, the National Council of Jewish Women and T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call to Justice signed a Feb. 12 letter to President Barack Obama ahead of the upcoming White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism, which criticized the publicity for the upcoming summit as focusing only on Islamic extremists.

“As you know, studies by the FBI and the Southern Poverty Law Center have shown that the overwhelming majority of terrorist incidents in the United States were committed by non-Muslims,” the letter said. The groups said that they were concerned about “focusing exclusively on Islamic extremists, which risks contributing to the marginalization of American Muslims.”

The letter was spearheaded by the Interfaith Alliance, whose executive director is Rabbi Jack Moline, the former head of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

“Unfortunately, no single religion has a monopoly on extremist violence,” Moline said. “The White House must make sure not to unfairly single out American Muslims as it seeks to confront violent extremism perpetrated in the name of any faith or ideology.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.