Uncategorized
How Jewish leaders tried — and failed — to keep a Farrakhan follower off a Florida city council
(JTA) – When Brother John Muhammad emerged this fall as the leading candidate for a vacant city council seat in St. Petersburg, Florida, local Jews were distressed.
Muhammad is well known in the city as the president of a local neighborhood association and as a frequent advocate for minority groups. But Jewish leaders learned that he was also a follower of Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who has a long history of antisemitism, and that he had made comments dismissing concerns about Farrakhan’s record.
Jewish leaders tried to stave off Muhammad’s appointment, pushing for more extensive vetting of the seven candidates and, in the case of the local Holocaust museum, actively lobbying against him. But the council confirmed him in a 4-3 vote, leaving local Jews frustrated — before they considered ways to make the situation a learning experience for their city.
“When I see a situation like this, it screams ‘opportunity’ to me,” Michael Igel, chair of the Florida Holocaust Museum, located in St. Petersburg, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The saga playing out in St. Petersburg, Florida’s fifth-largest city, unfolded during the same period that a handful of Black celebrities, including Kanye West and Kyrie Irving, first became enmeshed in controversy over their own antisemitic comments and social media posts. The coincidence meant a dicey environment for broaching a conversation about the antisemitism of the Nation of Islam, whose rhetoric disparaging Jews overlaps with that of Hebrew Israelites, the ideology that Irving promoted by sharing a link to an antisemitic film.
It also turned St. Petersburg into a window for understanding how ties forged between Jewish groups and others can be tested.
Local Jewish leaders initially sought to stop Muhammad from gaining the city council seat, which was vacated after its previous holder resigned following redistricting and accusations she no longer lived in her district. They learned about Muhammad’s city council application only a week before the council’s vote, leaving them with little time to mobilize. The information came from a political rival of Muhammad, former mayoral candidate Vince Nowicki, who shared information about Muhammad’s Nation of Islam affiliation with local Jewish groups.
Nowicki also shared a comment Muhammad had made about Jews in a 2016 video in which Muhammad interviewed local Black LGBTQ activists. In the video titled “A Conversation About Growing Up Black And LGBT,” which JTA viewed, Muhammad said, “Minister Farrakhan got accused of being antisemitic for a long time because he pointed out and made some corrections about the activity of Jews. And anybody who says anything critical of the Jewish community is labeled as being antisemitic. Good, bad, right or wrong, it doesn’t matter what you say. If you criticize them that’s what you are.”
He continued, saying, “And I’m finding that it happens when you are critical of the gay community, when you say anything critical or anything that doesn’t align with that ideology, now all of a sudden you’re homophobic.” Muhammad’s comments about gay people received some light but friendly pushback from his interview guests.
Muhammad did not reply to multiple requests for comment by JTA, including to questions emailed to him at his request. He said during a public meeting ahead of the council vote that he thought scrutiny of him by Jewish groups had been unfair.
To Jewish leaders, the comments in the video coupled with Muhammad’s Nation of Islam affiliation were clear signs that he should not be appointed to the city council.
“I would sure hope that being antisemitic would be a red line, that you could not be a candidate,” said Rabbi Philip Weintraub of Congregation B’nai Israel, a Conservative synagogue in the city.
Jewish leaders began to take action, issuing statements and launching a letter-writing campaign to the council. They felt so much urgency that some even conducted business on Simchat Torah, a Jewish holiday when Jewish organizations typically pause their activities in accordance with Jewish law.
As a nonprofit, the local federation was constrained in how it could weigh in. Since it could not endorse or oppose specific candidates, it instead pushed for every candidate to be “properly vetted” and informed council members about Muhammad’s affiliations and past comments, according to Maxine Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Federation of Florida’s Gulf Coast. She said the efforts did not have their intended effect.
“I don’t think anybody said, ‘Well, who is this Farrakhan, what does he stand for?’” Kaufman said. “I don’t think enough was done, personally.”
The entrance to the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Nov. 27, 2016. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The Florida Holocaust Museum took another approach, circulating information about Muhammad to the wider community, along with a statement opposing the candidacy of anyone who would support Farrakhan’s antisemitism. Their goal, Igel said, was to educate the community about the severity of these views.
“There’s nothing else to talk about when somebody is supporting Louis Farrakhan,” Igel told JTA. “Particularly when you are seeking a position representative of a city, particularly one like St. Petersburg that is so known for its inclusivity and its openness.”
Igel praised some members of the city council who asked Muhammad pointed questions about his views at the vote, giving him the opportunity to refute Farrakhan’s comments about Jews. One council member who voted against Muhammad, Lisset Hanewicz, said her stepfather is Jewish and read Farrakhan’s past antisemitic statements into the record, saying, “I think people need to understand why a certain part of this community is upset.”
Igel acknowledged that getting involved in a city council appointment was an unusual move for a Holocaust museum. He said museum leaders had held a meeting beforehand to determine how to proceed but made a decision fairly quickly to weigh in.
“In this case, we don’t consider this to be a matter of politics,” Igel said. “This is a matter of morality. And this is what we teach.” If the candidate had been a white supremacist, Igel said, “that person would have been disqualified out of the gate.”
The Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center, two hate watchdogs, define the Nation of Islam as a group that propagates antisemitism and other forms of bigotry, not a religion. Founded in 1930 by Wallace Fard Muhammad, the Black nationalist group is not the same as traditional Islam and is rejected by most Muslim clerics; it entered mainstream prominence in the 1960s after civil rights leader Malcolm X and boxer Muhammad Ali publicly joined the movement. (Both later left the group, with Malcolm X publicly denouncing its leadership; he was assassinated shortly after, and two Nation of Islam members who were wrongfully convicted of his murder recently received a large settlement from New York City.)
The Nation of Islam entered its current era after Farrakhan took over the group in 1977. Now 89, he has used his platform to issue a steady stream of antisemitism, including calling Jews “wicked” and the “synagogue of Satan,” saying they have “wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government,” and calling Hitler “a very great man.” Only a few years ago, the Women’s March progressive activist collective was nearly derailed over some of its founders’ associations with Farrakhan.
It is rare, but not unheard of, for public officials to have current or former associations with the Nation of Islam. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, a practicing Muslim, was dogged by accusations that he had formerly been a member of the group when he first ran for Congress in 2006; he apologized for his past associations with the group. Trayon White, a Washington, D.C. council member and onetime mayoral candidate who has spread antisemitic conspiracy theories, has donated to the group in the past. Former President George W. Bush once praised the group, and a photograph showing Barack Obama in the same room as Farrakhan was fodder for Obama’s critics during his presidential run.
Muhammad, who is referred to on the city council website as John Muhammad and whose legal name is John C. Malone, declined to condemn Farrakhan at the city council meeting.
“I am not willing to denounce the leader of my faith no more than a Catholic would be willing to denounce their pope,” he said.
Muhammad’s reaction to questions about Farrakhan particularly concerned the federation and other local Jewish groups. Kaufman told JTA she didn’t know whether Muhammad himself is antisemitic, but she said his refusal to disavow Farrakhan was alarming.
“I do have issue with his reverence of someone who is blatantly antisemitic, and he won’t disavow him, he won’t reject him,” she said, echoing the the federation’s official statement on the vote.
At the meeting, Muhammad did say that he had reached out to the Florida Holocaust Museum but had not heard back — and that he thought the museum’s criticism of him was unfair.
“What I found when we reached out to have dialogue with the Holocaust Museum director, they did not want to talk to me,” he said. “They wanted to evaluate and disqualify me based on the association that I have as an individual. I don’t think that that’s just.”
Muhammad also defended his record with Jews by claiming that they were among the “diversity of those who support me.” He added, “And if you look at those who oppose me, they’re coming from one particular group.”
Since the vote, a local Black newspaper condemned the scrutiny on Muhammad, calling it a “perusal into his faith practice.”
Igel said the museum had no record that Muhammad had reached out but encouraged him to come and learn more about the Holocaust and the nature of antisemitism. Stuart Berger, head of the local Jewish Community Relations Council, acknowledged at the city council meeting that Muhammad “has made himself available to us” at the federation, but that none of the federation staff “had been in direct contact with him.”
The federation’s involvement in Muhammad’s case became its own issue at the council vote, when the candidate referenced an email Berger had written to the county commissioner. In the email, Berger wrote that Muhammad’s vetting process had been “good enough for me!”
While Muhammad took the email as proof that the federation believed him to be fit for office, Berger and Kaufman maintain that it meant nothing of the sort. Berger had not been speaking on behalf of the federation, they say, and had not intended for his email to be shared publicly.
Now that Muhammad is on the council, attention has turned to building relationships with him. Kaufman has been meeting with individual city council members, and hopes to eventually meet with Muhammad himself. She also aims to have the federation make a presentation to the council about the dangers of antisemitism and push them to make a statement about it.
She doesn’t think it’s complicated. “I think hate’s hate,” she said. “Many different colors.”
Weintraub’s congregation is celebrating its 100th anniversary in March, and one of its congregants, Eric Lynn, is also involved in politics: he was the Democratic nominee for Florida’s 13th Congressional district in the midterms but lost his race to Republican Anna Paulina Luna, who said she was raised as a Messianic Jew and campaigned with far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
Weintraub himself is a member of an interfaith ministerial dialogue group with Black churches and says he’s “a professional optimist” when it comes to managing conflict between different communities. He sent JTA an episode of the public radio podcast “Hidden Brain” about how to keep conflict from spiraling, saying it “describes what I’ve tried to do.”
Since Muhammad was appointed, Weintraub has met with him; the pair had what Weintraub described as “a pleasant conversation.” The two talked about parenting and “shared traumas,” he said. They did not discuss Muhammad’s comments supporting Farrakhan, but the rabbi couldn’t help but think about him.
“I thought I was a termite, according to Farrakhan,” Weintraub said. In contrast, Muhammad “said I was a person, so that was nice.”
—
The post How Jewish leaders tried — and failed — to keep a Farrakhan follower off a Florida city council appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
After attacks, Jewish security watchdogs warn of ‘most elevated and complex threat environment’ in recent history
(JTA) — A string of recent synagogue attacks across North America and Europe has left security officials sounding the alarm bells.
“We are in the midst of the most elevated and complex threat environment the Jewish community and this country has seen in modern history,” said Kerry Sleeper, chief of threat management and information sharing for the Secure Community Network, a Jewish security organization.
Sleeper’s comment came during an SCN webinar on Friday, held in response to the previous day’s attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan, where an assailant rammed into the synagogue armed with rifles and smoke bombs.
Though the attack was successfully thwarted by existing security measures, Mitchell Silber, executive director of the Community Security Initiative, said in an interview that Jewish institutions may now need additional layers of protection.
“This might be a bit of a tipping point where we’ve gone to a new level, where really what’s required to secure a Jewish institution in the U.S. starts to look like almost a Europeanization of security,” Silber said.
That would include posting multiple armed guards outside entrances and requiring increased screening before entry, he said. Many European synagogues also require attendees to go through security screening at some distance from the building, rather than at their doors.
“Unfortunately that seems to be where we are right now — the Jewish community has to up its game in terms of the external security of its locations,” he said.
Currently, a shutdown at the Department of Homeland Security since Feb. 14 is halting the review of millions of dollars in security funding for nonprofits, constraining the ability of Jewish institutions and other vulnerable groups to upgrade their security infrastructure.
The Temple Israel attack came within two weeks of attacks in Austin, Texas, and at Old Dominion University in Virginia. Those other attacks were not on Jewish institutions, but Sleeper, a former FBI assistant director, said the “various motivations of the attackers appear to be affiliated with the war between the U.S., Israel and Iran.” He added that the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran, and President Donald Trump’s stated desire to facilitate a regime change, have “contributed to the extremely high threat environment.”
Meanwhile, things have escalated outside the United States. Three Toronto-area synagogues were hit with gunfire over the last couple of weeks, and a synagogue in Rotterdam was targeted by an arson attack early Friday morning, allegedly by a group that has also claimed credit for an explosion at a synagogue in Belgium.
The flurry of attacks has the entire Jewish world on edge going into Shabbat — and some watchdogs say things could soon get worse.
“It is not entirely shocking to those of us who’ve watched this space for a long time,” said Mike Jacobson, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who served in the State Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau. “I would think things would continue to ratchet up again, at least in the short term.”
He pointed to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ activation of sleeper cells — their agents lying in wait until called to action to commit an attack — across the West, as a danger to vulnerable targets, which includes Jewish communities.
Another source of danger, Jacobson said, comes from copycat attacks.
“There’s also this mix that makes it really hard to sort out in the initial stages, where you’ve got people, not only who may be directly tied to Iran, but people who are so-called ‘inspired’ by this,” Jacobson said. “Those are often really hard for law enforcement to get advance notice on.”
Not always does the threat come from direct orders from Iran, he said. “It’s often difficult to tell: Is this something that is directly tied to the organization, or is this something that is more by someone inspired [by the IRGC]?”
He added, “They are trying to inflict pain in as many directions as they can.”
As security organizations encourage increased caution and awareness of suspicious activity, they are also emphasizing that those measures shouldn’t come at the expense of gathering in communal Jewish spaces.
“We’re not going to let the terrorists take away our confidence or the ability to embrace our religion,” said Michael Masters, SCN’s national director, during the Zoom webinar.
Masters’ sentiment is also shared by congregational leaders like Rabbi Adam Roffman, of Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas.
“Sure, security is something we think a lot about, and we’ve done our best to protect ourselves,” Roffman said. “And at the same time, the life of this community goes on.”
At Temple Israel, Shabbat services are being streamed from the nearby country club that served as a reunification center for families after the attack. The synagogue wrote on Facebook: “We’re so glad you’re joining us tonight as our community comes together to welcome this much needed Sabbath.”
The post After attacks, Jewish security watchdogs warn of ‘most elevated and complex threat environment’ in recent history appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Muslim advisor to Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission resigns to protest ‘Zionist political agenda’
(JTA) — The Trump administration’s Religious Liberties Commission was wracked again this week over anti-Israel sentiment, as a second affiliated individual has exited while claiming it had been hijacked by a “Zionist political agenda.”
Sameerah Munshi, a Muslim member of a board that advises the commission, announced late Thursday that she would be stepping down. Her reason, she said, was to protest the dismissal of commissioner Carrie Prejean Boller, who was ousted last month after she used a hearing on antisemitism to expound on her objections to Israel and Zionism.
“In this country, people of faith are having their free expression stripped away, and even their lives put at risk, because of their deeply held beliefs about Palestine, all for the sake of a Zionist political agenda,” Munshi wrote in a resignation letter she posted to Substack. “The removal of a Catholic commissioner for expressing dissenting views grounded in her faith is the exact affront to free expression and religious liberty that I spoke out against.”
Munshi posted her resignation to X just before 10 p.m. Thursday, hours after an attacker drove a car into a Michigan synagogue while a preschool was in session. She did not mention the incident in her letter, which she said instead was timed to Prejean Boller’s formal ousting by Trump earlier that day.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations praised both Munshi and Prejean Boller on Friday for their “courage.”
“Ms. Prejean Boller and Ms. Munshi fulfilled the commission’s stated purpose by opposing all forms of anti-religious bigotry and standing up for every person’s right to express their religious beliefs, including opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” the council said in a statement. “The commission is now clearly meant to protect Israel from criticism, not to protect religious freedom for the American people.”
Munshi is a recent Brown University graduate and onetime director of the Muslim organization Coalition of Virtue. She was embraced by the Christian right after publicly opposing a change in a Maryland public school system’s policy allowing parents to opt their children out of curriculum, including LGBTQ material, that went against their religious beliefs. The policy Munshi protested was eventually taken to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of parents who had challenged the school.
Munshi’s biography on the commission’s website was still active as of Friday. It states, “Sameerah has courageously spoken out against forcing children to learn radical gender ideology in schools.”
Munshi had been outspoken for weeks about her support of Prejean Boller, with whom she was ideologically aligned on Israel, after Prejean Boller’s remarks during the antisemitism hearing caused a firestorm.
Like Prejean Boller, Munshi is also a follower of Candace Owens, the right-wing pundit who has embraced a number of antisemitic conspiracy theories. She praised Owens’ conversation with Jewish pro-Palestinian academic Norman Finkelstein last fall, writing on Instagram that Owens had a “rare willingness to confront uncomfortable truths head-on,” and suggested future guests for Owens to interview.
Munshi has been aligned with Prejean Boller since the fall, when Prejean Boller approached her after Munshi testified to the commission in favor of public schools’ rights to protest Israel. “Carrie has been wonderful. We’ve become pretty good friends at this point, and we’ve shared a lot,” Munshi told Middle East Eye.
On her Instagram before last month’s antisemitism hearing, Munshi wrote that the two of them had pushed the commission to invite “fair witnesses” to the hearing that would have reflected their own perspectives, including Finkelstein, left-wing Israeli academic Miko Peled, anti-Zionist rabbi Yaakov Shapiro, and David Spevak, an American Jewish activist and descendant of Holocaust survivors who has compared Jewish summer camps and cultural programs to the Hitler Youth.
After Prejean Boller’s performance at the hearing, during which she told Jewish witnesses that her Catholic faith compelled her to oppose Israel and Zionism, Munshi defended her from blowback from Jewish groups and the Trump administration. The Wall Street Journal wrote in an editorial that the two “left together and appeared to be texting amid the hearing,” appearing to allege collusion in Prejean Boller’s line of attack.
“Christian views and beliefs were targeted as ‘antisemitic’ for merely expressing concerns about the ongoing conflation between criticism of the state of Israel and anti-Jewish animus,” Munshi wrote on her Substack in February. “During the hearing, an attempt was made by a collection of ‘Israel First’ actors to redefine antisemitism to include all criticism of Israel, smear many concerned citizens as bigots, and even gatekeep what counts as ‘real’ Judaism by confining it to Israel-first Jews.”
Trump established the Religious Liberties Commission last year, with the order’s text stating that it would “offer diverse perspectives on how the Federal Government can defend religious liberty for all Americans.” Munshi was one of three Muslims on the commission and the only Muslim woman; all three were chosen to serve in an advisory capacity, rather than as full commissioners.
In her resignation letter Munshi also said she was resigning in protest of the Trump administration’s war with Iran, which she wrote was being done “at the urging of a genocidal state.”
“I support America over Israel, and unfortunately that means I cannot support Trump or this government,” Munshi continued.
The post Muslim advisor to Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission resigns to protest ‘Zionist political agenda’ appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Oklahoma attorney general accuses officials of rigging vote on proposed Jewish charter school
(JTA) — Oklahoma’s attorney general is accusing a state board of trying to rig the legal fight over a proposed Jewish charter school — a dispute that could open the door for publicly funded religious charter schools across the United States.
Attorney General Gentner Drummond filed a motion this week asking an Oklahoma County district judge to intervene after the Statewide Charter School Board rejected an application to open the Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School, a virtual statewide school that would combine secular studies with Jewish religious instruction.
Drummond alleges that the board engineered its vote so the rejection would focus only on the school’s religious character, strengthening the legal case for the school’s supporters, who are preparing a federal lawsuit challenging Oklahoma’s ban on religious charter schools.
“A state agency that deliberately hobbles its own legal position is not doing its job — it is betraying Oklahoma taxpayers. I will not allow that,” Drummond said in a statement.
He added: “The Board deliberately suppressed those findings to manufacture a cleaner path to federal court. I will not allow this Board to rig the record at taxpayers’ expense.”
Drummond asked the court to order the board to issue a new rejection letter detailing all of the reasons the proposal was deficient.
The dispute centers on the National Ben Gamla Jewish Charter School Foundation, led by former Florida Democratic Rep. Peter Deutsch. The group applied to open a statewide online charter school serving kindergarten through 12th grade students beginning next school year.
The proposal called for a curriculum combining secular coursework with daily Jewish religious studies. If approved, it would have become the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school.
Jewish groups in Oklahoma have opposed the proposal, saying they prefer not to be thrust into the middle of a debate over church-state separation and that there is little demand for such a school among local Jewish residents.
The charter board voted earlier this week to reject the application, citing a 2024 Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling that charter schools must remain secular.
That ruling overturned a previous effort to open a Catholic charter school, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court ended in a 4–4 tie after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself, leaving the state court decision in place.
Several board members said the precedent left them no choice but to reject Ben Gamla’s application.
At the same time, the board has signaled it may support the school’s broader constitutional argument in court. The board hired the conservative Christian legal group First Liberty Institute to represent it in the expected litigation and has indicated it could back the school’s position once a lawsuit is filed.
Drummond, who also fought the Catholic charter school proposal, said the legal question about religious charter schools had already been settled by the state courts and insisted his objection to the board’s vote was procedural rather than religious.
Among the issues he says the board improperly left out was a discrepancy in Ben Gamla’s projected enrollment.
Deutsch initially said the online school would serve about 40 high school students, but the formal application projected enrollment of 400 students across grades K-12.
State officials also raised questions about the composition of the school’s governing board. Oklahoma law requires a charter school board to include a parent or grandparent of a student. Ben Gamla listed Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, as its parent representative.
Supporters of the school have said they plan to challenge Oklahoma’s prohibition on religious charter schools in federal court, arguing that excluding religious schools from charter programs violates the Constitution’s protections for religious freedom.
The post Oklahoma attorney general accuses officials of rigging vote on proposed Jewish charter school appeared first on The Forward.