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Washington D.C., May 3, 2017 / 03:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Civic and religious leaders this week addressed a disturbing rise in religious hate crimes in recent years, especially harassment and violence perpetrated against Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs.

“While it is clear that Sikh Americans are not alone in experiencing a rise in hate crimes, the experience of our community is important to understand how dangerous this current era of inflammatory rhetoric promises to be if action is not taken,” Dr. Prabhjot Singh, a Sikh physician, said in his May 2 written testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony from representatives of the Anti-Defamation League, a Sikh doctor, and the civil rights division at the Justice Department on “responses to the increase in religious hate crimes” in the U.S.

“Crimes against Jews are the most common religious hate crimes and they have increased,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), chair of the committee, noted, but Islamophobic incidents rose the sharpest amongst all religious groups with a 67 percent spike from 2014 to 2015 according to FBI statistics.

Although overall hate crimes, including crimes based on race, sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity, went down in number from 2000 to 2015, religion-based hate crimes went up 23 percent from 2014 to 2015, Eric Treene, special counsel for religious discrimination at the Justice Department’s civil rights division, pointed to FBI statistics.

Dr. Singh, in his written testimony, told of how Sikhs are only one of many religious groups in the U.S., yet violence against them is representative of a worsening in religious bigotry.

Singh was violently beaten by a mob on the streets of New York City in 2013. As he lay awaiting treatment for his injuries in the hospital, he learned that the Muslim woman lying next to him in the emergency room wearing a hijab, or a religious headscarf, was attacked by the same group of young men.

“They threw a bottle of urine at her face, cutting her nose,” he said. Yet reporters who documented Singh’s attack in a story did not mention the assault on the Muslim woman because, in Singh’s words, “they said it would complicate the story, which was about a professor and doctor who was ‘mistakenly’ attacked in his own neighborhood.”

“We cannot accept this premise,” he insisted in his Tuesday testimony. “There is no such thing as a ‘mistaken’ hate crime. No one should ever be targeted. The only mistake is thinking otherwise.”

The attack, he continued, was only the latest incident in a rash of harassment and violence against Sikhs in the U.S. since the 9/11 attacks in 2001.

“Some of our fellow Americans,” Singh said, “call us 'ragheads and towelheads,' or 'ISIS and Al Qaeda.'”

“Ominously, the Sikh Coalition has consistently found that a majority of Sikh students in our nation's public schools experience bias-based bullying and harassment,” he added. “Some of our children are accused of being 'terrorists.' Others have had their turbans ripped off.”

Sadly, these attacks are part of a larger landscape of “threats, arson, assault, and murder” against Muslims, Jews, Hindus, African-Americans, and LGBTQ persons, he said.

“We seem to be backsliding into a new nativist era. This endangers us all,” he said.

Anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts rose in 2016 in the presidential election and have continued in 2017, Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and national director of the Anti-Defamation League, explained in his testimony.

Anti-Semitic incidents rose by over one-third in 2016 with “1,266 acts targeting Jews and Jewish institutions,” according to the ADL 2016 audit of incidents.

The campaign only intensified tensions that had already been aggravated, he added.

“And anti-Semitic abuse has soared on social media,” he noted, as “hateful, anti-Semitic invective” flourished on the mediums during the election season as well as harassment of Jewish journalists by white supremacists including the use of “triple parentheses, to publicly 'tag' Jews online.”

The election “featured harshly anti-Muslim rhetoric and anti-Semitic dog whistles,” he said, “and fostered an atmosphere in which white supremacists and other anti-Semites and bigots feel emboldened and believe that their views are becoming more broadly acceptable.”

President Trump's “initial reluctance to address rising anti-Semitism” has helped normalize this bigotry, Greenblatt said, and some of his supporters played a direct role in it.

“Much of the vandalism and harassment used slogans sourced from the Trump campaign such as 'Make America Great Again,'” he said. Incidents during and after the election – anti-Semitic graffiti and assault – were perpetrated with expressed support for Trump.

In addition, in the election there were “stereotyping of many groups, including women and immigrants, threats to ban Muslims from entering or living in the country, pronouncements that Islam ‘hates’ America, mocking of disabled people, and political candidates attacking one another based on their physical appearance,” he said.

Dr. Singh said he “was horrified to hear our President last weekend telling thousands of people at a rally that immigrants are snakes waiting to bite America,” he referred to Trump’s words at a recent rally in Harrisburg, Pa.

“Words matter, and when political leaders divide and dehumanize us, this lays the groundwork for hate to infect our society,” he stated.

All this has not only continued in 2017, but the number of incidents has spiked sharply, Greenblatt said.

He noted 161 bomb threats against Jewish synagogues or buildings so far and three reported desecrations of Jewish cemeteries.

“The bomb threats against JCCs, schools, ADL offices, and other community institutions in dozens of states across the country attracted very considerable attention,” he said, “causing evacuations, significant service disruptions, program cancellations, and deep community anxiety.”

Some of the threats were graphic in nature, warning of a “bloodbath” or the decapitations of Jews in explosions.

Action must be taken to stem these incidents, witnesses insisted. Preventative measures could include mandatory reporting laws for hate crimes, a federal inter-agency task force on hate crimes, and public officials speaking out against bigotry.

Dr. Singh shared how his son will soon enter Kindergarten, yet according to statistics, will probably be the victim of bigotry.

“These young years are formative, and how children are treated tells us so much about who we are as a nation, and who we aspire to be,” he said.

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Mumbai, India, May 3, 2017 / 03:34 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite being located on private property, a 122 year-old cross was demolished late last month in a suburb of Mumbai, sparking legal action from the archdiocese.

“This is gross misuse of authority and the archdiocese, in collaboration with various representative bodies, will legally pursue the matter,” archdiocesan spokesperson Father Nigel Barrett told Matters India in an April 30 article.

Local civic officers had demolished the cross a day before, inciting an angry response from the Catholic community. A makeshift cross was established hours later.

In 2016 the Allahabad High Court issued a directive calling for the removal of all religious structures which infringe upon any public roads, ranging from highways to pathways. The ruling is meant to restrict religious activities hindering the flow of traffic on public roads.

The court ordered any religious structure raised before 2011 to be removed within two months, and those issued before would need to be moved to private land or removed in six months. However, the cross was already located on private property.

Assistant municipal commissioner Sharad Ughade had sent notice to the church on April 26 that the cross would be demolished, referring to the ruling. In response, the owner of the land that the cross was located on provided documents that proved the land was private.

Father Barrett said that legal action was on its way over the destruction of the cross, decrying that the proper documentation was seemingly ignored by civic authorities.

The representative for the area's state legal assembly, Ashish Shelar, met with all affected parties on May 2. According to Mid-Day, he said the cross was included on a list of illegal structures which interfere with the development plan of the city.

He said the cross was mistakenly added to the list “without proper homework.”

Moving forward, he said the plan would be to reexamine the documents of the demolitions completed so far, to give all religious structures on the list a month to be relocated. Shelar also granted the request for a Christian cemetery to be built in Malad, a suburb on the other side of Mumbai.

Thirty-two temples and six crosses have also been removed since the court order, according to the Times of India.

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Washington D.C., May 3, 2017 / 03:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops on Wednesday sent out a text message alert urging Catholics to sign a petition calling on President Donald Trump to issue an executive order protecting religious freedom.

The petition, hosted by Human Life Action, encourages the president to sign such an executive order, which is rumored to be in the works for Thursday.

Religious freedom advocates have warned that, due to various mandates and rules issued during the Obama administration, religious institutions that uphold traditional marriage or do not cooperate with abortions and contraceptive use could soon face federal action if no executive order is issued to protect them.

A draft of such an executive order was leaked earlier this year, but was reportedly scuttled due to the efforts of Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner.

An executive order could help mitigate the effects of the HHS birth control mandate, which caused hundreds of religious non-profits and other employers to sue the federal government claiming the mandate forced them to violate their consciences.

The Trump administration has not yet stopped defending the mandate in court, although White House advisor Leonard Leo told Axios recently that the administration was not planning to defend the mandate indefinitely, but was rather still considering the best “litigation proof” route for lifting the mandate’s burden on religious employers.

Another reason for an executive order would be the protection of health care providers and crisis pregnancy centers from mandates that they perform abortions or cover them in employee health plans, according to religious freedom advocates.

Currently, the Weldon Amendments bars federal funding of states that force employers to provide abortion coverage for employees. But after California ruled that health care plans – including those of churches and religious organizations – had to include coverage for elective abortions, the head of the Office of Civil Rights at the federal Department of Health and Human Services decided last summer that the state had not violated the Weldon Amendment.

Also at stake is the tax-exempt status of schools and other religious institutions which teach that marriage is one man and one woman.

In 2015 oral arguments in the same-sex marriage case Obergefell v. Hodges, President Obama’s solicitor general Donald Verrilli said that the ability of these colleges to retain their tax-exempt status if same-sex marriage is the law of the land is “certainly going to be an issue.”

Another way an executive order could protect religious freedom would be to protect federal contractors, and dioceses and churches that provide military chaplains, from having to comply with mandates that they support same-sex marriage.

The Russell Amendment had upheld this freedom and was included in the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act that passed the House, but was removed by Senate Republicans so the bill could pass the Senate.

“Any Executive Order should make it clear that religious freedom entails more than the freedom to worship but also includes the ability to act on one's beliefs,” the U.S. Bishops’ Conference stated earlier this year on the need for an executive order.

“It should also protect individuals and families who run closely-held businesses in accordance with their faith to the greatest extent possible.”

 

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