Dear Friends,
A very Happy New Year to you. Many blessings for a peaceful and productive 2016.
We ended last year a number of reassuring interfaith initiatives to fight hate and anti-Muslim bias that had been stirred up over the Fall. We were glad to be a part of two multi-faith rallies at City Hall denouncing hate speech and crimes against Muslims. They included a Faith Leaders Rally to Denounce Crimes Against Muslims and Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito’s interfaith rally in response to Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric.
Currently, a controversial proposal by two Muslim woman Asra Q. Nomani and Hala Arafa suggesting that their fellow Muslim women ought not to wear the hijab underscores the current relevance of former ICNY Director of Community Development Sarah Sayeed’s Aug. 20, 2009 Reuters article titled “Out of Our Hair and Away from our Pants“.
Thankfully, statements on this subject proliferated and ICNY was one of the 40 organizations that signed an open letter on anti-Muslim bigotry and religious freedom that ran in the Washington Post on December 21. We also assisted in a Muslim-Franciscan statement by the Franciscan Action Network in the tradition of St. Francis and his peaceful encounter with the Sultan of Egypt. Twenty Westchester synagogues offer letter of support to Muslim Americans and ICNY’s Board and Staff members. Sister Aisha and Iman Boukadoum spoke on ABC7’s “Here and Now” program. ICNY also participated in a panel at the United Nations hosted by the Organization of Islamic Countries on countering Islamophobia.
The Rev. Chloe Breyer, Sally Kider (US Federation for Middle East Peace),
and Sister Aisha Al-Adawiya (Women in Islam),
at OIC’s UN Panel on countering Islamophobia
ICNY’s education programs are particularly relevant in this current climate and we encourage you to reach out to teachers you know nationwide who might be interested in applying for our National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute with Union Theological Seminary. It is about teaching religious diversity in the context of the city. In this letter we also include teacher resources for talking with students about Islamophobia.
Thank you again for your support and involvement with ICNY over the past year and we look forward to doing this work together as we move forward.
Best Wishes,
Rev. Chloe Breyer
Executive Director
The Interfaith Center of New York
P.S. Watch your email inbox later this month for our next podcast episode featuring Dr. Uma Mysorekar of the Hindu Temple Society of North America.
