Forum: Muslim Communities Confront Fear Mongering, Hate Speech, Suspicion

Dear Friends,

Here's one reason why this upcoming forum is so important: Within ten minutes of posting this event to Facebook, hate speech comments started showing up. They were pretty shocking, as you can imagine. It drove home to me how real the hate and fear mongering is in this country today.

Attending this forum will be an act of solidarity with our friends and neighbors. Even more important, we'll learn about the realities of being on the receiving end of such threats and what all of us can do to stop it. I hope to see you there.

Paul George, PPJC Director

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Presidential campaign rhetoric often gets overheated, blown out of proportion. But rarely has it descended to the base levels of Campaign 2016. Blatant racism, xenophobia and fear-mongering - hate speech - has become an alarming norm of the campaign this year.

Words matter, of course, and they have consequences. Frightening consequences if you are a member of one of the targeted communities. And no community has suffered the backlash from this hate speech more than the Muslim community.

The consequences of inciting speech takes many forms: physical assaults, bullying of school children, law enforcement abuses, employment discrimination, denial of public accommodations ... it is a long and ever-growing list.

This month's forum will take a look at the very real fears of the Muslim community, both locally and nationally, and explore how best to respond, as allies across all communities, to the fear-mongering and hate speech.

We are pleased to be joined by two top activists and obervers of these issues: Zahra Billoo, Esq., Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, San Francisco Bay Area Chapter and Mike German, a Fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and a former FBI special agent who specialized in domestic terrorism.