American interfaith groups are being infiltrated and undermined by the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliate, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). In their eagerness to find Muslim faith partners whom they want to believe share their values of religious tolerance and mutual respect, Jewish interfaith leaders allow themselves to be exploited. Under the guise of interfaith dialogue, Islamist organizations like ISNA that have ties to extremism, insinuate themselves into faith organizations while advancing their hidden agendas. Faith leaders who disregard ISNA’s ulterior motives place their congregations at risk.
In its June 2015 ruling in favor of Samantha Elauf, a Muslim woman who was denied employment for wearing a headscarf, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the American judiciary’s prohibition on workplace discrimination based upon religious practice. In the American melting pot, there are benefits to all faiths that successfully negotiate societal challenges between the secular and the religious, but these benefits are only guaranteed by a legal system that upholds a universal human rights standard. Blind spots in the interfaith movement, however, undermine common cause when religious leaders pursue interfaith outreach at any cost.
One such example was described in an article in a Jewish community paper written by a participant in a Christian/Jewish interfaith partnership with the Muslim organization, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The current head of ISNA’s interfaith relations, Dr. Sayyid M. Syeed, a sociolinguist by training, is a founder and former executive of ISNA. At the invitation of its rabbi, Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, Syeed met with faith leaders of various denominations, professors of religion, and “interested citizens” at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) in suburban Philadelphia. The rabbi presented Syeed “to guide our thinking about these issues.” Rabbi Kreimer is founding director of the Multifaith Studies Department of the RRC, the seminary of a branch of Judaism on the left side of the political spectrum and self-described as liberal progressive.