NEW YORK – Some religious leaders attending Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s interfaith breakfast Friday expressed solidarity with Muslims upset about police department surveillance in their communities while more than a dozen leaders boycotted the yearly gathering that is meant to be a showcase of tolerance.
“I wouldn’t like it to happen to my house of worship,” Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bodzin said at the breakfast of the spying program first revealed by The Associated Press. “I would be hurt if it was my faith group that was in this situation or predicament. … I see it as the mayor choosing one faith-based group to target.”
The absence of 15 Muslim clerics and civic leaders made little difference to the size of a breakfast roster that totaled more than 360, but it made their concerns about police infiltration of Muslim neighborhoods and mosques a topic of conversation for many.
Some worried about what the surveillance meant for the privacy of their own congregations, while others dismissed the boycotters as agitators who were missing the point of an event meant to foster communication between religious communities and city officials.
Bloomberg didn’t directly address the boycott during the event, though he did quote his father as telling him that “discrimination against anyone is discrimination against everyone.”
He also said: “We have to keep our guard up, but if we don’t work together, we’re not going to be able to have our own freedoms.”
The mayor’s comments were a disappointment for Hussein Rashid, an Islamic studies professor at Hofstra University who had hoped that Bloomberg would speak about the Muslim community’s concerns. Hussein, who wore a blazer over a T-shirt reading “I am not a terrorist,” said that leaders of all faiths at the gathering had been supportive when he spoke to them about the matter.
“I was able to talk to them about the fact that if I’m a potential suspect, by being next to me, you’re a potential suspect as well,” he said. “So this isn’t a Muslim issue. This is a civil rights issue.”
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