In 2022, CAIR wrote, “It is important that school officials recognize Ramadan is a very special time for their Muslim students and work to create safe spaces for students fasting and praying – now and throughout the year. "
In June, there were violent anti-Israel protests that blocked Jews from entering the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. Even President Biden called those protests antisemitic. In response, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to consider ordinances establishing a “bubble zone” that protects individuals entering or exiting healthcare facilities, places of worship, public facilities, community centers, and "other locations where identity-based gatherings are conducted, or services are administered." The ordinance would make it a misdemeanor for anyone who obstructs or blocks another person from entering or exiting synagogues and other facilities and would prohibit a person from harassing anyone entering or exiting such a place.
Earlier this year, it extended this desire: "All houses of worship should be a beacon and a safe space for the community."
But CAIR emphatically does not want synagogues to be safe spaces.
In short, the proposed ordinance would create safe zones for Jewish and other communities.
CAIR doesn't like that - at all. While they want to ensure Muslims are free of harassment, they consider harassing Jews to be a First Amendment right.
“It is deeply concerning that, after nearly a year of witnessing Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the LA City Council not only remains silent, but also continues to introduce measures designed to stifle the voices of those speaking up for Palestinian human rights and criminalize their constitutional right to free speech and assembly. By penalizing peaceful protests simply based on their proximity to geographic landmarks, this motion threatens to push protesters out of sight, effectively chilling their speech, further disenfranchising already vulnerable groups.
The laws, or course, would not criminalize protests, but just ensure that they do not infringe on the rights of others. There is no First Amendment right to protest anywhere one wants. CAIR is arguing that they have the right to harass Jews directly outside their synagogues and community centers and that they have every right to intimidate Jews and make them feel unsafe in their own places of worship.
Disgustingly, CAIR frames the right to harass Jews as something that makes Muslims feel safer themselves. In May, protesters targeted the heavily Orthodox Jewish town of Jackson, NJ. The mayor said that they had not applied for a permit for the protest, and CAIR-NJ said that this response was anti-Islamic and made the antisemitic protesters feel unsafe:
CAIR-NJ condemns Jackson Township and its mayor’s hostile treatment towards individuals wanting to exercise their first amendment rights. Their treatment of protestors as threatening and dangerous is harmful and puts them at risk. By telling the community to remain vigilant in the face of peaceful assembly creates the harmful rhetoric that pro-Palestinian protestors are dangerous, violent and even implicitly criminal.CAIR-NJ urges Jackson Township to aid in providing a safe space for individuals wanting to exercise their right to peacefully protest for any reason.
To CAIR, mosques must be safe spaces for Muslims. Schools must be safe spaces for Muslims. And even protests targeting Jews must also be safe spaces for Muslims.
But for CAIR, there cannot be any safe spaces for Jews.
