Eboo Patel at The Faith Divide:

I’m writing from Toronto, where last night I gave a plenary address on Muslim-Jewish cooperation to the Biennial conference of the Union for Reform Judaism. Backstage after the address, my friend Rabbi David Saperstein gave me a grim look and said, “The shooter had a Muslim name.”

He called his wife who works for NPR, and his face got more grim as I heard him say:

“Are you sure he was a Muslim? Are you sure he was a Muslim?”

He hung up the phone and turned to me. “This is our worst nightmare.”

Rabbi Saperstein knows there will be a thousand voices broadcasting the news that a Muslim opened fire at Fort Hood in Texas yesterday—the implication being, of course, that this act represents Islam. He knows how distorting that perception is for Muslims, and how dangerous that distortion is for America.

[...]

But a Muslim did not do this. Killers do not deserve the honor of a religious label. The man who killed a group of brave American soldiers deserves one name and one name only: murderer.

Read the full piece here.

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