The BBC writes:

The French president has promised the Jewish community a major increase in security after police shot dead a man suspected of targeting a kosher shop.

Francois Hollande said there would be ‘total mobilisation of the state to fight all terrorist threats’.

What Hollande is doing for the French Jewish community – providing security at their synagogues and protection against ‘terrorists’ – is really commendable stuff.  Clearly Hollande is fighting the recent spat of anti-Semitic attacks.  Remember Muhammad Mareh?

As an American in-tune with the happenings in and around the Muslim American community, Hollande’s initiative makes me a bit disappointed in the leaders of the U.S.  Why hasn’t Obama done anything similar for the Muslim American community?  This was a topic which I recently blogged about here.

Over the past several years, Muslim Americans have witnessed a horrendous strings of attacks, from their mosques being firebombed by arsonists of the Christian Identity Movement to Muslim gravestones which were graffitied with phrases like ‘Muhammad is a liar and a faggot’.  These are just two of the many, many attacks against Muslim American communities that have virtually gone unnoticed in Democratic and Republican policy making circles.

Both France and the U.S. are witnessing an increase in attacks against some of their most vulnerable religious communities.  One country – France – is taking the initiative to make sure that French Jewish communities are secure and able to worship freely.

The other, the U.S., a country ironically founded on the principles of human rights and religious freedom, seems to have dropped the ball on the vision of their founding fathers.

Related articles

• Commentary: Time for Obama to say something about mosque attacks across U.S. (drcraigconsidine.wordpress.com)