GRAND RAPIDS, Mich — Federal law enforcement is ramping up efforts to stave off a growing problem around anti-Semitic and Islamophobic threats.
On Monday, the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan announced a guilty plea from one such threat after 19-year-old Sean Pietila made online threats to at least one Jewish congregation in East Lansing.
"We're leaning into this," Totten said. "We have been in active communication with rabbis, imams, other leaders of the affected communities as well. And I will just reiterate that we will show zero tolerance for hate fueled acts of violence, and threats of violence against anybody based on their race, their ethnicity, their religion."
A new report out last month from the FBI showed that anti-Semitic hate crimes increased dramatically in 2022.
"We were already dealing with anti-Semitism," Cantor David Fair of Temple Emanuel told 13 ON YOUR SIDE last week.
And now, given the violence in the Middle East, it's an environment that has left local faith leaders like Fair with a sense of unease.
"My partner Corey wears his Yakama everywhere in anywhere grocery shopping, pizza parlors, etc.," Fair said. "And a man came up to us and he said, 'Huh, you're pretty brave to be wearing that in public.'"
And where anti-Semitic incidents have risen, so have those against the Muslim community. The Council for American-Islamic Relations saying Monday they had received over 1,200 requests for help and reports of bias in the four weeks following the outbreak of the war.
"I think, regarding this issue, which is a very grievous and shocking one and the whole of humanity is in the shock, and taking care of the security," said Dr. Sharif Sahibzada, the Imam of the Islamic Center of Grand Rapids.
In Grand Rapids where no large-scale threats have taken place, leaders of both faiths are focusing on building understanding.
"God says, 'I have given the life nobody else has got the right to take the life away,'" Sahibzada said. "So, this is the thing that we have to promote, and work on it: that we protect the life, not to ruin or destroy the life."
Their aim: to come together across faiths to have conversations and make a difference and fight back against the shadow of hate.
"I understand that we're not going to solve any actual Middle East issues," Fair said. "But we can at least come together and try to create a space of healing."
"Regardless of faith or culture, or religion, we are human beings," Sahibzada said.
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