Muslims have shown their support on social media and have offered to guard Jewish sites following the recent wave of bomb threats against Jewish community centres and the defilement of graves at a graveyard in Philadelphia and St. Louis.
The offers to protect religious sites have come from Muslims who include military servicemen, lawyers and Emmy Award-winning TV broadcasters.
It has been reported that more than 100 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centres in the first two months of 2017 out of which at least 31 threats were made on Monday alone.
In a tweet, a former Muslim marine, Tayyib Rashid, pledged: “If your synagogue or Jewish cemetery needs someone to stand guard, count me in. Islam requires it.”
Mr Rashid, known by his Twitter handle @muslimmarine adds in his periscope video that “I’ve seen a tremendous outpouring of love and support from all Americans, from Muslims, from my fellow Jewish Americans, from Christians, from atheists, from everyone”.
The former Marine welcomes people to meet him at a local coffee shop in his hometown in Grayslake, Chicago, in his “initiative to help promote peace between Muslims and non-Muslims”.
He aims to open dialogue about “the recent atrocities committed by some hateful people” that were responsible for the “destruction and desecration of the graves of people of the Jewish faith”.
He adds: “I condemn that wholeheartedly and I stand in solidarity with all my Jewish citizens.”
His now-viral tweet that has been “liked” by 12,000 supporters prompted an overwhelming number of responses from Jewish Twitter users with a ceremonial dinner held on the first two nights of Passover.
Unity between Muslim and Jewish organisations was also displayed after an online campaign to raise funds for an arson-damaged mosque in Florida raised more than $70,000 (£57,000).
Adeel Karim, a member of the Islamic Society of New Tampa, posted on his Facebook profile that he was “floored” after realising that many of the donors to the campaign were Jewish.
“I couldn’t understand why people were donating in what seemed like weird amounts to the cause. There are sums of 18, 36, 72 dollars etc. then I figured out after clicking on the names Avi, Cohen, Goldstein, Rubin, Fisher….
“Jews donate in multiples of 18 as a form of what is called ‘Chai’. It wishes the recipient long life. ”
