Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff said on Thursday that the Biden administration plans to soon release new guidance on best practices for combating Islamophobia.
Emhoff revealed the news while kicking off a roundtable on “interfaith coalition building” he convened with a group of religious leaders at the White House, after noting that many of those participating in Thursday’s meeting are “part of the interagency group that the president stood up to counter antisemitism and also Islamophobia.”
“The first deliverable, in May of 2023, was the first-ever national strategy to counter antisemitism. We are now getting into year two with additional actions. There will be an Islamophobia plan coming out soon as well, and making sure we are fighting hate wherever it exists,” Emhoff said after touting the administration’s efforts to “counter hate and restore unity.”
That deliverable was a whole-of-society approach that included more than 100 policy commitments across the executive branch and a call to action for ordinary Americans to stand together with the Jewish community in fighting antisemitism. The document does not address how precisely to define the term, following pushback by progressives to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. Opponents of the IHRA definition argued that it conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
Also at the meeting on behalf of the administration were Rashad Hussain, U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, and Stephen K. Benjamin, the director of the White House’s Office of Public Engagement.
The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism were among the organizations that participated in the roundtable, which was closed to the press after opening remarks from Emhoff, Benjamin and Hussain….
