On the morning of October 27, at Sabbath services—the holy day of the week for the Jewish community—Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA and yelled “All Jews must die,” then opened fire upon the congregants. He was armed with an assault rifle and several handguns and killed eleven congregants and wounded six others, four of whom are police officers. When surrendering to law enforcement, Bowers told an officer that he “wanted all…
7 Results
The Rohingya people are an ethnic minority group (the vast majority of whom are Muslim) in the country of Myanmar, a predominantly Buddhist country. The Rohingya numbered about one million people at the beginning of 2017 and represent the largest percentage of Muslim people in Myanmar; the majority live in the Rakhine state. Since August 2017, about 655,000 Rohingya people have fled into neighboring Bangladesh to escape violent and deadly persecution in Myanmar. This includes discriminatory…
On December 5, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a case about a baker who refused to sell a cake for a same-sex wedding reception because of his religious beliefs. The case began in 2012 when Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, a same-sex couple, went to Masterpiece Cakeshop, a bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, to purchase a custom wedding cake for their wedding reception. The bakery owner, Jack Phillips, said that he would sell…
After the terrorist attacks in Paris, Beirut and San Bernardino, California, there has been an increase in incidents targeting the Muslim community and those who are perceived to be Muslim. Since the Paris attacks on November 13, 2015, there have been at least seventy-five incidents in the United States, including assaults, vandalism and threats. In the wake of these terrorist attacks, the emergence of ISIS combined with a lack of information among the general public and the tendency to…
On Friday, November 13, coordinated shootings and explosions rocked Paris late in the evening, killing 130 people and leaving another 351 injured, 99 of them critically. The majority of the victims were killed at the Bataclan concert hall. There, attackers opened fire on concertgoers and took more than 100 people hostage, according to police. Police later stormed the Bataclan and ended the hostage situation. At the same time, there were three suicide bombings near the Stade de France, a soccer…
GRADE LEVEL: High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, Language Since its contrivance at the turn of the twentieth century by the Russian secret police, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (or The Protocols of the Elders of Zion) has taken root in bigoted and uneducated minds around the world. The booklet’s twenty-four sections spell out the alleged confidential plans of a Jewish conclave seeking to attain world domination. They represent…
GRADE LEVEL: Elementary School, Middle School, High School
COMMON CORE STANDARDS: Reading, Writing One of the oldest forms of bigotry in existence, antisemitism has persisted on account of religious intolerance, cultural misunderstanding and centuries-old myths that have resulted in divisions among cultural and religious groups and, in the most extreme cases, the loss of lives, families and communities. From bigoted jokes and slurs uttered in school halls to physical assaults and the…