Linda Sarsour’s Acts of Hate Against Jews: A Running List

Once again, Linda Sarsour has come under fire for being welcomed in mainstream politics and progressive spaces despite her long history of degrading, demonizing, and spreading harmful tropes about Jews.

Rather taking the majority of the Jewish community and its legacy institutions at their word, Sarsour’s supporters often prop up fringe Jewish voices who defend her – yet never address her specific actions. Others bring up that she has raised money for Jewish causes, as if any sum of money somehow erases years of anti-Semitism.

Many claim that Linda Sarsour is merely critical of Israeli policies. Criticizing the Israeli government, even passionately, is not an act of hate against Jews. However, Sarsour has repeatedly engaged in antisemitism that is completely unrelated to Israel. Meanwhile, when she brings up Israel, she often invokes antisemitic tropes. It is not that Linda Sarsour criticizes the Jewish state that is an issue — it is that she frequently uses hateful rhetoric that have gotten millions of Jews murdered to make her points. Regardless of her stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Linda Sarsour has repeatedly, and unapologetically promoted hatred against Jewish people, while engaging in it herself.

Here is Linda Sarsour’s history of antisemitism all in one condensed place.

Acts of Jew Hatred Committed By Linda Sarsour

Linda Sarsour’s ongoing praise, business, and association with the Nation of Islam, an antisemitic hate group that promotes tropes that Jews: control the U.S. government and FBI, plotted 9/11, “suck blood,” are part of a conspiracy to make people gay and transgender, and are pedophiles.

1. Linda Sarsour delivered a speech at a 2015 rally organized by NOI leader Louis Farrakhan in his celebration.
2. “On October 10, 2017, Sarsour shared a two-year-old clip with her almost 200K Facebook followers that showed her delivering a short speech at a 2015 rally organized by Farrakhan to mark the 20-year anniversary of the 1995 Million Man March.” She wrote “2 years ago today. I stand by every word.”(The Forward)
3. Sarsour has publicly advocated for the embrace of NOI in larger Islam. In 2012, she tweeted “When we write the history of Islam in America, the Nation of #Islam is an integral part of that history.” In 2014, Sarsour again expressed her passion for the hate group. “Can’t learn or teach about the history of Islam in America without talking about the Nation of Islam,” she wrote.
4. In 2018, after Jews expressed discomfort that Sarsour and her Women’s March Co-chair had embraced the hate group, Sarsour said they were part of a right-wing conspiracy to undermine the women’s movement. She asked Jews on Facebook: “What work are we willing to do and are we willing to be open to the true idea that members of the NOI [Nation of Islam] are not all anti-Semites? Are we cool with broad brushing a whole group?”
5. In April 2020, Linda Sarsour penned a public tribute to a leader of the Nation of Islam, Abdul Hafeez Muhammad, who worked under Louis Farrakhan. In a speech, Muhammad claimed that antisemitism accusations against the Women’s March were a “deception” to distract from the “truth” of Farrakhan’s conspiracy theories about Jewish people.“A tool of the liar is deception,” Muhammad said. “So you expose the deception by exposing the liar. The liar fights truth. This requires one who knows the truth also having the courage to tell the truth. And, most of all the willingness to face the opposition that results. Farrakhan is that person. The question is who will stand with him?”

6. Linda Sarsour has repeatedly hired NOI’s paramilitary wing, Fruit of Islam, for her personal security. She openly posted about it in 2015. On August 2020, it was posted again on Facebook that Linda Sarsour was working with Fruit of Islam.

Linda Sarsour posting that she has hired FOI (Fruit of Islam), a subset of Nation of Islam as security.

Linda Sarsour Has Spoke Over Jews About Antisemitism

In 2017, Sarsour spoke on a panel called “Antisemitism and the Struggle for Justice,” even though 21,000 Jews signed a petition asking her not to because she is neither Jewish nor a scholar on antisemitism. Her rejection of Jewish people’s wishes and asserting she knows more about antisemitism than them, is not only patronizing, it is antisemitic.

Linda Sarsour Has Engaged in Christian Antisemitism

When a Christian leader, Elder Kirsten John Foy, told a Jewish woman, “You’ve got wicked spirit laying upon your heart. I pray them bound and cast from you by the blood of the lamb of God, Jesus Christ,” she applauded him and replied, “You are too blessed to be stressed.”

Sarsour also proudly associates with Bishop Talbert Swan who engages in antisemitism online, and has written a book advocating for conversion therapy to be used against LGBTQ youth.

Linda Sarsour Has Spread KKK Rhetoric

“Ask them this, how can you be against white supremacy in America and the idea of being in a state based on race and class, but then you support a state like Israel that is based on supremacy, that is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everyone else,” Sarsour said at the annual conference of American Muslims for Palestine. The concept of “Jewish supremacy” was created by the KKK. Former Grand Wizard David Duke named his 2003 book “Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening on the Jewish Question.”

Duke has praised Sarsour’s comments about the Jewish state and American politics.

Linda Sarsour Was Complicit in the Antisemitic Harassment of a Colleague, Which Caused Her to Leave Her Job

Women’s March co-chairs Tamika Mallory and Carmen Perez began “berating” a march co-founder, Vanessa Wruble, over her Jewish identity at a January 2017 meeting. Wruble told Vox: “I personally witnessed statements that were inaccurate about the role that Jews have played in the slave trade and in the prison industrial complex,” she said. “I was pretty devastated.” She left the Women’s March soon after the January meeting, with zero solidarity from Sarsour in the face of workplace antisemitism.

Linda Sarsour Has Used Antisemitic Dual Loyalty Tropes

Sarsour claimed that Jews “masquerade as progressives but always choose their allegiance to Israel over their commitment to democracy and free speech.” This suggested Jewish progressives harbor divided loyalties to Israel over their values, an age old antisemitic trope invoked in mass killings of Jews.

Linda Sarsour has also claimed that American politicians are more loyal to Israel than the American people, which was praised by white supremacist leader Richard Spencer.

Linda Sarsour commented on an anti-Semitic tweet that told Jews their homeland is Poland and Brooklyn to “hey, hey leave Brooklyn out of this.”

Linda Sarsour regularly vilifies Jewish institutions, and has furthered a white nationalist narrative that Jews fake hate crimes

1. Sarsour told Jews to boycott the Forward, a nonprofit Jewish publication that has presented arguments both criticizing and defending her.
2. She created a list of “good Jews” versus the “bad Jews” while attacking the Forward, which promotes a ongoing double standard in which Jews who are who is acceptable to a Christian-majority society are rewarded, and others are targeted.
3. Sarsour condemned the creation of a Black-Jewish caucus, even though she is neither Black nor Jewish.
4. She successfully campaigned for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) to be expelled from diversity training at Starbucks — effectively excluding any training that protects Jews from workplace discrimination was out of the equation.
5. When a Jewish grocery in Winnepeg, Canada faked anti-Semitic vandalism, she publicized that it was staged in order to attack the ADL for publicly condemning the bigotry, long before the fraud was exposed. This promoted a narrative that Jews fake hate crimes and their institutions condemn them for personal gain. The concept that Jews fake hate crimes is a major conspiracy theory of white nationalists, and makes Jews everywhere less safe.

Disclaimer: We understand that Linda Sarsour is a victim of Islamophobia and vile attacks against her on the basis of her religion and Palestinian ethnicity. We condemn this hatred completely. We cannot fight antisemitism with Islamophobia and this list does not exist to stoke the fires of that hate.