Group behind Facebook filters supporting shooting victims draws criticism for anti-Islam language

In solidarity with the Jewish community in the wake of a mass shooting, some people have updated their Facebook profile pictures with filters created by the Campaign Against Antisemitism. Some people on social media are now accusing the group of anti-Islam rhetoric.

Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) is “a volunteer-led charity dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism” based in the U.K., according to its website. The organization started a Facebook campaign in response to the attack on Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday. Authorities reported that 46-year-old Robert Bowers shot and killed 11 people and injured four others. According to the New York Times, it is one of the most deadly attacks on the Jewish community in the U.S.

The CAA released a statement on Saturday condemning the Pittsburgh attack and other forms of Anti-semitism. “All over the world, far-right, far-left and Islamist extremists are stoking the flames of Jew-hatred, with too little done to stop them,” the post reads. “Antisemitism is an age-old disease which begins with hatred and violence towards Jews and ends with the unraveling of society.”

Some Facebook users took issue with the language of the statement, claiming that it unnecessarily directed blame toward Islam. “This act was done by a white supremacist, please clarify/update your language. Islam had nothing to do with this,” one user, Stefanie Brendler, commented.

Others online expressed concern over anti-Islam rhetoric resulting from the Pittsburgh attack.

white supremacists are the biggest threat to every minority in our nation, & yet hours after one of them shoots up a synagogue, y’all have the courage to be out here with your islamaphobia & rightwing politics I’m done

— spooky knafeh (@MissCongress) October 29, 2018

Racism. Anti-semitism. Islamaphobia. Xenophobia. White nationalism. These words belong in the center of our conversation. Yes, gun safety. NO, it's not a matter of the synagogue or church or mosque being better armed. But hate is at the rotten center. We must see it and name it.

— ilyse hogue (@ilyseh) October 27, 2018

Brendler told the Daily Dot that the post failed to mention that the shooter was a white supremacist. “The post from CAA does not identify that the act was done by a white supremacist terrorist at all,” Brendler said. “We cannot make space for Islamophobic rhetoric in a Jewish response to crisis; such rhetoric actually upholds white supremacy.”

Prior to the shooting, Bowers posted anti-Semitic content and conspiracy theories to far-right social media platform Gab. According to the Times, he once wrote that Jews were the “enemy of white people.”

https://twitter.com/Blk_Hermione/status/1056242143193231360

They’ve announced that the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter is a white man. But we already knew that, because they took him in alive.

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) October 27, 2018

The Campaign Against Antisemitism did not immediately respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment.