Interfaith groups on Long Island seek to bridge divisions that breed hate

Bill Kiley spent 30 years in the Suffolk County Police Department, rising to a top-level job as a deputy chief. Now he is devoted to a new mission — fighting hatred on Long Island.

Kiley is leading a new interfaith effort he hopes will stop hatred, draw attention to incidents of hate, and provide support to victims of it. Formed about six months ago, the Huntington Action Network Against Hate (HANAH) has brought together Christians, Jews, Muslims, Unitarian Universalists and Baha'i.

Its goal is to fight hatred based on religion, ethnicity, race or sexual orientation.

"It’s an effort to stand up against hate and to do what we can to prevent it," said Kiley, 75 and now retired from the police department. "Everybody talks about it, but we have to do something about it."

The issue was in the spotlight again last week when someone spray-painted the largest Hindu temple on Long Island, located in Melville, with anti-Hindu graffiti. Suffolk police said they are investigating it as a hate crime.

The Huntington group is part of a larger effort launched by the multifaith organization Abraham’s Table, which hopes to establish similar versions of HANAH across Long Island. So far, Abraham’s Table also has helped launch a community action network, called the United Community Action Network, or UCAN, in Smithtown and northern Brookhaven towns, including communities such as Selden, Mount Sinai, St. James and Smithtown.

The groups have emerged in recent months as hate crimes across Long Island are on the rise, and as some church leaders are encouraging houses of worship to take a greater role in the fight against hate. Those involved, such as Kiley, say they felt compelled to start these groups as a way of building bridges in an increasingly divided society.

"This is the most polarized moment in my memory since the 1960s. It's infecting us everywhere. It's showing itself in politics, in schools, in families, in business, and manifesting itself in hate ... It's time to act," said Richard Koubek, a founder of Abraham’s Table.

Education, discussion and prayer

Some networks, such as HANAH, can be made up entirely of people from faith-based organizations, including churches, synagogues and mosques. HANAH has about 20 members so far, and meets on Zoom or in local churches.

Other groups, like UCAN, can have a mix of people from houses of worship as well as local civic groups and even government. UCAN has about 15 members and meets at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Stony Brook.

The anti-hate networks plan to carry out their work by holding educational workshops, prayer services and discussion groups at schools, churches and community organizations. In late October, for instance, HANAH is hosting a panel discussion with five student winners of an essay contest who wrote about their fears and dreams in a polarized society — and their calls for solidarity — on the eve of national elections.

UCAN recently testified before the Smithtown Town Board about what it called hateful posters that were put up locally, and then held educational workshops at a church and at a library branch to discuss the issue, said Deborah Little, one of the group's leaders. UCAN is also designing an anti-hate poster it hopes local businesses will place in their front windows.

Claire Mis, a deacon at St. John's Episcopal Church in Huntington and a member of HANAH, said she thought linking different faith communities to fight hate was a powerful idea, partly because many of them did not know each other before even though they live in the same town.

"I think it is a wonderful opportunity for faith-based communities of all sorts to get to know each other," she said. "A lot of times we don’t communicate with each other, we don’t talk with each other, we don’t even know people from other faith communities. I think it is a wonderful way to be able to reach out and help each other in times of need."

HANAH this month had its first in-person meeting, a potluck dinner that attracted 16 people from Jewish, Christian, Unitarian Universalist and Baha'i faith traditions. Most had never met.

The community action networks contend that despite the work of various anti-bias task forces on Long Island, along with the investigations and arrests carried out by police, more needs to be done, since the number of hate crimes and incidents are rising.

A rise in hate crimes

Hate incidents "are with us and they are growing," Koubek said.

Statewide, the number of reported hate crimes surged by 69% in the last five years, from 644 in 2019 to 1,089 in 2023, according to a report released in August by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. The report said religion was the most common bias motivation.

Locally, the report said, the numbers went up as well. Nassau County saw a jump from 34 in 2019 to 75 in 2023, while Suffolk County went from 20 to 31. Nassau's numbers increased sharply in just two years, from 28 in 2021 to 61 in 2022 to 75 in 2023.

Hate crimes are offenses deemed to be motivated by a bias or belief about a victim’s race, religion, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation or other factors.

Little, of the Smithtown/Brookhaven group, said many acts of hate do not get officially recorded because they do not rise to the level of a crime.

Since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, and Israel’s subsequent war against Hamas in Gaza, advocates say acts of antisemitism and Islamophobia on Long Island also have risen sharply.

Koubek said his organization began to see a worrying trend several years ago. In 2021, the Proud Boys, a neo-fascist group designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, marched through the streets of Rockville Centre.

The following year, an incendiary device exploded outside a mosque in Ronkonkoma, damaging a metallic crescent moon that cost $10,000 to build, officials said. Over the last few years, antisemitic flyers were dropped in driveways or placed on windshields in communities across Long Island.

Koubek said it became time to act, and not just denounce such incidents.

His group, which numbers 600 members from across Long Island, started an initiative called Beloved Community Action Networks. The name is a nod to Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision of all people being accepted for who they are.

Training to battle hate

The group met for months and developed a training manual to serve as a guide to residents who want to start an action network in their community. It covers topics such as how to start a network, how to get the attention of public officials and the media, and how to offer support to victims of hate.

The latter point is one ideally suited to houses of worship, since most clergy are trained in providing pastoral support to congregants, Koubek said. He added that it is especially important that houses of worship get involved in the effort since "I’m not sure the faith community was engaged as well as it should have been."

Mis, of St. John's Episcopal Church, agreed.

"I think we can do more. We are taking baby steps," she said. "There are some faith communities that are responding, but not every faith community is."

Other groups are also fighting hate on Long Island, such as the Anti-Defamation League and the LGBT Network. But Koubek said they focus on one aspect of hate such as antisemitism, while the new community networks will address all types. Another difference generally is that the networks are bringing in the faith element, and are focused on a particular local community.

HANAH works collaboratively with the Huntington Anti-Bias Task Force, a town government-appointed organization. Kiley said his group will help incorporate houses of worship into the work.

Abraham’s Table hoped to have more local action networks by now, but the conflict in Gaza has made some people reluctant to get into issues touching on Judaism and Islam because of heightened tensions over the topic, Koubek said. His group held its first training session for prospective response network volunteers on Oct. 11, four days after the Hamas attack.

Abraham’s Table itself does not talk about Gaza to avoid provoking divisions in the group, Koubek said.

Kiley said he is hopeful HANAH can reach across religious barriers. His own extended family reflects the changing ethnic and religious face of Long Island. They include people of Korean, Colombian, Peruvian, Italian, German and Irish descent, along with two Iranian brothers-in-law who are Muslim.

Kiley decided to form HANAH, he said, after attending the Abraham’s Table training sessions and "because of the level of hatred that I perceived in our society," especially antisemitic acts.

Some of it went as far back as the early 1980s, when he headed the police department’s community relations unit. Officers spent a lot of time in high schools, he said, where racial tensions among students sometimes erupted into fights.

"Sadly," he said, "you saw hate raise its ugly head."