Washington, D.C.— Muslim Americans in Public Service (MAPS) welcomes the recent strategy to counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab hate announced by the White House.

While these actions are just a start for addressing institutional Islamophobia in the United States, Thursday’s announcement is a step in the right direction. While these initiatives have been long overdue, it is important to remain engaged in tackling the issues that are pertinent to Muslim American public servants.

Since the creation of this organization, our mission has been to better the workplace, increase professional opportunities, and create a community for Muslim Americans in public sector jobs. Our work towards advancing better representative and conducive workplaces across the Federal, state, and local government includes:

• Sharing resources on the Muslim public service community and broader American Muslim community, including a toolkit to educate government administrators on the Muslim American experience in public service,
• Establishing employee resource groups (ERGs)
• Addressing workplace accommodation issues

MAPS hopes to see a greater effort from Federal executives towards comprehensive interagency efforts that combat institutional bias including security clearances, training, voluntary data collection, resource sharing, and the creation of new roles to counter Islamophobia. MAPS and its thousands of members serving across all levels of government also expect to see the Federal government serve as a model employer for its diverse workforce, to keep public service as representative and conducive as the great country it serves.

Muslim Americans in Public Service (MAPS) is a national, non-partisan, non-profit network of professionals and organizations that aims to create an enabling ecosystem for Muslim American public servants and the public institutions they serve. The first organization of its kind, MAPS's mission is to support the career, workplace, and community development of Muslim American public servants and serve as a catalyst, resource, and force multiplier for the associations that represent and support them. To learn more about MAPS, visit us at our website at www.mapsnational.org or on social media at Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.