By Fiyaz Mughal
Many UK Muslim groups and imams show weak leadership – and in some cases outright spinelessness – when it comes to confronting and rejecting Islamism
The Golders Green stabbing is the sixth attack against Jewish communities and property in just under a month. Let me say that again – six!
The question I want to ask is, in all of the antisemitic attacks, where are the anti-racist groups and campaigners that we have seen so omnipresent on our streets for over two years – marching for Palestine? Or shall we just say what is now blatantly obvious, that they don’t care a jot about the safety of British Jews?
There are some home truths which are now so blatantly obvious. Anti-racism movements, by and large, don’t see British Jews as deserving victims when they suffer hate, but as people who are all powerful and who have some intrinsic link to violence against Palestinians. In other words, anti-racism movements in the UK say that they tackle racism, unless it is anti-Jewish racism. Then, it is seems, Britain’s beleaguered Jewish communities are on their own and in some ways deserving of the hate they get.
Over the last 25 years of my work in British Muslim communities, I remember the numerous occasions when British Jews stood up for Muslims targeted by anti-Muslim hate. I remember British Jews distributing aid to Bosnian Muslims in the mid-1990s after the break up of Yugoslavia and calling for British military action against Serb paramilitary forces who rounded up Muslim men, women and children in what were concentration camps.
I remember British Jews speaking up against anti-Muslim attacks post 9/11 and 7/7 that started to ramp up in Britain at the time. I remember British Jews guiding British Muslims when they sought to defend halal practices.