by Fiyaz Mughal, Telegraph
The religion I grew up in was one of gentleness but a sectarian tendency has worsened over the past four decades
Anti-Semitism is a disease in the soul of British Islam today. The religion I grew up in was one of gentleness and deep spirituality. But the first thing I noticed when I came to Britain from East Africa was the fractured nature of ethnic minority communities here.
In Kenya – where I grew up – Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims shared religious events together, ate together, and regularly socialised together. In the England of 1983, though, I came to realise that identity politics was the norm and each community viewed the other with suspicion and hostility.
This sectarian tendency has worsened over the past four decades, and one of the nastiest expressions is the anti-Semitism that has infected British Islam – spread by Islamists and their useful idiots.
Merchants of hate have repeatedly used the Palestinian issue as a recruiting tool to encourage hostility to Jews, while successive British politicians have over decades failed to challenge and call out the anti-Semitism within the small but significant parts of my religious community. The reason is for fear of being called “divisive” or “racist” or “Islamophobic”.
As someone who set up Tell MAMA, the first government-backed national monitoring centre on anti-Muslim hate, I can tell you that there is nothing “Islamophobic” about calling out Jew hate; in fact, after six national anti-Semitic incidents in the last five weeks, we are all duty bound to call out what we see.
I have known for years that Islamist campaigners and activists have used support for Palestine as a rallying call to promote a set of repugnant and poisonous views. This has included calls for the Islamic takeover of Israel and the subjugation of Jews.
We are now seeing the decades-long effects of a supine unwillingness to challenge Muslim anti-Semitism for fear of a community backlash, or because of a passive unwillingness to “rock the boat”. With little challenge to these narratives, it was only time before anti-Semitism became a reality on the streets of our country.
Read also: How anti-Semitism was allowed to take hold of Britain by Leaf Arbuthnot, Telegraph