by Jim Chimirie
Lord Hermer, the Attorney General, is a Jewish man. Today he asked whether Nick Timothy would object to a Jewish prayer event in public, suggesting that Timothy and Badenoch only had a problem with Muslim prayer. It was a clever intervention. It was also a dishonest one. And Hermer knows why.
The Adhan declares there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger. That is a theological repudiation of every other faith, including Judaism. It is not private devotion made public. It is a declaration of exclusive religious truth projected into shared civic space. A Jewish prayer in public contains no equivalent assertion. The Nicene Creed begins I believe. The Adhan begins there is no god but. The distinction is not subtle. It is the entire argument. Hermer, as a trained lawyer and a Jewish man, understands it perfectly. He has chosen to ignore it because the government he serves needs the question closed rather than answered.
That is the week in miniature. Nick Timothy named something accurately. The Prime Minister reached for Tommy Robinson. Thirty six Labour MPs wrote to the Parliamentary Commissioner demanding Timothy’s investigation. The Attorney General deployed his Jewish identity as a shield. And the Parliamentary Commissioner rejected the referral, which means the government’s most powerful legal officer spent political capital defending a position that collapsed within hours.
Meanwhile the actual week unfolded. Thousands gathered on the Embankment chanting death to America and death to Israel. Bobby Vylan led chants of death death death to the IDF, cleared by the CPS last year, back on a London stage doing it again. The Islamic Human Rights Commission, named in the Walney report as part of Iran’s soft power network, addressed the crowd. Khamenei’s autobiography sold for seventeen pounds a copy. The Metropolitan Police closed Lambeth Bridge and deployed marine units on the Thames. It was, we are told, a normal Sunday.
Charles Moore noted this week that Jesus himself addressed the question of public prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, warning against praying in public to be seen by men rather than to commune with God. Nick Timothy, citing the former extremist turned scholar Ed Husain, pointed out that the total Islamisation of public space is an expression of power and intimidation, and that the domination of shared civic spaces comes straight from the Islamist playbook. Both are right. Neither has been answered. Both have been accused of Islamophobia.