Reconciliation — or surrender?
An apparently worthy initiative is based on a dangerous moral equivalence
At a time when the west is beginning to wake up to the nature and extent of the threat from the Islamic world, Jewish faith leaders in Britain appear to be waving the white flag of surrender.
Earlier this month, a group of prominent Jewish and Muslim faith leaders — including Britain’s Chief Rabbi — presented to the King the “Muslim-Jewish Reconciliation Accords” which had been created in secret over the course of a year.
Described as a “framework of reconciliation, understanding, and solidarity”, the document calls for “sustained dialogue, mutual understanding and practical collaboration”.
Acknowledging that “tensions in the Middle East often have ripple effects on Muslim-Jewish relations locally,” it says:
These conflicts can lead to mistrust, heightened emotions, and fractures to relationships that we cherish and value so dearly.
Talk about understatement. “Tensions”? “Ripple effects”? “Mistrust”? Do such bland vagaries really convey the impact of the past 16 months of Muslim-led hate-marches against Jews and Israel following the Hamas-led pogrom in Israel on October 7 2023?
While most Muslims pose no threat whatever, and many of the most vicious antisemites and Israel-bashers are white-skinned, Muslims have played a disproportionate part in this anti-Jewish hysteria. The incitement against Israel and the Jews has been orchestrated by both Sunni and Shia Muslim extremists in alliance with the western left. And as opinion polling repeatedly reveals, antisemitism in the Islamic world is far higher than in the general population.
The inter-faith document says that “both communities must strive to offer reassurance, promoting dialogue and reaffirming our shared commitment to peace and mutual understanding”.
“Shared commitment”? Really? How many Muslim members of this group publicly denounced Hamas after the October 7 atrocities and said “Not in our name”? How many have publicly rejected the Muslim Brotherhood, the jihadi parent body of Hamas that’s entrenched in Britain’s Muslim community? How many have publicly condemned those members of their community who regularly parade through the streets chanting for intifada, the death of Jews and the destruction of Israel?
Worse, this document draws an equivalence between Jews and Muslims, Judaism and Islam, antisemitism and Islamophobia. It implies that both Jews and Muslims equally promote tensions against each other. Not so. Jews have no issue with Muslims other than when Muslims threaten them, the State of Israel or western civilisation.
The document draws a shocking equivalence between Judaism and Islam. It selectively quotes Islamic precepts to conceal ways in which Islamic thinking threatens Jews and the west.
For example, it fails to acknowledge that in Islamic thinking the warlike verses in the Koran supersede the peaceful ones. It fails to acknowledge the hatred of Jews embedded in Islamic theological texts, such as the hadith (or source) that states;
The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!
Proponents of inter-faith initiatives generally claim that, since their work is all about finding common ground, theological issues must be avoided at all costs because these only cause friction. But this document actually draws explicitly upon theology in order to propagate a false impression that erases Islamic Jew-hatred.
The equivalence it draws between antisemitism and Islamophobia is very troubling. All bigotry is wrong, and the increase in unprovoked attacks on Muslims is reprehensible. But there’s no comparison between that and the state of siege under which British Jews — who have never threatened anyone — have been forced to conduct their activities for years.
Most important, the claim of Islamophobia is a weapon of censorship to silence all criticism of the Islamic world, including the extent of Muslim antisemitism.
At least one member of this group, Imam Qari Asim, has sought to deploy such restrictions on free expression. In 2022, the government removed him as deputy chair of the government's Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group after he backed calls for The Lady of Heaven, a film about the daughter of Islam’s founder Mohammed, to be banned.
The government said Asim’s actions were “a clear effort to restrict artistic expression;” the campaign he supported had “led to street protests which have fomented religious hatred,” and “risked fuelling extremism and tension in communities that would undermine cohesion in British society”.
Yet this “reconciliation” group appears to have surrendered to just such an impulse to fetter free expression. For its document states:
While we acknowledge the importance of free speech, we recognise how offensive or derogatory language regarding sacred figures and practices which stand at the heart of our respective faiths can be, and therefore pledge to treat them with due sensitivity and good faith.
Respect for other faiths is indeed essential. But as we have seen repeatedly, the Islamic world interprets such respect as meriting killing people who criticise, poke fun at or even just publish images of Mohammed. In Batley, west Yorkshire, a teacher who showed his class a picture of Mohammed in a lesson about free speech received death threats so severe he is still in hiding for his life almost four years later.
In Britain, the Muslim community is pressing for “Islamophobia” to be criminalised under what would amount to an Islamic blasphemy law. Yet astonishingly, it seems that the Jews in this group have pledged to go along with this lethal interpretation of “sensitivity”. Did they forget the Batley teacher? Or didn’t they care?
Of course it’s right to reach out to those of good faith in other cultures. And there are brave and decent Muslims who do speak out against these excesses by their community. But they are rare and isolated voices. Forming an alliance with a community that refuses to acknowledge the threat posed by a large number of its members against Jews and others isn’t reconciliation but bending the knee to intimidation.
Jews don’t attack Muslims with hatred and lies. Why do these Jewish faith leaders state that Jews must offer reassurance to a community many of whose members attack them in this way? Why don’t these Jewish leaders demand instead that their Muslim counterparts ensure that this behaviour actually stops?
The Jewish members of this group are undoubtedly acting with fine intentions. But they have come across as at best naive and at worst craven. Either way, Britain’s beleaguered and frightened Jewish community has been exceedingly ill-served.
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