Mick Hartley

Kishwer Falkner, former head of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, speaks out, in the Times – Silence on antisemitism shames us as British Muslims:

Growing up in Pakistan until my late teens, I never encountered a Jewish person. My passport permitted me to travel the world, but not to Israel, and so my intrigue at my first encounter with a Jewish person when I was in my twenties in New York was palpable.

It was reciprocated, as he had never met a Muslim socially, but he was nevertheless taken aback by how little I knew of the Holocaust and Jewish history. I picked up a copy of Primo Levi’s account of surviving Auschwitz, If This is a Man, which began my education about people I was taught to think of as religious opponents, and of a land still riven by conflict.

Fast forward to Britain today, where antisemitism is becoming routine and where Israeli political actions are routinely taken to be representative of all Jewish opinion in our increasingly sectarian political discourse.

I have found this tendency prevalent in older Muslim migrants from Pakistan, who arrived in the postwar period and would have grown up in a mono-religious society at home — not speaking fluent
English nor schooled in British values. Since arrival, many still live segregated lives and have remained monocultural.

For them, original prejudices are reinforced by adherence to conservative Islam at Friday prayers, and a reliance on single viewpoints, particularly focusing on atrocities and war crimes by Israel, supposedly justifying violence on our streets and in our synagogues.

I am utterly dismayed, but I know their deafening silence on antisemitism is our national failure of integration. So, when members of their community commit violence against Jewish people for simply being Jewish there are no mosque vigils or prayers, and no loudhailers condemning the perpetrators.

To their shame, and mine, many Muslims in Britain appear entirely alienated from the plight of Jews when attacked.

This silence speaks volumes. Most concerning is the antagonism within sections of our second and third-generation Muslims, as well as newer arrivals from the Middle East.

Or Somalia, like our latest Jew knife attacker

A welcome intervention from a Muslim who’s been prominent in British public life.