I quite like the idea of there being Muslims who are against Jew-hatred, just as much as I like the idea of Muslims who don’t hate Christians, Buddhists, Atheists or gays. Not engaging in blind, mindless and baseless hatred is a reasonable way to get through life.
However, there is a ‘new’ group that has sprung up and which was publicised in a recent edition of the Jewish Chronicle that I find much to be suspicious about. I am suspicious about the individuals and groups behind it, I’m suspicious of the level of support it has in the Muslim community and I’m suspicious of this group’s intentions.
Knowing as much as I do about the high levels of Jew-hatred in Islamic scripture, contemporary Islamic Jew-hatred and the third class dhimmi status of Jews in Muslim lands (with a few exceptions where there was peaceful coexistence), I find I have to be somewhat cynical about Muslim overtures to Jews. What’s in it for them? This is what we should always ask. Unless a Muslim is prepared to face the wrath of other Muslims by denouncing the Jew-hatred that has been a part of Islam since Mohammed, then I wonder whether that person is entirely serious about either reform of Islam or living in peace and equality with their neighbour.
I’ll start this particular tale with a photo of the Jewish Chronicle article in question. Then I will examine this article and the story behind it in a little more detail.
You will note firstly that this organisation has been set up by a man with connections to some pretty shonky and questionable organisations. Fiyaz Mughal, who is one of those behind the Muslims Against Antisemitism Group, also founded the Tell Mama group, which was itself an offshoot of Mr Mughal’s ‘Faith Matters’ vehicle. What all these groups have in common, apart from the presence of Mr Mughal and oodles and oodles of taxpayer cash, are impressive Establishment connections, records of apparent dishonesty and attempts to make Islam look less bad than it really and truly is. Faith Matters has promoted a ‘fluffy’ view of Islam that bears little relation to the sort of Islam that many of us have had the misfortune to live alongside. There are a long list of concerns about Tell Mama’s behaviour that date back to when they lied about the amount of ‘Islamophobia’ that had occurred following the Islamic murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby. This act of outright dishonesty should have sunk this organisation, as it would have any other entity that had been caught out in such a way, but Tell Mama was to a large extent protected by their political friends. Attempts by British subjects, including some correspondents to this blog, to hold Tell Mama and Mughal accountable for their behaviour, via the political system, have been brushed off by the political Establishment.
However, it’s not just the political classes that are assisting Mughal’s organisations. Sad to say, Tell Mama and other Fiyaz Mughal vehicles have also been assisted to a certain extent by members of Britain’s Jewish communal Establishment. This communal Establishment have all too often in my opinion been used as ‘beards‘ in order to make it seem as if everything in the garden of Jewish / Muslim relationships is rosy. Tame Islam-friendly Rabbonim like Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg are a prime example of this ‘Jewish beard’ phenomenon. He’s often been featured on Tell Mama/Faith Matters publicity extolling the positive relationships between Jews and Muslims, whilst, like so many of these interfaith obsessives often do, studiously ignoring the massive levels of Jew hatred in Islamic literature and culture.
Rabbi Wittenberg and Imam Mamadou Bocoum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4FHzF1dMb8
Now Fiyaz Mughal, who has left Tell Mama, has set up another organisation, one that purports to want to do something about Islamic Jew hatred, called Muslims Against Anti-Semitism but is this organisation all that it seems to be or is it even far less than it appears to be? Let’s start with the first challenge I have to the veracity of this story, the history of this Muslims Against Anti-Semitism group.
The Jewish Chronicle article, which was published 25th May 2018, states that this Muslims Against Anti-Semitism group is a new one, they say this in paragraph three. However this statement doesn’t appear to be true, if we are to accept what the right wing Jewish Defence League said a few years ago.
Way back in 2013 this blog published an article critical of Fiyaz Mughal and his groups that drew heavily on information supplied and disseminated by the Jewish Defence League. In this article, the JDL pointed out that Fiyaz Mughal had formed this ‘ Muslims Against Anti-Semitism’ group way earlier than is currently being claimed by the Jewish Chronicle. In the context of the JDL criticising the motivations of Mughal’s groups, the JDL said:
Mughal created what it seems to be a bogus “Muslims Against Anti-Semitism” http://ma-as.org.uk/ group.
The ONLY blog post by MA-AS was published (22 Nov 2010) in the aftermath of the Panorama expose of Muslim schools teaching Jew-hatred and how to kill gay people. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/panorama/2010/11/british_schools_islamic_rules.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/22/bbc-panorama-islamic-schools-antisemitism
MA-AS’ only comment on anti-Semitism was done with the intent to diminish the impact of the Panorama programme.
http://muslimsagainstanti-semitism.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/enough-of-anti-semitism.html
As you can see Mr Mughal has had control of this group for a few years now, it is in no way ‘new’. It’s the same group as before but it has apparently been brought out of mothballs. It has been re-branded certainly and has a new web-address, but it is in effect, because of Mr Mughal’s prime position in it, the same group as existed before. The pixels may have been tarted up a bit but the personnel remain the same.
I move on now to the subject of this group’s legitimacy and the question of whether they have any influence on the wider Islamic community? It is a grave mistake, one made by many on the ‘interfaith’ circuit to assume that the liberal Muslim you may be dealing with represents the whole Ummah, he or she does not. It’s a comforting lie that the interfaith types tell themselves that nice Mr Mohammed from the Christian – Muslim encounter group has no theological or political link with the head-choppers or the Islamic Rape Gang members. We should not judge the Muslims we meet by the Islam we know and equally importantly, not judge Islam by the decent Muslims we know.
Muslims Against Anti-Semitism do seem to be supported by the more liberal and leftist elements within Islam and that is a minority position in Islamic culture. The letter that launched this latest incarnation of Muslims Against Anti-Semitism was signed by prominent liberal-leaning Muslims decrying Islamic Anti-Semitism and which was published at probably great expense in national newspapers, doesn’t mean much at the end of the day because of that. I very much doubt that Muslims Against Anti-Semitism will have much impact on the problem of Islamic Jew hatred in Britain at all. It might rope in a few Imams who want to promote the ‘religion of peace’ lie or who genuinely are reformers, but this is not the majority of Islam.
In the UK the percentage of the general population who can be considered as hard core Jew haters was, according to a Jewish Policy Research study of 2017 approximately 5%, with 70% of the population holding positive views of Britain’s Jews, a similar level to how Britons view Hindus. However when one looks at Britain’s Muslims, the water is a lot more murky. According to an ICM poll taken in 2016 for Britain’s Channel Four, Britain’s Muslims are markedly more hateful towards Jews than others in Britain. The poll showed that Muslims were more likely than other Britons to believe in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories, with 25% of British Muslims believing that Jews were responsible for all the world’s wars and 40% believing in fallacies about ‘Jewish control of the world’.
These are not good figures. They are the figures that show that Britain’s Muslims and Islam are a major driver of Jew hatred in the United Kingdom. Islamic Jew hatred is such a massive and intractable problem that I very much doubt that this latest Fiyaz Mughal vehicle, even with assistance from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, will make much of a dent on this issue. The scale of the problem, how ingrained these attitudes are in Britain’s Islamic ghettos and the roots of these attitudes in Islamic scripture render Mughal’s ‘Muslims Against Anti-Semitism’ group virtually worthless. Mughal’s small group of liberal minded Muslims and the Jewish communal Establishment can make little difference to a Jew hatred that is part of Islam’s foundation stones.
There were of course the usual nice platitudinous words from Mr Mughal about his ‘Jewish brothers and sisters’ and how Jews are feeling ‘dislocated’ because of Islamic anti-Semitism. They were nice words but that is just all they are, empty words. Until I see phalanxes of Imams from orthodox Islam publicly saying that Islamic scripture is wrong about Jews, then this group should be seen by Britain’s Jews as just so much taqiyya or lying for Islam. I have no fraternal feelings for Islam, it’s alien and nasty and its moral compass is irredeemably busted. Let’s be honest here and admit that the only things that Islam and Judaism have in common is an avoidance of bacon, everything else is wildly different.
British Jews, and everyone else for that matter, should be highly suspicious of this ‘Muslims Against Anti-Semitism’ group. It’s an obvious ‘retread’ of the previous Mughal-run group of the same name that was criticised many years ago by the Jewish Defence League. Muslims Against Anti-Semitism has similar supporters and possible funders as other Fiyaz Mughal related projects. The whole thing looks a little politically incestuous with supporters of Mughal and those who have worked with him, praising this ‘new’ organisation, assisting it and publicising it.
It is highly likely that Muslims Against Anti-Semitism V2.0 will be as empty and as worthless as the version of Muslims Against Anti-Semitism that Mughal set up nearly a decade ago. It is difficult for the cynical not to see this latest incarnation of Muslims Against Anti-Semitism as being a vehicle for taqiyya aimed at Britain’s Jews, after all it is difficult to expect more from the founder of an organisation, Tell Mama that has become known to many as little more than mendacious grievance-mongering taqiyya artists. I think Britain’s Jews should give this organisation a very wide berth even though it may be supported by some elements in Britain’s Jewish communal Establishment. As a Jew who unfortunately understands the influence of anti-Semitism on Britain’s Muslims I have to say that I’d no more trust this Mughal’s ‘Muslims Against Anti-Semitism organisation to solve this problem than I would trust a man who tried to sell me a slightly used Tower Bridge. I think that Muslims Against Anti-Semitism is little more than a sticking plaster to cover a gaping and haemorrhaging stab wound. It’s pointless, ineffective and probably doomed to failure because of the nature of Islam and those who are running or involved in it. I’m Jewish and want nothing do to with this questionable anti-Semitism organisation and other Jews should look carefully into the background of this entity and those involved in it and maybe take a similar view.
