NEED TO? I’M NOT EVEN SURE WE’RE ALLOWED TO: Hardeep Singh: We Need To Talk About Muslim Anti-Semitism.

Speaking at a conference on anti-Semitism in Israel last month, the UK’s Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said something that would not normally be uttered among liberal interfaith circles in Britain: ‘The threat to Judaism and Jews from the world of Islam is one which can only be cured from within the world of Islam. And the leaders of Islam have to take a stand.’

It is very rare for British Jewish leaders or groups to draw attention to anti-Semitism among certain Muslims. But Islamists do seem to have a special antipathy towards all things Jewish – starting with Israel. And this is increasingly becoming a problem among British Muslims more generally.
To their credit, some Jewish organisations have attempted to confront the problem of anti-Semitism among Muslims. The Campaign Against Anti-Semitism’s 2016 report, British Muslims and Anti-Semitism, surveyed the attitudes of non-Muslims and Muslims and found that anti-Semitic views among Muslims were ‘considerably and dangerously’ more prevalent than among the general public. ‘On every single count’, the report noted, ‘British Muslims were more likely by far than the general population to hold deeply anti-Semitic views. It is clear that many British Muslims reserve a special hatred for Jews, rating Jews much less favourably than people of other religions or no religion, yet astonishingly British Muslims do not recognise anti-Semitism as a major problem.’

Well, it’s not — for them.