As Jihad Al-Shamie attacked Heaton Park synagogue on Yom Kippur, 1st October, he shouted, ‘This is what they get for killing our children’’. He also pledged allegiance to ‘Islamic State’.
LCSCA hosted a panel the following week, which featured philosopher Eve Garrard, Theologist, Jules Freeman, Bury councillor, Richard Gold, chaired by former Manchester University linguist, Yaron Matras.
Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs invited Tommy Robinson to Jerusalem in the middle of October, and the populist agitator was given Amichai Chikli’s platform to rail against the Muslim ‘invaders’ of Britain. He denounced the institutions of the Jewish community in the UK as part of the ‘woke’ and unpatriotic ‘elite’ which has been responsible for Islamism and the rise of antisemitism
Also at the same time, the economist Michael Ben-Gad had his lecture shut down by students who accused him of genocide on the grounds that he had served in the IDF in the 1980s. Somebody in the mob threatened to cut his head off.
One of the students involved in shouting down Ben-Gad had previously helped to shut down an event at King’s at which PhD student and Iranian artist Faezeh Alavi was trying to talk about Iranian-Israeli dialogue.
Across the universities and across respectable public and political discourse, there was almost no serious discussion of Islamist antisemitism, and little responsive attempt to understand it.
Daniel Allington, a Reader at King’s College London and an LCSCA Fellow, had written a report on ‘Islamist Antisemitism’ which was published by the Counter-Extremism Group in July.
We decided to organise an afternoon seminar on the topic. We promised serious, careful discussion, with Daniel Allington, Alexander Hitchens, Faezeh Alavi, Charlotte Littlewood, Martin Bright, Matthias Küntzel and Danny Stone. Chaired at KCL by David Toube and in the House of Lords by Lord Walney.
The boundaries of the seminar was described as follows:
There are significant political movements which claim to speak for Islam as a whole, which organise in Muslim communities, which embrace antisemitism and anti-democratic values. We take that seriously. But we insist that opposing those political movements is political work. We should not reduce politics either to race or to religion.
We live in a time of increasing bigotry and racism against Muslims. The accusation is sometimes leveled against Muslims as a whole, that their religion or their ‘culture’ is essentially and unchangeably hostile to Jews and to democratic values. We contest that strongly.
We should oppose antisemitism and anti-democratic politics. To do that effectively, it is necessary to understand the particular forms that antisemitism and anti-democratic politics take in Muslim communities.
That was why we were organising this seminar on Islamist antisemitism. Both panels were well attended. In fact, many more tickets would have been taken up if we had been able to give more notice, but it was important to us to respond to events reasonably quickly. Jewish News carried an extensive report of the KCL panel.
And there were enough interested and influential people at both events, who asked well informed and nuanced questions, to suggest that there is a hunger for more serious information and discussion on this topic. Some arrived ready to take notes and many listened quietly, intently and respectfully. Some of them left somewhat elated by the honesty and openness of the exchanges. People left thoughtfully, understanding more than when they had arrived.
We will publish a video of the KCL seminar, but it will take us a little while. Unfortunately we were not able to film in the House of Lords.
Our work on Islamist antisemitism is important and timely. The populist right says that nobody but them has the courage to say anything. But we are not afraid. We are not prepared to allow irresponsible agitators to be the only ones appearing to take the issue seriously. This topic needs to be studied and discussed with care, in a scholarly and evidence-based way and in a way that is effective. We remain acutely aware of the significance of the current rise in bigotry and racism against Muslims, both in the UK and further afield, and the pressure that is building on Muslim communities. We are also aware that the impact of Islamist antisemitism, and Islamist politics more generally, is serious within the Muslim community. We stand with our Muslim and ex-Muslim friends and colleagues who embrace liberal democratic values, in the UK, in other democratic states and across the Middle East. We hope, in particular, to engage with them; we want to learn from them and perhaps they may learn something from us.
The London Centre for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism is committed to continuing this important discussion. We hope to bring together a network of dedicated scholars of Islamist antisemitism, to facilitate academic engagement, discussion and the sharing of research; and to back up this community of scholarship with the infrastructure that it needs, and that is not easily available in the university system.
