Antisemitism and the Islamic connection

Antisemitism has been prominent in the news in the last few weeks with good reason. The brutal daylight knife attack on Jewish people in Golders Green shocked the country. Yet this was not an isolated incident. It followed the arson attack on the Jewish community ambulance service in March this year. This followed the Manchester Synagogue attack last year by Jihad Al-Shamie who pledged allegiance to Islamic State. And those are just the highest profile incidents in the last few months. 

A report from Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism found that in 2025, Britain had the highest per capita rate of antisemitic assaults of any country with a large Jewish Community. That is a shocking, disturbing and shameful statistic. Indeed, in Britain, per capita hate crimes against Jews are 8 times higher than those against people of any other religion or worldview according to government data published last year, ahead of the most recent incidents. It is no wonder that Israel has warned that antisemitic attacks are “out of control in the UK”. 

What few people are willing to acknowledge is the Islamic connection to this alarming rise in antisemitism. As the influence of Islam has increased in this country, it is no surprise that antisemitism has also increased. Clearly, antisemitism is not limited to Muslims, and neither are all Muslims antisemitic. However, antisemitism in Islam can be traced right back to Muhammad and the Qur’an, and the other sacred texts of Islam.

There is no shortage of antisemitic texts in Islam

Two years ago, I debated American scholar Reza Aslan on the question Is Islam Antisemitic?  The debate can be watched on YouTube here. My aim was to demonstrate that Islam, as defined by its texts, is antisemitic. All I really had to do to prove this was to cite the multiple blatantly antisemitic texts in the Qur’an and the Hadith, not to mention the Sira. (My research for this debate forms a chapter of my book The Challenge of Islam, and can also be read in a five-part series online here.) 

To summarise, there is no shortage of antisemitic texts in Islam. Jews are likened to apes and pigs several times in the Qur’an. It is said that Jews will be inflicted with the worst torment “until the day of resurrection.” (Q 7:166-167). It is said that “animosity and hatred forever” will exist between Muslims and Jews (Q 60:4). Jews are also said to be “cursed” multiple times. These texts cannot just be written off, or even related to a particular time given the emphasis on “forever” or “until the day of resurrection.”

When it comes to the Hadith, the most notorious text is the so-called apocalyptic Hadith which says:

“Allah’s Messenger said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.’”
(Sahih Bukhari 4:52:177; see also Sahih Bukhari 4:52:176; Sahih Muslim 41:6985)

This Hadith was cited in the founding charter of Hamas. 

In 2023, a Nottingham charity trustee was found to have preached a sermon in which he quoted this hadith. He was disqualified from holding office in a charity for three years. 

Antisemitism in Britain has been tacitly tolerated for too long. The genocidal slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free”, was even projected onto Parliament itself with no action taken. 

Last year, the police were found to have been misleading in order to justify banning Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from coming to Birmingham to support their football team. The police did not want to stand up to the local antisemitic Muslims who were planning confrontation, so they found a way to stop the Israeli fans from attending. This event highlighted the culture in the police which seeks to appease Islam at every opportunity, and will thus not stand up to Islamic antisemitism.

By contrast, the police are often quick to arrest Christian preachers, sometimes for merely questioning what the Qur’an says. Nothing less than wholesale culture change within the police is required to tackle this problem. 

Moderate Muslim Fiyaz Mughal was brave enough to write in The Telegraph last week: Labour won’t say it, so I will: Islam has an anti-Semitism problem. He is right on both counts. Firstly, Islam has an antisemitism problem. Secondly, Labour won’t say it. Starmer was forced into making a speech about antisemitism on Monday in which he was keen to assert that “antisemitism does not have one source alone.” He is right, of course. But the predominant source of contemporary antisemitism in Britain is Islam.

Indeed, polling published on Sunday by Policy Exchange showed that British Muslims are much more likely to believe that Jews have too much power in various areas of society, relative to the rest of the population. Muslims also have a much lower favourability rating towards Jews than the rest of the population. They are also much less favourable towards Jews than towards people of other religions. 

As yet, the police and politicians are not willing to even acknowledge an Islamic source of antisemitism in Britain, let alone tackle it. The only actions they are prepared to take is to talk about it and to offer more funding for security for Jews. This is not enough. We need the police to be a lot more intolerant of incitement of antisemitic hatred or violence. This requires a level of political and moral courage that is sorely lacking in politics and police at present. Until this changes, I foresee continued high levels of antisemitic assaults in Britain.