Gaza’s top Islamic scholar issues fatwa against October attack

It is an embarrassing critique for Hamas, which has used religious arguments to justify its actions.

bbc.com

The most prominent Islamic scholar in Gaza has issued a rare, powerful fatwa condemning Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, which triggered the devastating war in the Palestinian territory.

Professor Dr Salman al-Dayah, a former dean of the Faculty of Sharia and Law at the Hamas-affiliated Islamic University of Gaza, is one of the region’s most respected religious authorities, so his legal opinion carries significant weight among Gaza’s two million population, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim.

A fatwa is a non-binding Islamic legal ruling from a respected religious scholar usually based on the Quran or the Sunnah - the sayings and practices of the Prophet Muhammad.

Dr Dayah’s fatwa, which was published in a detailed six-page document, criticises Hamas for what he calls “violating Islamic principles governing jihad”.

Jihad means “struggle” in Arabic and in Islam it can be a personal struggle for spiritual improvement or a military struggle against unbelievers.

Dr Dayah adds: “If the pillars, causes, or conditions of jihad are not met, it must be avoided in order to avoid destroying people’s lives. This is something that is easy to guess for our country’s politicians, so the attack must have been avoided.”

For Hamas, the fatwa represents an embarrassing and potentially damaging critique, particularly as the group often justifies its attacks on Israel through religious arguments to garner support from Arab and Muslim communities.

The 7 October attack saw hundreds of Hamas gunmen from Gaza invade southern Israel. About 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken hostage.

Israel responded by launching a military campaign to destroy Hamas, during which more than 43,400 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

Dr Dayah argues that the significant civilian casualties in Gaza, together with the widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure and humanitarian disaster that have followed the 7 October attack, means that it was in direct contradiction to the teachings of Islam.

Hamas, he says, has failed in its obligations of “keeping fighters away from the homes of defenceless [Palestinian] civilians and their shelters, and providing security and safety as much as possible in the various aspects of life... security, economic, health, and education, and saving enough supplies for them.”

Dr Dayah points to Quranic verses and the Sunnah that set strict conditions for the conduct of jihad, including the necessity of avoiding actions that provoke an excessive and disproportionate response by an opponent.

His fatwa highlights that, according to Islamic law, a military raid should not trigger a response that exceeds the intended benefits of the action.

He also stresses that Muslim leaders are obligated to ensure the safety and well-being of non-combatants, including by providing food, medicine, and refuge to those not involved in the fighting.

“Human life is more precious to God than Mecca,” Dr Dayah states.

His opposition to the 7 October attack is especially significant given his deep influence in Gaza, where he is seen as a key religious figure and a vocal critic of Islamist movements, including Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

His moderate Salafist beliefs place him in direct opposition to Hamas’s approach to armed resistance and its ties to Shia-ruled Iran.

Salafists are fundamentalists who seek to adhere the example of the Prophet Muhammad and the first generations who followed him.

Dr Dayah has consistently argued for the establishment of an Islamic caliphate that adheres strictly to Islamic law, rather than the political party-based systems that Hamas and other groups advocate.

“Our role model is the Prophet Muhammad, who founded a nation and did not establish political parties that divide the nation. Therefore, parties in Islam are forbidden,” he said in a sermon he gave at a mosque several years ago.

He has also condemned extremism, opposing jihadist groups like Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and has used all of his platforms to issue fatwas on various social and political issues, ranging from commercial transactions, social disputes over marriage and divorce, to the conduct of political violence.

The fatwa adds to the growing internal debate within Gaza and the broader Arab world over the moral and legal implications of Hamas’s actions, and it is likely to fuel further divisions within Palestinian society regarding the use of armed resistance in the ongoing conflict with Israel.

Sheikh Ashraf Ahmed, one of Dr Dayah’s students who was forced to leave his house in Gaza City last year and flee to the south of Gaza with his wife and nine children, told the BBC: “Our scholar [Dr Dayah] refused to leave his home in northern Gaza despite the fears of Israeli air strikes. He chose to fulfil his religious duty by issuing his legal opinion on the attack”.

Ahmed described the fatwa as the most powerful legal judgment of a historical moment. “It’s a deeply well researched document, reflecting Dayah’s commitment to Islamic jurisprudence,” he said.

Harrowing video shows Hamas torturing innocent Palestinians

The horrifying incidents appear to have been filmed inadvertently by CCTV cameras inside a Hamas military base in northern Gaza raided by Is

Mail Online

Israel's military says it has discovered thousands of hours of sickening footage showing Hamas interrogators torturing innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

The harrowing videos show male prisoners with sacks over their heads, chained to floors and ceilings in painful positions.

Men writhe in agony as they are beaten with sticks on the soles of their feet.

In one distressing clip, a hooded man appears to be screaming and remonstrating with his captor.

The horrifying incidents appear to have been filmed inadvertently by CCTV cameras inside a Hamas military base in northern Gaza raided by Israeli troops earlier this year.

The footage was said to have been discovered on computers seized from the abandoned compound inside the Jabalia refugee camp. It is unclear why the men were being held.

But human rights experts have previously warned that innocent Palestinians have been kidnapped from their homes and tortured by Hamas thugs who have ruled Gaza with an iron rod since 2007.

Gay men and adulterers are among those who have been tortured by Hamas, along with political opponents and anyone accused of collaborating with Israel.

A time stamp in the corner of the footage suggests the torture took place between 2018 and 2020.

Often, the guards appear casually at ease, chatting as the abuse unfolds.

One interrogator reclines on a chair, with his arms folded behind his head, in front of a chained-up prisoner hanging from the ceiling by his arms.

Another film features a man, with a red sack over his head, chained up so awkwardly he can just about place one foot on the floor. One captor later appears to brutally choke the man.

A senior Israeli military source told The Mail on Sunday: 'The IDF found these CCTV images in March. It took months to go through them all.' It has not been possible for the videos to be independently verified but human rights groups have long warned of abuses by Hamas against civilians in Gaza. Amnesty International published a 44-page report detailing a brutal campaign of abduction, torture and killings by Hamas against its own people following the last Israel-Hamas war in 2014.

Many were accused of collaborating with Israel. Hamas has also tortured and killed gay men in Gaza, where homosexuality is against the law.

Hundreds of gay men risked their lives to cross over the border to Israel or Egypt before the most recent conflict.

One, Abdul, previously told Israeli media how he lived in fear in Gaza after Hamas discovered he was gay. He was tortured repeatedly before he fled to Egypt.

In a chilling account that matches up with the torture captured in the footage found by the IDF, he told i24News: 'They put me in a tiny room. They wouldn't let me sleep or go to the bathroom inside. There was no food.

'They would torture me so badly. Sometimes, they would tie my feet up and beat them with a stick. After that, every few years, they would arrest me and torture me in the same way.

'They made me swear on the Koran that I won't be gay again.'

Last night another Hamas torture victim, Hamza Howidy, 27, told The Mail on Sunday how he was detained for protesting against the regime in Gaza.

'They would torture you until you broke and say whatever it is they wanted,' he said. 'I could hear my fellow protesters scream in the next room.'

Mr Howidy, an accountant who later fled Gaza, said he believed he was held in western Jabalia in 2019 but it is unknown if he appears in the footage.

He said: 'Hamas controls everything. They confiscated my laptop and had issues with my conversations with my girlfriend.

'Collaborating with Israel would warrant a severe punishment and homosexuality would result in a death sentence.' Mr Howidy said one man was detained for three years and tortured three times a week. 'He had objects inserted into him,' he added. 'One man was given electric shocks for two years before his innocence was eventually discovered.

'The first thing he did was shoot dead the Hamas officer who reported him – his uncle.

'You would never get a lawyer and your family would have no idea what happened to you. I was lucky because my family paid a price for me. I managed to leave for Europe via the Egyptian border in September last year, which cost a fortune, but my family there were told that should I return I'd be a dead man walking. Luckily I got them safe passage too.'

He added: 'You just cannot tell who is a Hamas snitch or not.

'One friend of mine was forced to divorce his wife when he got caught for something. There is a growing hatred towards Hamas now, especially after the war, but because Hamas controls the media and people are afraid, we hardly hear of it.

'People outside of Gaza call Hamas freedom fighters when they are killing innocent Palestinians for nothing. Hamas is holding the people of Gaza hostage.'

A former Israeli intelligence officer, known as Guy C, told this newspaper that Hamas' leader Yahya Sinwar, who was killed by the IDF last month, was 'obsessed with finding collaborators and held thousands against their will'.

He added: 'They have been known to melt plastic over skin, electric cables on their body.

'Some are electrocuted on electricity pylons or dragged on a chain from a vehicle until they die.

'Even worse, they won't allow the families a proper burial, and the bodies have a sign on saying they were collaborating.'

Palestinian Ahmed Fouad Alkharib, who is now based in the US and is a fellow at the Atlantic Council think- tank, said: 'Extreme torture has been a fundamental component of Hamas' governance strategy to ensure they deter people and instil fear in those who speak out.'

Thread by @concretemilk on Thread Reader App

@concretemilk: This month is #IslamophobiaAwarenessMonth. The ostensible goal of this initiative is to “deconstruct and challenge stereotype

threadreaderapp.com

This month is #IslamophobiaAwarenessMonth. The ostensible goal of this initiative is to “deconstruct and challenge stereotypes about Islam and Muslims”. A noble aim you might think, as apparently do the organisations, institutions & individuals signalling their support.

However, Islamophobia Awareness Month was co-founded by the Islamist group MEND - an organisation closely tied to the terrorist support group CAGE and created with the purpose of “battering the Israel lobby” according to its founder Sufyan Ismail. 

MEND’s idea of challenging stereotypes appears to consist of attacking liberal Muslims & partnering with Salafist hate preachers such as Haitham al Haddad & Shakeel Begg.

Haddad supports death for apostasy. Begg was found by a judge to have “encouraged religious violence.”

One of MEND’s former directors, the now CAGE-employed Azad Ali, is also no stranger to court cases. This unrepentant Hamas supporter launched a libel suit against the Daily Mail for describing him as a hardline extremist who supports the killing of UK troops in Iraq. He lost.

MEND’s founder has pushed the scare-mongering assertion that British society hates Muslims, and has falsely and irresponsibly claimed that UK law does not consider threatening or committing violence against Muslims to be a crime.

Yet for a group who launched an anti-Islamophobia initiative, MEND are not keen on the infinitely more moderate group Tell Mama who exist for the same purpose. MEND have described them as being headed by a “pro-Zionist” & criticised their liberal position on homosexuality.

MEND were also less than enthused with the appointment of liberal Muslim Sara Kahn to lead the counter extremism commission, with one of their officials referring to her as “an Oreo” – a racist reference to those who are deemed brown on the outside but white underneath.

In 2018 head of counter-terrorism policing, Sir Mark Rowley, aptly criticised MEND’s undermining of efforts to tackle hate crime - referencing their absurd and divisive claim that Britain was "approaching the conditions that preceded the Holocaust".

Labour police boss candidate under fire over event

A Labour candidate for the region's police commissioner role has been criticised for sharing a platform with a group linked with an alleged

expressandstar.com

It should be clear that partnering with extremists groups like MEND and their cohorts, or otherwise legitimising them, does nothing to challenge actual bigotry, and that anyone interested in actually making a difference in this area should be giving MEND a very wide berth.

"Islam is not a race… Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not ‘Islamophobic’ to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy." -- Ayaan Hirsi Ali

And finally, New Rule: To mark the October 7th anniversary, we must launch a campaign to educate young Americans about the Middle East. And the way I'd like to begin that process is by addressing an open letter to Chappell Roan.

Now, to those viewers who aren't watching this while also looking at their phones, let me explain. Chappell Roan is not the name of one of Tru.mp's golf courses, she's actually a great new recording artist who, like a Hezbollah pager, is really blowing up. In just a few months, she went from a struggling artist to getting three billion plays on Spotify. Netting her almost 11 cents.

But here's what caught my eye. She seems like a Gen Zer who can be reached, because I saw her on TMZ say: "it's like, obviously, fuck the policies of the right. But also, fuck some of the policies on the left." That sounds like something I would say!

She also said, "I think it's important that people use critical thinking. I think it's important for me to… question myself… question my algorithm, question: is some person that tweeted something about someone else even true?" Preach, queer ally, preach.

But then we get to Israel, and Chappell, this is where we must put to the test your pledge to use critical thinking and to question whether what you're reading on social media is true. Because it isn't. There's a whole history of the Middle East that you and your fans aren't hearing about. So, why don't you let me be your spirit guide through this?

But before I do, let me tell you a little about myself, since you may have no idea who I am, considering that when this show went on the air you were barely old enough to be told you were in the wrong body. So, my name is Bill Maher, I'm 35. I've been to all of Diddy's freak-off parties, and I work at the same place as Euphoria. In fact, she's right down the hall. My TikTok handle is "B-Nasty" and I go live every Friday night with the anime filter on, and I once won a smoke-off against Willie Nelson, Woody Harelson and Snoop. Okay, that one's true.

But, no, look the truth be told, I'm a baby boomer, I remember phone-booths and cars with ashtrays and vaginal sex. And I didn't learn about the Middle East from TikTok, which is a Chinese company whose totalitarian government would just love to have America's youth hating America. That's some of that algorithm stuff you say you want to look into.

Now, first off, the fact that you don't know much history isn't your fault. You live in the United States where the schools stop doing that whole "teaching facts" thing a while ago. But getting all your history from TikTok is like getting all your calories from Hostess.

I know you're moved by what you see on there, we all are. The dead Palestinian bodies. But it's odd that your generation didn't seem nearly as moved by the Jewish bodies on October 7th. You killed at Coachella this year, but when Hamas kills at a music festival it's a whole other thing. Doesn't the sight of so many young women raped at a music festival make it a little personal? My guess is that Gen Z hearts are hardened by the propaganda you see on TikTok, which likes to call the Jews "colonizers." But colonizers are intruders who have no history in an area, like when Spain conquered the Mayans. Or when your mom took over Facebook.

When the Dutch took over South Africa, they had no history to the land, they just wanted it. But Israel is the Jews homeland. And Jews have always lived there, I cap you not. You can look it up. It's in this book called The Bible, which is horribly wrong about sex ed, slavery, science and cooking, but the archaeology checks out. It says the Jews built a temple with a really big wall seven centuries before Muhammad or Islam ever existed, and sure as shit, you can still go there and touch it. Calling Jews colonizers in Israel is like calling Native Americans colonizers here. It's ridiculous.

Chappell, did you know that for 2,000 years, Palestine was like an Uber driver with a three star rating? Nobody wanted it. And there was never any Arab country called "Palestine." It was an orphan province, and if you ask people what they thought about it back then, they'd say it gave them the ick.

But after World War II, and after the Jews were very nearly wiped out by an actual attempted genocide, they decided it was time for their historic homeland to be an actual country so that for once they could defend themselves.

And the UN - we like them, right? Yeah, they agreed, and voted a country for each of the indigenous peoples. One side agreed to that. But the Arabs had a slightly different proposal. They said, "how about we keep it all and wipe you out?"

Chappell, if you think it was repressive growing up queer in the midwest, try the Mid East. You're a female drag queen and you sing, "I fucked you in the bathroom when we went to dinner, your parents at the table." Yeah, that wouldn't fly in Gaza. Although you would, straight off a roof. The same goes for, "knee deep in the passenger seat and you're eating me out." Yeah, my guess is the morality police would figure out that one's not about the drive-thru and kill your featherboa wearing ass. You know when you sing that LA is where "boys and girls can all be queens every single day"? You're welcome, but offer not good in the West Bank.

Chappell, you're not wrong that oppression is bad or that Palestinian and many other Muslim populations are oppressed and deserve to be freed. You just have it completely ass-backwards as to who is doing the oppressing. Hamas is a terrorist mafia that took over Gaza. The Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist mafia that took over Iran. ISIS is a terrorist mafia that took over Iraq. The Taliban is a terrorist mafia that took over Afghanistan. These are the oppressors and when you make it all about Israel, you take the pressure off of them. You enable them.

The Iranian regime has killed 600 protesters after a 22-year-old woman died in police custody following her arrest for the crime of wearing her head covering incorrectly. Just to be clear, that's your team. Iran is who sponsors Hamas and Hezbollah. Are you sure this is who you want to throw down with?

Meryl Streep spoke at the UN recently and said this about the Taliban, who are only slightly more conservative than your heroes in Hamas. She said, "today in Kabul a female cat has more freedoms than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face. She may chase a squirrel into the park. A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today… A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not." You're a singer and you're advocating for a place and a culture you would never want to live under.

Gender may not be binary, but right and wrong kind of is.

The ancient Greeks loved the theater and ancient Greek actors enjoyed a position of eminence and respect. In contrast, although entertainment and drama were similarly adored in Ancient Rome, theater performers were often demeaned by the upper-class society and also perceived as morally unclean.

I was born and raised in Lebanon, which used to be the only majority Christian country in the Middle East.

We were open-minded. We were fair. We were tolerant. We were multicultural. We prided ourselves in our multiculturalism. We had open border policy, we welcomed everyone to come our country because we wanted to share with them the westernization which we had created in the heart of the Arabic world.

Muslims used to send their children to study in our universities because we had built the best universities in the Arabic world. They graduated and worked in our economy because we had built the best economy in the Middle East, even though we did not have any oil.

Beirut became Paris of the Middle East. The banking capital of the Middle East. In 1965, National Geographic Magazine had on its front cover, “Lebanon, Eden of the Middle East.”

Unfortunately, all this began to change as the years went by.

We got our independence in the early 40s, but by the 60s and 70s, the Christians had become the minority, and the Muslims had become the majority in Lebanon. And as the Islamic population grew in the country, the country became less and less tolerant, because they started pushing for more rights that were not compatible with our Judeo-Christian value system that we had created, and that’s when the problems started.

The problem was contained until the influx of the Palestinians out of Jordan in 1970, when Lebanon brought them in because we already had refugee camps -- actually at that time Lebanon was the only country in the Middle East to accept the third wave of Palestinians into Lebanon. The majority of them were Muslims, they put their heads together with the Muslims in Lebanon and declared jihad on the Christians.

What they wanted to do is create a base from which to fight Israel, kill the Jews, and throw them into the sea. Something they tried to do in Jordan, yes Arafat and the Palestinians tried to do in Jordan, but they failed because of the dictatorship of the king. Yet they were able to come to Lebanon, use our open-mindedness, our fairness, our tolerance, our multiculturalism, and our democracy to topple our democracy.

Hezbollah leader Nasrallah dies in Israeli strike, upending region

Hassan Nasrallah was among the region's most important leaders, commanding a sophisticated militia that fought Israel to a standstill in 200

USA TODAY

WASHINGTON − Hassan Nasrallah, the revered and reviled longtime leader of Hezbollah, was killed Friday in an Israeli airstrike, the Israeli Defense Forces said.

Nasrallah, "the leader of the Hezbollah terrorist organization and one of its founders, was eliminated by the IDF," the Israeli military said in a statement Saturday.

"Following precise intelligence," the statement said, fighter jets "conducted a targeted strike on the Central Headquarters of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, which was located underground embedded under a residential building in the area of Dahieh in Beirut."

Hezbollah confirmed Nasrallah's death, saying it would continue its battle against Israel "in support of Gaza and Palestine, and in defence of Lebanon and its steadfast and honorable people."

The decapitation attack on Israel's strongest neighboring foe was a political earthquake for the region, threatening an armed response against Israeli and U.S. targets from Iran and its proxies in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

"It’s huge," said Mohamad Bazzi, director of the Kevorkian Center for Near East Studies at New York University. "It’s a tremendous blow to Hezbollah. It's a blow to Iran."

Nasrallah was among the most important leaders in the Middle East, commanding tens of thousands of fighters and armed with missiles supplied by the Shia Islamist movement's patron, Iran. Hezbollah governs southern Lebanon and its nearly 1 million residents independent of the weak Lebanese government.

"The strike was conducted while Hezbollah’s senior chain of command were operating from the headquarters and advancing terrorist activities against the citizens of the State of Israel," the Israeli statement said.

Friday's airstrike on Dahiyeh shook Beirut. A security source in Lebanon told Reuters the attack − a quick succession of massively powerful blasts − had left a crater more than 20 yards deep. It was unclear how many people were killed.

It was followed on Saturday by further airstrikes on Dahiyeh and other parts of Lebanon. Huge explosions lit up the night sky, and more strikes hit the area Saturday morning. Smoke rose over the city.

The death of the militant movement's longtime leader came after a week of Israeli attacks that Tel Aviv said were meant to neuter Hezbollah's military capabilities and allow 60,000 residents of northern Israel to return to homes evacuated due to months of rocket fire from over the Lebanon border.

For almost a year, the Iran-backed militant group has intensified firing of rockets into northern Israel. Tensions on that border have increased since the October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel that killed 1,200 people. Israel responded by launching military strikes on Gaza that have killed about 40,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Gazan Health Ministry. 

U.S. officials are concerned that a ratcheting up of tensions could lead to a broader regional conflict in the Middle East and have been trying to negotiate a cease-fire.  

More than 1,500 people have been killed in Lebanon in the last week, and more than 90,000 displaced, on top of 100,000 forced to flee since October.

Among supporters, Nasrallah has been lauded for standing up to Israel and defying the United States. To enemies, he was head of a terrorist organization and a proxy for Iran's Shia Islamist theocracy in its tussle for influence in the Middle East.

"No doubt, he is a particularly important figure," Bazzi told USA TODAY. "He’s very charismatic, an excellent orator."

Still, Bazzi said, "His star has fallen in the Middle East since Hezbollah's involvement in the Syrian civil war," when Hezbollah fighters were key to the survival of Bashar al Assad's brutal government.

Nasrallah's regional influence has been on display over nearly a year of conflict ignited by the Gaza war, as Hezbollah entered the fray by firing on Israel from southern Lebanon in support of its Palestinian ally Hamas, and Yemeni and Iraqi groups followed suit, operating under the umbrella of an Iran-led "Axis of Resistance."

"We are facing a great battle," Nasrallah said in an Aug. 1 speech at the funeral of Hezbollah's top military commander, Fuad Shukr, who had been killed in an Israeli strike.

Yet when thousands of Hezbollah members were injured and dozens killed, when their pagers and walkie-talkies exploded in an apparent Israeli attack last week, that battle began to turn against his group.

Responding to the attacks on Hezbollah's communications network in a Sept. 19 speech, Nasrallah vowed to punish Israel.

"This is a reckoning that will come, its nature, its size, how and where? This is certainly what we will keep to ourselves and in the narrowest circle even within ourselves," he said.

He has not given a broadcast address since then.

Israel has meanwhile dramatically escalated its attacks, killing several senior Hezbollah commanders in targeted strikes and unleashing a massive bombardment in Hezbollah-controlled areas of Lebanon, which has killed hundreds of people.

Israel said Friday's strike also killed Ali Karki, who it identified as the commander of Hezbollah’s southern front, and other leaders.

Iran on Friday accused Israel of using U.S.-made "bunker buster" bombs in the attack.

"There have clearly been serious security breaches in Hezbollah," Bazzi said. "It begs the question of how and why he was moving around at this point."

"This is severe, decapitating in some ways." Still, Bazzi added, "They are also set up − Nasrallah has made this point himself − as an organization that will continue as leaders get killed."

Recognized even by his enemies as a charismatic orator, Nasrallah's speeches were followed by friend and foe alike.

Wearing the black turban of a sayyed, or a descendent of the Prophet Mohammad, Nasrallah used his addresses to rally Hezbollah's base but also to deliver carefully calibrated threats, often wagging his finger as he did so.

‘Islamists and the woke left are the enemies of civilisation’

Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the calls to criminalise ‘Islamophobia’.

spiked-online.com

The new UK Labour government has declared war on free speech. Within weeks of gaining power, it scrapped a law upholding free speech in universities. In early August, following rioting across England, it announced plans to tighten the regulations on online speech. Perhaps most troubling of all, Keir Starmer is also considering writing a broad definition of ‘Islamophobia’ into law, which would make it almost impossible to criticise Islam and even Islamic extremism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali – writer, activist and author of Prey: Immigration, Islam and the Erosion of Women’s Rights – returned to The Brendan O’Neill Show last week to discuss the importance of free speech in the battle against Islamist extremism. What follows is an edited extract from the conversation. You can listen to the full thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: Why do you think politicians – even those who would define themselves as ‘liberal’ – are so willing to adopt a phrase like Islamophobia?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: I think it has to do with guilt about the past. When it comes to the Jews, many European countries did not protect them from Nazi persecution, so there’s definitely a sense that we don’t want to do the same to our Muslim minorities. When I was living in the Netherlands, this was a very potent argument. The Dutch felt extremely guilty about the fact that, in proportion to the Dutch population, more Jews were removed from their homes and sent to concentration camps, than in any other country in Europe. So there’s definitely a sense of ‘let’s not repeat history’. But this is also what makes me so angry, because the Islamists – and to a certain extent, the leftists – will exploit this. They will exploit what is essentially the goodness of human beings, a desire to ‘do right this time round’, in order to do wrong.

While the Islamists want to use democracy as a tool to win power and then abolish democracy, I think the woke left also wants to do something similar. I think this is part of why the far left does rely on the Islamists to vote for them. This is then compounded by the fact that the white working class, which was traditionally the group of people the Labour Party relied on, has faded. So instead, these parties rely increasingly on migrants. This is their new demography. They think they can harness their vote to come to power. People talk about the ‘great replacement’, but it’s actually a ‘great realignment’. The parties which used to represent the working classes now no longer do so. Instead, they now just represent capital.

O’Neill: So what do you make of this idea of the ‘Muslim vote’ in the UK, particularly in relation to the new Labour government?

Ali: I see Keir Starmer as a front for the radical left. He needs the Muslim vote, and the Muslim vote can be relatively easily gained because Islamists can skillfully organise their communities to vote. But the question that Keir Starmer, and other leftist parties across Europe, should ask themselves is this: ‘What are they demanding in return?’ Because the Islamists do have many demands in return. First and foremost, they want censorship. They want ‘Islamophobia’ to be made illegal. And the way they define Islamophobia is any form of criticism of the political agenda of Islam.

If you talk about the radical views being preached in the mosques or the schools, that’s Islamophobia. If you question the fact that some imams are telling their congregations not to assimilate and to distance themselves from ‘the infidels’, that’s Islamophobia. If you talk about the recent examples of sexual abuse against women and girls, some perpetrated by Muslim immigrants, that’s Islamophobia. If you highlight that there is a kind of soft Sharia law in Britain – which is well established in many Muslim communities when it comes to marriages, divorces and inheritances – that’s Islamophobia. The same goes if you want to talk about the fact that there are Muslim women in Muslim households being beaten, curfewed, removed from school, forced to marry and then raped. If you want to expose any of this, you’re committing Islamophobia. And so, all of a sudden, you can’t fight sexual violence against women perpetrated by men.

That is what banning Islamophobia is going to ban, if you allow it. It will ban discussing these issues in the name of human rights and equality. If you question this and ask, ‘Do we really want this parallel society?’, you’ll be called Islamophobic.

These days, the Islamists are less and less secretive about their agenda. This can be seen recently in the blatant anti-Semitism in some Muslim communities. But if you bring this stuff up, and try to get politicians to discuss it, you’re again accused of Islamophobia. This is the question that we have to ask governments, particularly the leftist governments that are trying to outlaw Islamophobia. It is criticism of Islam that’s going to be banned. Journalists and newspapers will no longer be able to exercise their free-press rights to investigate crimes that are being committed.

O’Neill: The unwillingness of the woke left, even the moderate left, to ever criticise radical Islam is extraordinary. We really are in a difficult situation, aren’t we?

Ali: Absolutely. We’re emboldening them. The woke left is the enemy of civilisation, and they say so themselves. They’re deconstructing everything. On the other hand, the Islamists are also clearly an enemy of civilisation – our Western civilisation in particular. We’ve got to stand up to these two forces now. The silent majority has to stand up and stop this before they stop us. And the only way to do that is through freedom of speech, which is exactly what they want to take away from us.

As voters, we still have the capacity to organise, vote, find new leaders and reject what is being imposed on us. In the decay of the universities, alongside the censorship in schools, there’s definitely a concerted effort to silence us. Most worryingly of all, I think, is what we’ve seen after the riots and how the government has responded. Whereas previously you might be cancelled or piled-on online, now the elites are using the law. British prisons, which are effectively full, are clearing out convicted criminals, some of whom have done all sorts of horrible things, to put people in prison for putting words and images online. They’re using the awesome powers of the state to censor and to silence us. Soon we could be banned from saying things that are, in this very sinister phrase, ‘legal but harmful’. This should be met with the greatest opposition of all time. All of us need to go out into the streets and say, ‘stop right there’.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali was talking to Brendan O’Neill on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Listen to the full conversation here:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Islamism is the enemy we dare not name

Ayaan Hirsi Ali – writer, activist and author of Prey: Immigration, Islam and the Erosion of Women’s Rights – returns to The Brendan O’Neill

Audioboom

“Islamophobia” is a meaningless word

We must retain the right to criticise or mock any ideology.

andrewdoyle.substack.com

For a precious few decades, we in the west enjoyed a liberal consensus. The overwhelming majority of us had accepted that we should be free to speak and act as we wish so long as we adhere to the rule of law and not violate the rights of others. But since the early 2010s, culture warriors have successfully managed to destabilise this consensus. This has been achieved not through a process of persuasion, but largely through linguistic chicanery.

The term “Islamophobia” is a case in point. Few of us would tolerate the abuse of citizens for their belief in Islam, the vandalism of mosques, or physical attacks on those who are identifiably Muslim. We are right to condemn all such behaviour, and to support freedom of belief and worship. This is the essence of a secular democracy.

And yet those of us who maintain that the belief system of Islam is essentially wrong, that the veiling of women is rooted in misogyny, and that no religious icon should be ringfenced from ridicule, are often dismissed as “Islamophobic”. This is to conflate the actions of bigots and criminals with those who are simply exercising their right to criticise ideas. It is linguistic sleight-of-hand. And it works.

The UK government is currently considering how to tackle so-called “Islamophobia”, which should come as no surprise given that the Labour Party seems to be waging an open war against free speech. Having already jettisoned the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act - a bill that had been thoroughly debated in parliament and had received cross-party support - Labour has moved on to targeting online speech. Meanwhile, judges are openly imposing draconian prison terms for speech-crimes in order to “set an example”. These are dark times for liberty.

So what will the criminalisation of “Islamophobia” mean? If it is to tackle vandalism, assault, or harassment of Muslims, then its proponents should rest assured that such actions are already illegal. To understand what the Labour party is considering, we need to examine the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG)’s definition of “Islamophobia”, a variation of which is likely to be adopted by the current government in future legislation. A report by the APPG in November 2018 put it this way:

“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”

The definition is factually wrong. Islam is a belief-system, not a race. There are over two billion Muslims in the world, and they belong to multiple ethnicities. To criticise Islam is to criticise an idea, not a racial demographic. If we wish to live in a free society, that means we must retain the right to reject or embrace ideologies as we see fit. We don’t criminalise “Christianophobia” or “Marxistophobia” or “Freemarketcapitalismophobia”, so why should we do so when it comes to Islam?

The conflation of race and belief is, of course, a strategic means to silence dissent. Most of us in the west have reached the consensus that racism is an intolerable evil. And so by making criticism of Islam akin to racial hatred, we implicitly render such criticism an act of bigotry. This is why so many intersectional campaigners are silent on the treatment of women in Islamic theocracies. While western activists are claiming that the veil is empowering, courageous women in Iran are throwing off these oppressive garments and dancing in the streets. This is in spite of the risks of imprisonment and violence by the “morality police”.

The term “Islamophobia”, like many other “phobias”, is an attempt to pathologise perfectly legitimate points of view. It is similar to the claim that anyone who opposes same-sex marriage is “homophobic” or that anyone who believes that women are entitled to single-sex spaces is “transphobic”. As a tactic, it’s about as sophisticated as saying: “Oh, don’t pay any attention to him. He’s a nutcase”.

The term “Islamophobia” apparently dates back as early as 1910, when it appeared in the French form islamophobie in an essay by Alain Quellien. It was popularised in the 1970s by Iranian Islamic fundamentalists. Like all ideologues, they understood that cultural revolutions are best achieved through the control of language and definitions.

Those who struggle to convince others to join their cause often take this alternative approach. They simply redefine words so that people end up supporting their side without realising it. This is precisely the method that had led so many liberal-minded people to promote “woke” causes, even though they represent the precise opposite of liberal values. It’s also why people who fully understand that human beings cannot change sex are nonetheless parroting the slogan: “trans women are women”.

The propagation of the term “Islamophobia” works in much the same way. It prevents open discussion about Islamic beliefs by stigmatising those who participate. We saw this explicitly when the European Court of Human Rights agreed with a court in Austria that criticism of the Prophet Mohammed was “beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate”. As Qanta Ahmed pointed out in the Spectator, this was offensive to Muslims because it infantilised them. It implied that they should be treated like children who are prone to violent tantrums when insulted.

In criminalising criticism and ridicule of Islam, the UK government would effectively be asserting that Muslims are second-class citizens who need to be protected from the realities of life in a pluralistic society. Would this not be a violation of their own law? Could the implementation of a law against “Islamophobia” itself be an act of Islamophobia? These are dizzying possibilities that remind us that the state should never attempt to control the speech or thoughts of its citizens.

Enough of the word games. Islam is not a race. Its disciples are not entitled to a life free from offence. Anti-Muslim hatred and prejudice exists and ought to be criticised, but it is not the same as the mockery or the denunciation of a religious creed. Any legislation against “Islamophobia” would be tantamount to a new form of blasphemy law. In a supposedly free society, this cannot be tolerated.

"There is no such thing as Islamophobia. Bigotry and racism exist, of course—and they are evils that all well-intentioned people must oppose. And prejudice against Muslims or Arabs, purely because of the accident of their birth, is despicable. But like all religions, Islam is a system of ideas and practices. And it is not a form of bigotry or racism to observe that the specific tenets of the faith pose a special threat to civil society. Nor is it a sign of intolerance to notice when people are simply not being honest about what they and their co-religionists believe." – Sam Harris

Hitchens: People want to pray, you can’t stop them. But we cannot have state subsidized prayer. We cannot have state subsidized preachers or chaplains.

Give it up, or give it to your deadliest enemy and pay for the rope that will choke you.

This is very urgent business, ladies and gentlemen, I beseech you: resist it while you still can and before the right to complain is taken away from you, which will be the next thing.

You will be told, you can’t complain – because you’re Islamophobic. The term is already being introduced into the culture, as if it’s an accusation of race hatred or bigotry, whereas it’s only the objection to the preachings of a very extreme and absolutist religion.

Watch out for these symptoms. They are not just symptoms of surrender, very often ecumenically offered to you by men of God in other robes, Christian and Jewish and smarmy ecumenical. These are the ones who hold open the gates for the barbarians. The barbarians never take a city until someone holds the gates open to them. And it’s your own preachers who will do it for you, and your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you.

Resist it while you can. And if you wonder what will happen if you don't, look and see how a cricket team in Middlesex in England had to change its name by force last week because it was called, and had been for years, the Middlesex Crusaders. Look and how stories about little pigs can’t be taught to children in English schools anymore, lest offense be taken by the religions of peace.

Resist it while you can.

Starmer: One of the things that's coming up over and over again is Islamophobia and well, you can see by the stats, you can see the numbers rising, particularly since October the 7th, although we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that before October the 7th, this was all heading in the right direction. It's been far too high for far too long. Clearly, we need to just say over and over again, Islamophobia is intolerable. It can never, ever be justified and we have to continue with a zero-tolerance approach, and I think there's more we can do in government. There's certainly stuff online, which I think needs tackling much more robustly than it is at the moment.

Q: What I'm hoping, Keir, is your experience as a prosecutor means you'll be thinking about the strategy we can use to make sure we take action against those who break the law.

Anjem Choudary joked about terrorist attacks ahead of TV interview, court told

The 57-year-old made reference to 9/11 and the 7/7 bombings during a ‘count to 10’ soundcheck with broadcaster CNN, the jury heard.

Evening Standard

Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary made a joke about terrorist attacks before a television interview, a court has heard.

Choudary, who was convicted of supporting the so-called Islamic State in 2016, is accused of taking a “caretaker role” in directing Al-Muhajiroun (ALM), as well as being a member of the banned organisation and encouraging support for it through online meetings.

The 57-year-old, of Ilford, east London, is said to have given lectures to the New York-based Islamic Thinkers Society, which prosecutors allege was “the same” as ALM.

During a “count to 10” soundcheck before an interview with broadcaster CNN around 2016, Choudary made reference to 9/11, the 7/7 bombings and the 2004 Madrid train bombings, Woolwich Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Tom Little KC asked him: “Did you say 1,2,3,4,5, 9/11, 7/7/?”

Choudary said the joke was “not serious” and claimed there had been “rib-tickling” going on with the crew.

When the preacher said he could not fully remember the interview, Mr Little said: “Is it a fact you joke about terror incidents all the time, and you’ve lost track?

“Isn’t the position that you took pleasure from the twin towers attacks?”

Choudary replied: “No.”

“You’ve continued to joke about it ever since,” Mr Little added.

Choudary previously told the trial that a joke he made about 9/11 during a lecture on the anniversary of the terror attacks was “inappropriate”.

Pressed by the prosecutor on whether he had continued to support ALM after it was disbanded, Choudary said: “It hasn’t existed since 2004, the only one who’s trying to flog that dead parrot is yourself.”

“We’ll return to that parrot later,” Mr Little replied.

Choudary, who has previously described how a “Kevin Keegan effect” made people link him to the terror group, was interrupted by the judge as he spoke about the Labour MP Tony Benn, who died in 2014.

Mr Justice Wall said: “Mr Choudary, we don’t need to go into Tony Benn.

“Not everything has to be illustrated by an analogy.”

Also on trial is Khaled Hussein, 29, from Canada, who prosecutors say was a “follower and dedicated supporter” of Choudary.

He has pleaded not guilty to membership of ALM, while Choudary denies directing a terrorist organisation, being a member of a proscribed organisation and addressing meetings to encourage support for a proscribed organisation.

Choudary told the trial he had not directed ALM, and had only taken care of the “affairs” of a former leader after he left the country.

He was arrested in east London on July 17 of last year while Hussein was detained at Heathrow having arrived on a flight the same day.

The trial continues.

At least 550 Muslims die at Hajj - as temperatures at Mecca hit 51.8C

Around 1.8 million Muslims were expected to travel to Saudi Arabia for the religious journey, where temperatures this year reached 51.8C in

Sky News

Around 1.8 million Muslims were expected to travel to Saudi Arabia for the religious journey, where temperatures this year reached 51.8C in the shade.

At least 550 people have died during the Hajj pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in the scorching heat, it has been reported.

Temperatures reached at least 51.8C (125F) in the shade in the Saudi Arabian city, as huge crowds of Muslims undertook the annual religious journey - one of the five pillars of Islam.

"Hajj is a difficult task, so you have to exert efforts and perform the rituals even in the conditions of heat and crowding," an Egyptian pilgrim said.

Pilgrims used umbrellas to protect themselves from the sun, as Saudi authorities warned pilgrims to stay hydrated and avoid being outdoors during the hottest hours between 11am and 3pm.

Stampedes, tent fires and other accidents have caused hundreds of deaths during the Hajj in the past 30 years. Some 240 people reportedly died last year.

This year's pilgrimage began on Friday and as usual coincided with the religious holiday, Eid al-Adha.

Dozens of deaths have been reported during this year's Hajj, with the AFP news agency putting the total at 550, citing diplomats.

Some 323 of the dead were Egyptians, most of whom perished due to heat related illness, AFP said.

A 2024 study by the Journal of Travel and Medicine found that rising global temperatures may outpace strategies to deal with the heat. A 2019 study by Geophysical Research Letters said that as temperatures rise in arid Saudi Arabia due to climate change, pilgrims performing Hajj will face "extreme danger".

A Saudi health official, speaking on Monday before many of the reports of deaths were issued, said authorities had not noticed any unusual fatalities among Muslim pilgrims amid the extremely high temperatures.

The ministry had so far treated more than 2,700 pilgrims who suffered from heat-related illness, he added.

One of the largest mass gatherings in the world, the Hajj is a once-in-a-lifetime duty for able-bodied Muslims who can afford it.

Every year hundreds of thousands of Muslims journey to the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of the Prophet Muhammad and of the religion of Islam.

The Great Mosque of Mecca - Masjid al-Haram - is home to the Kaaba. It is Islam's holiest site and the direction in which Muslims all over the world face when they pray.

More than 1.8 million pilgrims were expected to take part this year, according to the Saudi General Authority for Statistics.

"If you find men engaged in a homosexual act - kill the active one as well as the passive one."

Don't start asking: "Are you active or passive?" Just kill both.

The companions of the Prophet Muhammad unanimously agreed that homosexuals should be killed, but they had disagreements about the method of killing.

Some said that they should be burned alive. That was (the Caliph) Ali. Abu Bakr supported this ruling. Others said that they should be thrown off a high place and this should be followed by stoning. Yet others said that they should be stoned to death. Both Ali and Ibn Abbas agreed on this.

With regard to girls - people ask if the same ruling applies to lesbianism. The Islamic scholars have said, unanimously, that lesbianism is prohibited.

Some of them say: "I am not homosexual, I'm gay." They want it to sound nice. No! You are a homosexual, a sodomite, and a lesbian.

Narrated Abdullah ibn Abbas:

The Prophet (ﷺ) said: If you find anyone doing as Lot's people did, kill the one who does it, and the one to whom it is done. Abu Dawud said: A similar tradition has also been transmitted by Sulaiman b. Bilal from 'Amr b. Abi 'Umar. And 'Abbad b. Mansur transmitted it from 'Ikrimah on the authority of Ibn 'Abbas who transmitted it from the Prophet (ﷺ). It has also been transmitted by Ibn Juraij from Ibrahim from Dawud b. Al-Husain from 'Ikrimah on the authority of Ibn 'Abbas who transmitted it from the Prophet (ﷺ).

Homosexuality is one of the most disgusting sins and greatest crimes. God did not afflict any people with this before [He afflicted] the folk of Lot, and He punished them as He punished no one else. It is a vile perversion that goes against sound nature, and it is one of the most corrupting and hideous sins.

Homosexuality is forbidden. It is a great sin. The Qur’an and the majority opinion [of scholars] confirm the prohibition on it. The Qur’an states: “We also (sent) Lut: he said to his people: "Do ye commit lewdness such as no people in creation (ever) committed before you? For ye practise your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds." [7:80-81] God the Most High said about His prophet, Lut: And to Lut, too, We gave Judgment and Knowledge, and We saved him from the town which practised abominations: truly they were a people given to Evil, a rebellious people. [21:74]

Muslims have been unanimous in prohibiting this practice.

Punishment

The punishment for homosexuality is death. Both the active and passive participants∗ are to be killed whether or not they have previously had sexual intercourse in the context of a lawful marriage. The Qur’an and the unanimous opinion of the Prophet’s companions show this.

The companions of the Prophet were unanimously agreed upon killing [those who commit this sin]. Ibn Qudamah said, “The companions of the Prophet were unanimous on killing, although they differed in the description, that is, in the manner of killing.”2 Some of the companions of the Prophet stated that [the perpetrator] is to be burned with fire. It has also been said that he should be stoned, or thrown from a high place. Other things have also been said.

A paradigm shift in countering antisemitism: Make American values relevant again

The Jewish community's inability to counter the growing antipathy toward Israel and Jews on college campuses with its current policies compe

eJewishPhilanthropy

While the Jewish world was reeling from the inhumanity of the Oct. 7 massacre, an immediate aftershock came in the form of the anti-Israel rallies on college campuses and on the streets of major cities. Since that time, the protests have only intensified. Opposing Israel has become fashionable in some circles. Campus activists feel imbued with a sense of historic mission, perceiving themselves as the modern embodiment of the protest movements of the 1960s. Many Jewish professionals and lay leaders remain overwhelmed and unclear as to how to proceed. Years of investment in countering various forms of antisemitism have been proven inadequate. It should be clear by now that we need a new strategic approach and a comprehensive plan to enact it.

The post-Oct. 7 reality dictates a strategy that counters underlying ideological currents, places Jewish concerns in the context of broader American interests and upholds American and Western values. The current focus on antisemitism makes it appear that the strife on and off campus is a Jewish problem rather than an American problem. Antisemitism is low on the relevance scale for most Americans, but the health of American society is central. Based on our assessment of what went wrong, current survey data and key trends, we believe that the Jewish security is inextricably linked to firming up larger support for American values and a renewed commitment to the U.S.’s key geopolitical interests. We further argue that American Jewish organizations should prioritize work with new partners in civil society who share this mission and who should take center stage in effecting a larger cultural shift. In short, we believe the best defense against antisemitism is restoring the commitment of Americans to the nation’s founding principles under which American Jews and other minorities have thrived.

The anti-Israel narrative — Israel as an apartheid, colonialist enterprise — gained limited support on college campuses over the past few decades. Yet trends in survey data indicate that while the anti-Israel narrative caused a slow erosion of support for Israel, the overwhelming majority of college students remained neutral and attitudes towards Jews were largely unaffected. In fact, the data through 2016 indicates that, even in the face of hostile campus rhetoric, most college students and most Americans cared little about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The issue was just not relevant to them and they remained in the “middle” — neither “core supporters” nor the “unreachable.” Likewise, antisemitism among college students remained low. Research indicated that the large group in the middle represented an opportunity as it could be swayed towards Israel once it was shown the broader face and humanity of the Israeli people.

So if the same anti-Israel narrative has been around for decades, what explains the dramatic increase in its acceptance now? Simply put, anti-Israel forces have found a way to make their cause relevant to a growing swath of Americans by linking it to the significant cultural and ideological shifts over the past ten years.

With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014 and changes in the social media landscape, a binary ideology that divides society into oppressors and oppressed, skyrocketed in popularity on campuses. Anti-Israel groups successfully aligned themselves with activist groups representing marginalized communities, thereby significantly expanding the cohort of young Americans sympathetic to their cause. For the first time, Jewish students found themselves excluded from student social justice activities due to their sympathies towards Israel.

In the heated aftermath of the murder of George Floyd in 2020, this binary, oppressor-oppressed ideology found new audiences outside campuses. Diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts, which frequently enshrined the oppressor-oppressed ideology, gained broad-scale penetration into numerous mainstream institutions including business, government, media, science, medicine, culture, K-12 schools, etc. So while the State of Israel and, now, Jews are seen by many as white, privileged oppressors in a broad swath of institutions, Hamas is increasingly seen as a legitimate resistance movement representing the marginalized.

It is important to note that notwithstanding the titular expression of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, protests against Israel on U.S. campuses are about far more than the Jewish state. Instead, they are often part of a larger agenda that aims to reshape the power structure, dismantle the larger social order, defund the police, undermine the very notion of meritocracy and undo the market economy and concept of private property. Many protesters on campus explicitly cite this larger worldview as a motivation for their campus activism. 

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that in the wake of Oct. 7, most surveys of young people show high levels of support for Palestinians/Hamas and declining support for Israel. The majority are no longer in the swayable middle. Moreover, for the first time since the Anti-Defamation League began measuring such trends, young Americans are more likely to believe antisemitic tropes than older Americans. In short, by aligning with cultural shifts occurring among the progressive left, anti-Israel forces — many representing extreme Islamist perspectives — have successfully made their narrative relevant to many young Americans.

While the Jewish community was busy maintaining support for Israel in the political arena, ideologues sought to and succeeded in changing the culture. We are now experiencing the downstream effects of our collective failure to counter dangerous cultural trends.

If Israel is to retain American support down the road and if Jews are to be safe in this country, then action must be taken to reverse these cultural shifts. For the most part, the Jewish community has responded to the post-Oct. 7th onslaught with well-funded efforts to counter antisemitism and anti-Zionism. It is not doing enough to make its case more relevant to Americans than it was years ago, unlike the anti-Israel camp, which broadened its appeal in the intersectional arena.

Yet there is good news amid the bad. In this highly charged environment, Israel and its allies have lost support among college students, but not among most Americans. Raucous anti-Israel protests on campuses have alarmed many Americans, who are concerned that these anarchists pose a clear and present danger to the U.S. The Jewish communal world needs to take a page from its enemies’ playbook and make its cause more broadly relevant by aligning with the significant percentage of Americans who believe in the American dream, oppose chaos and support the principled use of American power in the world. Jews represent only 2% of the American population; we cannot win this battle on our own.

The Jewish community needs to work with those who are already fighting back on various fronts and to catalyze the energies of those who may be concerned but are not yet taking action. The focus of such coalitional efforts must be on strengthening the American narrative and values, not on antisemitism or Israel. And these efforts need to be led by diverse American voices rather than Jewish groups, as they will be seen as more believable and less likely to have an agenda. In short, the Jewish community needs to lead from behind.

We are currently developing a white paper that lays out in greater detail the needed strategic shift and will be holding sessions in person and online in the coming months. For more information, email: [email protected]