UK: Jewish leaders support pro-terror, anti-Semitic Islamist groups

Via Harry'a Place:

In 2013, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Husseini, a passionate Muslim supporter of interreligious dialogue and a tireless advocate for Britain’s Jewish community, was fired from his job at a London Jewish college. Muhammad had made the ultimate mistake within the world of interfaith dialogue: he had criticized its disciples.

Sheikh Al-Husseini dared to reveal that senior Jewish community leaders were conducting interfaith dialogue with pro-terror and anti-Semitic Islamist groups, while genuine moderate Muslims were left out in the cold.

(...)

For decades, Islamist organizations in Britain have used fashionable interfaith dialogue to put a friendly face on a sinister ideology. By participating in government-supported interfaith programs, Islamist networks are able to advertise themselves as “moderates,” obtain public funding and acquire political backing.

To a considerable extent, Sheikh Al-Husseini believes, the continued support offered by British Jewish leaders to Islamist organizations has made this exploitation possible. By working with Islamist networks, the Jewish community has sent a clear message to government, media and other interfaith groups and charities: extremists should be heard, not shunned.

Sections of the Jewish community are also not supportive of their leadership’s activities. In August 2014, following yet another collaborative event between the Board of Deputies and the MCB, several former presidents of the Board of Deputies called on Vivian Wineman to resign. The government, they argued, had rightly distanced itself from the extremist MCB, while the Jewish community appears to have “effectively rehabilitated” the MCB’s reputation.

Sheikh Al-Husseini is baffled. “The one community you would expect to be most robust about Islamism,” he tells me, “is the Jewish community. And yet it is the Jewish leadership that has, bizarrely, been the most collusive with the MCB.”

(...)

The reality, however, is more sordid. Jewish community leaders know exactly what sort of groups they are embracing and what sort of ideas they are legitimizing. In truth, Jewish officials continue to do so because they believe the Islamist grip over Britain’s Muslim community is too deep-rooted to do anything about.

Ultimately, the Jewish leadership thinks it safer for their own reputations to play make-believe with the organized Islamists than risk working with the powerless moderates.