The ‘Faith-washing’ Anti Jewish Libel

Last year former professor David Miller was widely ridiculed when he called an interfaith event where Jews and Muslims cooked chicken soup for the homeless a “Zionist plot”. He further claimed that “this is a Zionist organization, trying to infiltrate the British Muslim community and to capture them to normalize Zionism within the British Muslim community.” While the idea that Jews or “Zionists” are using interfaith as an underhanded tactic to do something nefarious may have sounded ludicrous at the time it is a libel that has refused to go away.

This is evidenced by the antisemitic discourse that took place at an event entitled ‘Faith washing - How interfaith groups are being used to normalise Israeli apartheid’. It’s difficult to see how the speakers at the event would have been able to avoid falling into antisemitic discourse once they accepted the premise of the title; that there’s a conspiracy to use interfaith to influence the way people view Israel. This is just the most recent example of a libel that has appeared often in recent years.

An early example can be found in a speech made by Roshan Salih in 2018 . At the time Salih worked as a journalist for Iranian regime media outlet Press TV and was also editor of the website 5 Pillars. He opened his speech with a warning about:

“Zionist infiltration of Muslim communities, which I’ve noticed as a journalist, happening in our mosques and happening in our institutions generally” adding “if you read unfortunately papers like the Jewish news and the Jewish Chronicle you get an insight into Israel’s strategy in the UK and their strategy vis-a-vis the Muslim community is to make links with the Muslim community for two goals, one is to make them shut up about Israel and secondly to drive a wedge between different parts of that community.”

Over the course of Salih’s speech he said he “wants the entity of Israel to cease", or like former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had said, “to pass away from the page of time.” Salih, at the time an employee of the Iranian propaganda outlet Press TV, added that “unfortunately a lot of British Jews and non-Jews do put the interests of Israel ahead of the interest of their home country.”

A short time later Salih appeared on the show 20th Hour on the Ahle Bait television channel, which was recently sanctioned by Ofcom for antisemitic discourse aired on a different episode of the same show. Salih told the host that:

“Our institutions need to stop normalizing with hardcore Zionists simple as that”, adding “this has been going on for a few years now and they're not, they're not taking our advice on board so ultimately you know we're gonna have to call a spade a spade at some point and we're gonna have to name and shame but inshallah our brothers can, you know, get with the programme, you know, because ultimately we are in an ideological war with the British government!”

It turned out that Salih wasn’t alone in thinking this way. In May that year the Islamic Human Rights Commission published an article entitled ‘How to Support Palestine’ that included the following statement about Zionists in the UK:

“Zionists have started to implement an insidious strategy to build ties with the Muslim community in Britain in order to normalise Zionism and the brutal illegal occupation of Palestine. This cosying up to mosques and Muslim groups is nothing more than a deceitful attempt to normalise the continuing murder, maiming and dispossession of the Palestinian people by using vehicles like inter-faith work.”

The article went on to warn the reader: “Do not allow your mosque or Islamic centre or organisation to allow Zionist [sic] to come in and normalise Zionism and diminish the crimes of Israel. Expose their agenda to one and all.”

When Jews and Muslims met up to make chicken soup for homeless people at the East London Mosque in 2018, Salih called it “a deliberate tactic to firmly establish Israel as a fait accompli, to neuter criticism of it and to divide groups which could pose a threat to it.” Arguably his pressure was amplified by an article in Middle East Eye entitled ‘Was the Jewish-Muslim 'chicken soup challenge' cooked up by UK's Home Office?’

People who choose to engage in interfaith represent the best of us. Meetings between Jews and Muslims to cook chicken soup for homeless people, to carry out good deeds, to build bridges with other communities, to give without thinking of receiving in return, showcase the very best of our communities. Extremists will do anything to prevent these bridges between us from being built, rightly seeing mutual respect and tolerance as a threat to gaining support for their dogmatic, intolerant perspectives. We must not let them win.