The sad fact is that Sheikh Asrar Rashid, incorporates a politicised and aggressive narrative within his religious edicts. Whilst religious leaders have sometimes historically strayed into political speech, we have to highlight the deeply corrosive speech that Asrar Rashid gave on the 13th of June 2021, at a lecture entitled ‘Al-Aqsa and the future of Islam and ‘Free Palestine’.

This is the You Tube video: https://youtu.be/vdQ9fkmPRKM.

We have listed excerpts of the video below highlighting some of the comments by Asrar Rashid:

1:13 mins: “Remember in Jerusalem, the Olive Tree is the tree of the Palestinians and the Boxthorn tree is the tree of the Jews. So the Olive tree has deep roots and it gives shade and it gives olives and oil – benefit. The boxthorn tree was known as the tree of the Jews even in the time of the messenger of Allah, (Muhammad). It also has deep roots but it is just thorns and they (Jews) preferred this tree over the date and olive trees. But the olive tree is known as the tree of the Palestinians and the Israeli occupying forces are known to uproot the trees of the Palestinians. So even planting an olive tree in Palestine is an act of Jihad.”

“And retaking the land forcefully, by force, is an act of Jihad. That if a Muslim goes there and he takes the land, if this Jacob, this Jew from America, can go and claim a house of a Muslim family in Sheikh Jarrah, then every Muslim in the world has a right to go back to Palestine and forcefully take the house of the settlers. I mean they belong to Muslims.”

1:18:43: “Today some people think that the Arabs were treacherous to the Ottoman Caliphate. This is incorrect. There were two groups from amongst the Arabs who were treacherous. Who were the two groups? One was the Sharif of Mecca who was treacherous and from his progeny is the Jordanian Royal Family. And the second was the Al-Saud who govern the Arabian peninsular today. But David Lloyd George from the British Cabinet at the time mentioned two things if you read the historical accounts, they mention two things. One, they were unable to communicate because remember, you have ‘uncle toms’ everywhere in India and Pakistan, otherwise how was a small nation like Britain able to govern a nation of millions.”

“You still have these Uncle Toms. You have this Uncle Tom who goes to Israel – ‘occupied Palestine’ and lays down flowers at the graves of Holocaust victims, these people will never recite Al-Fatiha for Hamas fighters for instance. Yes, they will deem them or designate them as terrorists. Which is fine, you want to deem them as terrorists, that is your opinion, but they will recite their Al-Fatiha for those people who died in the Holocaust. Of course, Holocaust victims were innocent people, they were innocent people, but the fact that you go under the Israeli occupation and go to that place and ignore the Palestinian cause and the Muslim cause of emancipating the city of Jerusalem, and then when you do release a statement regarding what is happening, your statement is neither here nor there. The statement is not unequivocal. So we still have these Uncle Toms….”

1:24.00: “This is why the Caliphate will descend on the city of Jerusalem and this is the future of Al-Islam. It is interlinked and intertwined with the future of Jerusalem. So even when Donald Trump declared Jerusalem as the capital of the occupied state of Palestine, Muslims as a whole and Muslim Ulema as a body should declare and must declare the city of Jerusalem as the future of the Islamic Caliphate. This is an important action.”

The statements made by this preacher are abhorrent, particularly suggesting that Muslims who visit places of the Holocaust in Israel are ‘Uncle Toms’. The use of force to take material items from people in Israel is also unacceptable. Everyone has the right to challenge political ideology and we in Muslims Against Antisemitism believe that any form of racism, prejudice or intolerance, whether directed at Israelis of Arab or Jewish heritage, should be roundly condemned. However, the use of force is not acceptable.

We believe that Asrar Rashid should answer for these statements. His words will have an impact as a religious leader and can influence minds.

Read more: Growing antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate in Europe is a wake up call for us all

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We believe that the mixing and engagement of communities is the only way to create stronger and more resilient cultural, research and economic links. This leads to less conflict in the future and there is much more that unites Muslims and Jews, than that which divides them.

We believe that greater co-operation between Muslims and Jews in the region is the only way to unlock the potential of the region and to ensure that people grow up in environments where they value difference, instead of developing barriers to it.

Which is why we hope that more countries will see dialogue as the way ahead, when conflict has brought nothing but pain to the lives of many.

Read more: Antisemitism: The trap that Muslims fall into when discussing Israel

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One of the most divisive elements between both faith communities has been the issue of Israel and Palestine. As more Muslim majority countries find common ground with Israel, the positive repercussions reverberate into diaspora communities; this positive change coming on the back of some of the more difficult and darker periods of community relations between the two faiths, because of conflict in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel. For two decades, these dark periods of conflict led to global spikes in antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred.

We in Muslims Against Antisemitism welcome these progressive developments which reduce conflict and enhance peace and mutual understanding between Muslims and Jews.  This is the only way, if we are to work together on issues of hatred, prejudice and intolerance.

We are only stronger together and with the protection of each other serving as the vanguard armour that we should wear in this increasingly complex world.

The post There is a New Wind of Change for Stronger Muslim and Jewish Relations appeared first on Muslims Against Antisemitism.

We are keenly aware of all the problems our society and communities face, and in an ideal world, every humanitarian organisation should deal with all issues at all times, and perhaps our exclusive focus on such a divisive topic might be a justifiable reason to view our endeavour with surprise or even mistrust.

It is, however, not just a case of arbitrarily picking a controversial issue for the sake of it, but rather of believing that creating a momentum within the Muslim community towards the fight against antisemitism, is a way towards a solution to all the most pernicious and problematic issues all our communities face, and specifically a catalyst in the fight against islamophobia.

This is more logical than the counterintuitive nature of the statement might suggest: bias, the cause of prejudice, is rooted in natural, and seemingly benign assumptions we all quite innocently and automatically make in our attempt to make sense of the world. The cognitive processes we employ in our day-to-day decisions, favour an all-encompassing approach to reality and human interaction, without which the level of information needed to deal with reality in a totally unbiased way would be too great.

Consider the famous joke in Mark Haddon’s award-winning book: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time:

“There are three men on a train. One of them is an economist and one of them is a logician and one of them is a mathematician. 

And they have just crossed the border into Scotland (I don’t know why they are going to Scotland) and they see a brown cow standing in a field from the window of the train (and the cow is standing parallel to the train). 

And the economist says, ‘Look, the cows in Scotland are brown.’ And the logician says, ‘No. There are cows in Scotland of which at least one is brown.’ And the mathematician says, ‘No. There is at least one cow in Scotland, of which one side appears to be brown.'”

In Haddon’s book the joke is told by the protagonist to extol the superiority of maths over all the sciences, but it is a good example of how our brain works, and how complex reality requires a lot of data processing.

The case of the cow in the field in Scotland is a simple example of a rather simple reality, the problem is that we tend to make observation about very complex realities in the very same simplistic way. This is not because we are foolish or careless, but because, as already seen above, we cannot be wasting time every time we glance outside the window of a moving train to consider all possibilities.

The consequences of these cognitive shortcuts are insignificant when it is a cow in a field quickly disappearing from view, but become problematic when we apply this quick decision making to the complex realities of human behaviour and belief. As The Guardian’s science correspondent Hannah Devlin puts it in her article Unconscious bias: what is it and can it be eliminated?

“Scientists believe that stereotypes in general serve a purpose because clustering people into groups with expected traits help us navigate the world without being overwhelmed by information. The downside is that the potential for prejudice is hard-wired into human cognition.”

And this is why the colour of the cow is ultimately so important: by rejecting our normal cognitive processes when dealing with complex realities, we are less prone to fall prey to prejudice, and it is also why by challenging our most difficult issues, like antisemitism in Muslim communities, we are better placed to engage with an open mind with other issues that affect us all.

Furthermore, by visibly engaging with worthy campaigns, whose influence will benefit people we do not normally affiliate with, we win more support for causes which more directly affect us.

Put simply, when we hear a Priest lending support to LGBT+ tolerance, an imam eloquently exposing antisemitism, or a rabbi vociferously opposing islamophobia, we are not only more likely to sit up and listen, but we might also give a better chance to ideas and concepts we might have not been entirely open to up to then.

Lou Fioravanti is a Senior Researcher with Muslims Against Antisemitism.

The post The Colour of Cows in Scotland: Why Fighting Antisemitism Is A Fight Against Islamophobia appeared first on Muslims Against Antisemitism.