This foiled conspiracy has since become a key example of the dangers posed by Islamic State-inspired terrorism at home and underscores the ongoing challenges of extremist radicalisation in Western societies.

What Was the Plot?

According to the CST report, the plan was orchestrated by Walid Saadaoui (38) and Amar Hussein (52), both of whom were described by the prosecution as devoted followers of Islamic State (IS) ideology with a “visceral, deep-rooted” hatred of Jewish people. Their goal was to carry out a marauding firearms attack against Jewish civilians in Manchester, using automatic assault rifles to kill and injure as many people as possible.

Had the plot been carried out, it would have likely resulted in hundreds of deaths and serious injuries, creating one of the worst terrorist atrocities on British soil since the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017.

The conspirators selected their target carefully. Manchester is home to a vibrant Jewish community of approximately 28,000 people with thriving synagogues, schools and cultural centres — a community that Saadaoui and Hussein had been reconnoitring prior to their arrest.

Their ambitions extended beyond Jewish civilians alone. The original plan reportedly included attacks at an antisemitism march in Manchester city centre — a public event designed to assert solidarity against hate — followed by further violence in Jewish-dominated suburbs. This approach would have maximised casualties and terror impact.

How the Plot Was Foiled

What ultimately prevented this catastrophe was a covert operation led by Counter Terrorism Policing North West, officially codenamed Operation Catogenic — described in the CST report as the largest and most complex covert counterterrorism investigation ever conducted in the North West of England.

Key to the disruption of the plot was the work of an undercover operative, known only by the codename “Farouk.” Posing as a fellow IS supporter and arms dealer online, Farouk established contact with Saadaoui in December 2023 through jihadist social-media posts. Believing Farouk shared extremist sympathies, Saadaoui soon began communicating detailed plans and ambitions with him.

Over several months, Farouk gained the trust of Saadaoui and Hussein, helping to facilitate weapons acquisition — unknowingly to the extremists, these were inert weapons supplied by police — and to plan the attack logistics. In May 2024, as Saadaoui attempted to complete a hand-off of rifles, ammunition and other gear in a hotel car park in Bolton, authorities moved in and arrested the plotters.

The success of the sting operation prevented a mass casualty event and has been widely praised by law enforcement officials for its bravery and precision.

The Convictions

At Preston Crown Court, after an eleven-week trial that began in October 2025, all three defendants were found guilty on terrorism charges:

• Walid Saadaoui: Life imprisonment with a minimum of 37 years — as the ringleader who planned and coordinated the attack.

• Amar Hussein: Life imprisonment with a minimum of 26 years — for his active participation and assistance in planning.

• Bilel Saadaoui (Walid’s brother): Six years’ imprisonment for failing to report the plot to police.

During sentencing hearings, the court heard that Saadaoui’s radicalisation included hero-worship of European IS figures, particularly those linked to the 2015 Paris terror attacks, and that the conspiracy had been in planning stages for many months, involving extensive target reconnaissance and logistical preparation.

Broader Context: Rising Antisemitic Violence

The CST’s briefing does more than catalogue a single incident; it situates the plot within a broader environment of rising antisemitic hate and violence in the UK. In 2025 alone, anti-Jewish incidents reached record levels, driven in part by global tensions and a fatal antisemitic terrorist attack on the Heaton Park Hebrew Synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur in October 2025, which resulted in the deaths of two worshippers.

This atmosphere of fear and vulnerability, coupled with the inspiration extremist ideologies like IS can have on isolated individuals, has heightened security concerns for Jewish communities throughout the UK.

The CST report stresses that security measures at Jewish sites — from synagogues and schools to community events — remain vitally important given the current threat landscape, and that cooperation between community organisations, police, and intelligence agencies is crucial for prevention.

What This Plot Teaches Us

The foiled Manchester Jewish terror plot exposes several critical realities about contemporary terrorism:

1. Home-grown radicalisation persists: Both Saadaoui and Hussein lived in the UK and utilised online networks to reinforce extremist views, showing how individuals can be radicalised far from traditional conflict zones.

2. Undercover operations remain essential: The role of covert policing — including creating believable online personas and monitoring suspect actions — was central to stopping the attack.

3. Antisemitism can intersect with terrorism: While antisemitic hate can take many forms, this case demonstrates how ideologically driven hatred can escalate into planned mass violence.

4. Communities must remain vigilant: The Jewish community’s extensive security network and liaison with police illustrates both vulnerability and resilience.

The post The Manchester Jewish Terror Plot: How a Jihadist Attack Was Foiled and Why It Matters appeared first on Muslims Against Antisemitism.

The picture is heart-breaking and shows the love of a mother for her now deceased young son.

However, what AbuHilalal did, was to use an image that also placed a picture of what is assumed to be Mary, holding the body of Christ. It contained the text – “After 2,000 years and its the same killer”.

AbuHilalah has now deleted the tweet. However, what cannot be denied is the antisemitism within the graphic that is highlighted below and which was also raised by Adam Milstein, as being blatantly antisemitic in nature.

This also demonstrates the pernicious nature of antisemitism online and how graphics are produced and circulated and which at their core, seek to marginalise, dehumanise and spread intolerance against Jewish communities.

AbuHilalah calls himself a columnist and journalist on his Twitter account. You would think that he might be aware of the strong antisemitic resonances in the graphic below, however, this failed to be the case. With over 607,000 Twitter followers, you could say that antisemitism had already percolated through the platform within hours that his tweet was up on his account, given the transient nature of the platform.

We hope that journalists like AbuHilalah learn from this experience and realise that antisemitism is viral by nature and that it mutates in different forms. We also hope that he realises that groups like Muslims Against Antisemitism will not stand idly by and allow such online tweets to go unchallenged.

Al Jazeera isn’t even trying to hide their antisemitism anymore: pic.twitter.com/KmSP6yy0NB

— Adam Milstein (@AdamMilstein) August 13, 2022

The post Former Managing Director of Al-Jazeera Circulates Antisemitic Material appeared first on Muslims Against Antisemitism.

              (Daniel Netz)

At a time when Jews were being held hostage in the US, a Jewish follower on my Facebook, Daniel Netz, asked: “Are we Jews forever doomed to live in fear?”

This not only brought tears to my eyes, but I was also left speechless as I considered the intense pain and fear that Daniel felt for his community.

His fear is not irrational, and I am sure he witnessed many antisemitic incidents in his life.

Jews have remained and still are, a soft target for Islamists in the West because they consider Jews a “mastermind” behind all the problems Muslims have faced over the decades. Almost all of the key leaders from major Islamist terrorist organisations have delivered speeches against the Jewish community as well as Israel. Because they cannot fight Israel directly, these so-called ‘leaders’ promote revenge on local Jewish communities by inciting against them in their places of worship, shops, streets and transports, etc.

Let us not forget the toxic hate against Jews spewed out by Osama Bin laden when he said: “The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone.”

This violent Islamist mindset translates to hurting Jewish communities so that Israel should ultimately feel the pain. In other words, the ultimate target for violent Islamist groups are Jewish communities and inflicting as much horror and pain on them is one way of attacking Israel. This violent antisemitism runs throughout their thinking, their Islamist ideology and their way of seeing the world.

“The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes…..The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.”

(Osama Bin laden, Head of Al-Qaeda)

Jihadist leaders believe that Jews are at fault for the taking up of arms against them. Intertwined within this thinking is a core belief that ‘Islam is under threat’ and that the main protagonists are Israel and Jews. This conspiratorial thinking is no different to the ideology that pervades far right groups and shows a virtual mirror image in thinking.

Depressingly, many Muslims across the globe buy into this thinking as they read online material that promotes such messages, dressed up as Islamic thought or interpretations. Let us therefore not forget that such ideology creates the mood music that people like Iraq’s one time Al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, wanted to enhance in his murderous drives.

“The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies — civilians and military — is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it, in order to liberate the al-Aqsa Mosque…”

(Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda leader)

The ideology of antisemitism is key tool of Islamists and at one point, nationalists, to generate hate and violence against Jews, so that it can be used to whip up hatred against Israel. Terrorist attacks against Jews, and the expulsion of Jews in Muslim majority Arab countries have all been examples of this.

Over the course of 2021, there have been a number of violent antisemitic attacks in England, including:

• On the 16^th of May, police arrested four men in connection with a video appearing to show antisemitic abuse being shouted from a car in north London.
• On the 5^th of July, a Jewish man was subjected to antisemitic abuse twice in an hour in central London, including physical threats, because of his appearance.
• On the 4^th of September, a man (Abdullah Qureshi) was charged in connection with a string of antisemitic attacks against a Jewish grandfather in London.
• On the 1^st of December, a bus full of Jewish passengers, many of them children and celebrating the festival of Hanukkah, were targeted by a group of “Middle Eastern men” who attacked their vehicle while shouting abuse and spitting at them.
• On the 24^th of Dec, a man was injured in an antisemitic attack and received death threats in London during Hanukkah.

Furthermore, according to the Community Security Trust, over 1,300 antisemitic incidents were recorded in the United Kingdom over the first six months of 2021, a 49 percent increase over the same period last year.

And now, in the beginning of 2022, we witnessed another harrowing ordeal after a British man who travelled to Texas to free an Al-Qaeda convicted Antisemitic terrorist, Afia Siddiqui. After a ten hour-long standoff, he was shot by law enforcement agents after the Jewish hostages escaped.

Islamists certainly do not have a monopoly on antisemitic violence and, moreover, Islam is not a historical home to antisemitism. Under the Islamic Caliphate in Spain, Al-Andalus, the Jewish-Muslim community experienced a “Golden Age” of coexistence after Jews sought refuge from European persecution. Jews mingled freely and comfortably with Muslims and were immersed in Arabic Islamic culture including the language, poetry, philosophy, science, medicine and the study of Scripture.

It is important to highlight three Quranic verses in which Allah has not only protected the religious rights of the People of the Book, but also commanded Muslims to eat with them and make close relations (marriages) with Jews and Christians.

Religious rights and protection: “Had Allah not been repelling some people by means of some others, the monasteries, the churches, the synagogues and the mosques where Allah’s name is abundantly recited would have been demolished. Allah will definitely help those who help Him (by defending the religion prescribed by Him.) Surely Allah is Powerful, Mighty.” (Quran: 40:22)

Muslims are also permitted to eat good food of the people of Book, including Jewish meat: “This day [all] good food has been made lawful, and the food of those who give the scripture (Jews and Christians) is lawful for you and your food is lawful for them” (Quran: 5:5)

Intermarriage is permissible among the People of the Book: “And [lawful in marriage are] chaste women from among the believers (Muslims) and chaste women from among those who were given the Scripture (Jews and Christians) before you…” (Quran: 5:5)

If Jews were our enemy, Allah would not have commanded us to eat, marry and have close ties with Jews.

As a Muslim I find all hateful attitudes abhorrent. All violence against non-Muslims (particularly Jews) not only hurts innocent souls but also defames Islam. Moreover, militant Islamists who violently attack communities of other faiths are not only against progressive notions like human rights, they are also against the very principles of the Quran.

Noor Dahri is a Patron of Muslims Against Antisemitism and an executive director of Islamic Theology of Counter Terrorism (ITCT), a UK based think tank. His opinions can be viewed at @dahrinoor2.

Read More: Even After the Beth Israel Terrorist Attack, Few Voices Tackle Islamist Extremism

The post The scourge of Islamist Antisemitism appeared first on Muslims Against Antisemitism.

The perpetrator in the latest attack was arrested and a piece of paper with a Swastika was found in his pocket. Whilst details of the perpetrator have not been released, the attack looks to be inspired by far right extremist ideology.

Over the last decade, the sharp rise use of social media platforms has led to the spread of such virulent ideas, particularly between 2010-2015 when social media platforms did little to remove antisemitic and anti-Muslim hate, including some of the most aggressive forms of racist and anti-Roma hate online. These forms of ideology have now simply moved to other platforms and ‘pandora’ has been let of out of the box. Putting her back in, is a monumental task that will take decades of work that will see such hate mutate and adapt into various forms. There are difficult times ahead.

We within Muslims Against Antisemitism have repeatedly said that antisemitism is a hatred that British Muslims must challenge since it is a joint threat against both Jews and Muslims. Antisemitism is an indicator, a form of a weather vane, telling  us all when something terribly wrong is happening in society and when diverse communities are under threat. It also should form the moral compass by which we activate, mobilise and build allies to counter those who seek to dehumanise Jewish and diverse communities.

Right now, some countries in Europe are looking inwards and their politicians are using the language of fear to instill a form of ethno-nationalism in their populations. This populism is growing, creating fertile ground for conspiracy theories and with these theories comes the hate of Jewish and Muslim communities. Which is why, more than ever, antisemitism is a threat that needs us all to vigorously challenge and counter.

We are moving into a difficult time, which is why we within Muslims Against Antisemitism, stand tall with allies in this struggle to defend our identities and our futures.

Read more: MAAS (Muslims Against Antisemitism) statement on Twitter’s failings to address antisemitic abuse

The post Growing antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate in Europe is a wake up call appeared first on Muslims Against Antisemitism.

 “Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

IHRA Working definition of antisemitism

Since Jews lived on this earth they’ve been hated, mocked, laughed at, disliked and seen as nefarious controllers of the world just because they were Jewish. Their views, skin colour, origin, gender, economic level, gender, sexuality etc does not matter to these people, all antisemites’ see is a Jew to blame all the world’s problems, to hate, to dump all the fears of the other on.

This is why antisemitism is such as wide-ranging ideology, coming from across the political spectrum and hiding in many guises and continually metamorphosing like the three headed monster, who every time you think you have killed comes back bigger and stronger in a different guise. Jews have been blamed for capitalism and communism, greed and poverty. If something troubles you, antisemitism tells you the Jew is the eternal scapegoat.

The heart-breaking thing for me and so many Jews and non-Jewish allies fighting antisemitism is that the situation seems to be getting worse and worse. I’ve been monitoring, speaking out and attempting to root out antisemitism in the UK since 2012 and I wish I could say the situation has improved by then, but it has significantly worsened.

A report in July 2014 by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research ‘The Exceptional Case? Perceptions and experiences of antisemitism amongst Jews in the United Kingdom’ found that from 2009-2014 70% of UK Jews said antisemitism had grown. Then there were the problems those Jews faced who were observant. The report discovered that 60% of Jews who were traditionally observant sometimes avoided public display of Jewishness such as wearing a kippar.

In 2018 the Community Security Trust – which is monitors antisemitic crime incidents across the UK recorded a record 1,652 antisemitic incidents, a 16% rise on the 1,420 incidents recorded in 2017.

These are all statistics but behind them are personal stories like mine.

I was born in 1990. When I was around 5 to 6 being Jewish was great. I ate cool food at Jewish festival. I also had lots of non-Jewish friends who found it cool I was Jewish.

By the age of 7, being Jewish became a burden, as I was bullied simply for being Jewish. Its this bullying which to this day has robbed me of a lot of self-belief and I believe is a key reason why I am so susceptible to depression. The bullying continued till secondary schools and I did react in ways that did not help. I didn’t want to be Jewish, all it caused me was problems.

There were still some fantastic times, when I felt blessed being Jewish. I still remember the wide grin encompassing my whole face on my Bahmitzvah aged 13 (A ceremony when a Jewish man come of age). Reading from the Torah, I felt the presence of God and the loving embrace of my family and friends who had come to experience the joy of my Bahmitsvah.

Age 14 to 16 was tough. Alongside, all the teenage hormones which can make life nightmarish, I spent lots of time desperately trying to fit in with ‘the cool kids’ by hiding my Jewishness and if pressed making a joke of it. I went along with the antisemitic taunts masquerading as banter, which were like a dagger to my heart, but which I greeted outwardly with a nervous smile and a hollow laugh. Most of the jokes were around Jews being money grabbers, selfish and greedy. There was the ubiquitous dropping of coins and jokes about Jews getting sweaty in banks with all the money around. Sometimes it got sinister, the idea that Jews were in charge of the world – and given that why was I not rich. I tried to convince myself it was all banter.

At 16 I moved to a new school and resolved to never hide my Jewishness again. Its an important part of my identity and I will always be proud of being Jewish. Throughout university even when I saw antisemitism at Leeds University where I studied, I never again hid my identity.

At the age of 22 when I entered the world of work, I saw how antisemites would pretend they were anti-Zionist, but in their anti-Zionism frequently expressed antisemitic tropes. Terms like ZioShill, ZioNazi and Rothschild Zionist were the latest word accessory for antisemites.

The last two years have been a living hell for me when it comes to antisemitism. Every week I monitor pro-Corbyn Facebook Groups and Far-Right Facebook groups. The sewer of antisemitism which I monitor and record, is like an open sewer in these groups. Jews are all called disloyal, Zios, smear merchants, liars, part of a global Rothschild or Soros, whingers, string pullers, warmongers and much more. Indeed, what I’ve recorded goes to 100s of pages. It makes me feel as a British Jew that I am under attack and unwelcome in the country and I am not alone as one of over 300,000 Jews living in Great Britain feeling like this.

I hope I have given you a small insight in to the human impacts of antisemitism and why as fellow humans, we need the Muslim community to be #ActiveAllies in combatting antisemitism, as you should expect of the Jewish community when it comes to Islamophobia.

About Stephen Hoffman

Stephen is a young British Jew with a passion for writing and speaking out against intolerance.

From a young age, Stephen has been interested in the world and people around him. It is this which leads him to want to work to bring people together to challenge prejudice.

As a student at Leeds University, Stephen was active in the Jewish society and since graduation, he has held a number of roles including working in UK Parliament for an MP and for a variety of campaigning groups, which has involved him monitoring and campaigning against antisemitism and other forms of hate.

The post What antisemitism feels like appeared first on Muslims Against Antisemitism.

There has been a 29% increase in hate crime since last year and over 700 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the first 6 months of this year alone. There is a real need for minority groups to stand in solidarity with one another in these troubled times.

With knowledge that positive content online lasts longer and propagates further, we will be developing and sharing content that showcases our positivity, our solidarity and our commitment to tackling prejudice together. Hear from our Outreach and Network Development Manager on what we will be doing and why.

The post With a Rise in Antisemitism – Minority Groups Should Stand Together appeared first on Muslims Against Antisemitism.

We live surrounded by invective, toxic opinion, and a lot of SHOUTING.

It is hardly surprising or blameworthy: there’s a great deal wrong with the world, and trying to be part of the solution is difficult and frustrating. Add to that the time pressures we are all under, the imperative to always produce and excel, so prominent in  the corridors of power and in our work place, and you have the ingredients for very bitter exchanges.

So what of a few bruises inflicted or a few wounds to lick? Surely the betterment of society warrants a few casualties, and we can just take it on the chin and carry on. In fact, we can probably draw strength from it, in the favourite trope of toxic masculinity: ‘grow a pair.’

But what if the methods were part of the problem? What if, in the race to turn up the volume and causticity of our utterances, we were causing irreparable damage? Or even worse, what if, by virtue of our combativeness, we were increasing our chances of defeat?

Intellectual debate has always relied on juxtaposition of different ideas, the very nature of thought formation occurs in neural connections made of electrical sparks, and reasoning is always made more fertile when challenged, yet the nature and rigour of the discourse is far more important that it is given credit.

The reasons differ from what may be immediately apparent, like  the basic need to keep a civilised exchange going and leave the debating floor with our integrity intact. In fact, having a more impassioned and rational debate helps us ‘unpick’ the automatic thinking that underpins so much of bias, prejudice and conflict.

That is not to say that we should shy from ‘calling out’ injustice and malfeasance as we see it, but by concentrating on the causality in our opponents’ motivations, we will make our argument stronger and more incisive.

The main problem with much of the acerbic exchanges on the media sphere is the ‘othering’ of our interlocutors by placing them into an immutably wrong conceptual space, allowing us to gain confidence in the righteousness of our position by virtue of contrast with it.

That is very much like the processes we employ, mostly unconsciously, when we make decisions based of biased premises.

The, now infamous, often quoted faux pas  by Jeremy Corbyn, who referred to Zionists as having no understanding of ‘English irony’, is a very good example to illustrate this point.

Corbyn later explained that he had used the term “in the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people,” and felt justified, I believe, in using the term to denigrate a political adversary, in the same way that one could say, without much controversy: ‘The Tories are a callous lot’ or ‘Socialists are living in the past.’

The point, however, is not whether the term is legitimately used, but that this process of creating a conceptually inflexible, all encompassing ‘other’ absolves us from reassessing her/his future utterances on their specific merits, and sanctions our treating of such utterances as the manifestations of a group that is intrinsically wrong, and therefore cannot contribute anything of value to the debate.

In other words, it allows the more prejudiced amongst us  to say that Zionist is ‘a thing’, like ‘women’ or ‘gays’ or ‘lefty’ and believe that everyone in that ‘group’ behaves as a single entity.

That is the same process we have employed in our biased decisions in our places of work, our courts of law and our social circles across gender, class, abilities, sexuality, religious and other perceived divides, in prejudiced structures whose mechanisms we are increasingly uncovering and struggling to make reparations for.

My point is that by frankly scrutinising our own arguments before making them public, we not only increase the mordancy and incisiveness of our arguments, but we also escape the vicious cycle of quick judgement and biased perspective.

In the debate about religious intolerance, these tendencies are exacerbated by the perceived immutable nature of God’s wisdom, and the various manifestations of holy utterances. Yet the mistake is to attribute these immutable qualities and infallibility to the very mutable and fallible human nature and all its manifestations and conflicts. It is no coincidence that when learned people: imams, rabbis, priests, philosophers, and others deliberate as a group, after studious reflection, their conclusions are inclusive and moderate.

So we should learn from the likes of Socrates, reflect on the conclusions of the Amman Message and The Bahrain Declaration on Religious Tolerance, and draw strength and perspective from the moderate sides of the argument, who are measured in their statements not out of weakness, but because of a strong and compassionate understanding of the inability of mankind to adhere to the perfection of God, Truth, and Justice. The emphasis is then on the process of seeking a path, rather than the appropriation of a predetermined, inflexible way.

In conclusion the way we really fight prejudice is by dismantling its complex structures into their small, often seemingly innocuous pieces. We must do this because human beings are intrinsically creatures of prejudice and coming to terms with it will help us navigate the small actual differences that divide us, and recognise the vastity of the common traits we share.

Lou Fioravanti is a Senior Researcher with Muslims Against Antisemitism

The post Win the War? I’m not Fighting! appeared first on Muslims Against Antisemitism.