Jews and Muslims in London have a recent history of cooperation and collaboration.
While much of the mainstream media and many demagogues peddle the idea – in order to drive a wedge between groups – that the Muslim and Jewish communities of the UK’s capital show hatred and vitriol towards each other, our evidence suggests otherwise.
The truth is that while in many parts of the world there are, at times, hostile relations between Jews and Muslims, for various geo-political reasons, London is not one of those places.
A recent story concerning this issue has emerged following increasing attacks on London Mosques by far-right extremists (occurring as a result of the backlash from incidents in Woolwich and Nairobi); the almost vigilante, non-official Jewish patrol group, Shomrim, have offered help with policing and guarding London’s Mosques in areas such as Stanford Hill, Hackney, where there is a culture of co-existence.
While Stanford Hill has been home to a large a number of Jewish residents (approximately between 15,000 and 20,000 of whom are orthodox Jews) for over a century, the Muslim population of East London has also been rapidly growing. At the time of the first Jewish wave of immigration to London, since Jews were in a much smaller minority, and since the Metropolitan Police was a relatively new creation at this point, the religious leaders set up their own ways of policing the streets. More recently, Shomrim (the Hebrew word for “watchers” or “guards”) has been established to guard local Jewish residents and Synagogues from anti-Semitic attacks. There are also Shomrim organisations in American cities such as New York, Baltimore and Williamsburg, and across the world they have proven to be a great success.
Shomrim still receive complaints and grievances about anti-Semitism; according to their figures, they actually received around 5000 calls in 2012 alone. Yet Shomrim leaders are aware of the fact that the Muslim community in London – people with whom they have peacefully lived, worked and prayed side by side for decades now – is under increasing threat, and consequently have offered this community help.
Shomrim’s supervisor, Chaim Hochhauser, told the press, “We keep an eye on all the mosques. If we see anything suspicious, we’ll take down a car registration number, report it to the police, keep it for intelligence, log the call and hopefully there won’t be any trouble.”
Sure enough, this outreaching arm has been warmly welcomed – a Muslim community advocate, Eusoof Amerat, is of the opinion that people should:
This idea, however, did not just occur in a vacuum. Religious communities have been working together for years to create harmony and peace between each other, particularly in such concentrated areas as London, where to live in conflict is to disrupt the mechanics of ordinary life.
The FRF charity, for example, has helped strengthen interfaith relations between communities, providing joint workshops for Muslim and Jewish young people so that they can rediscover their heritage. Alongside this is the Faiths Forum 4 London, which is a centre for religious and social cohesion, and added to that has been the joint Sukkot event in North London this year, where Muslims and Jews celebrated together.
We hope that this history of working together will continue for years to come and set an example to the world of religious respect and cohesion.
About the Author
