Palestinian Forum in Britain reportedly brands Jewish-Muslim interfaith work “faithwashing”
Efforts to encourage interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims have been denounced during the meeting of an anti-Israel organisation.
Speakers at a meeting of the anti-Israel group Palestinian Forum in Britain (PFB) have reportedly described attempts for Jews to enter into dialogue with Muslims as “faithwashing”.
The group held a meeting at an art gallery in London entitled “How interfaith groups are being used to normalise Israeli apartheid”.
Video footage of the meeting appears to show the Director of the news website Middle East Monitor, and the former Deputy Chairman of the Muslim Council of Britain, Daud Abdullah, saying that interfaith dialogue, which received the backing of “rich Jewish philanthropists” is used to “cover up the crimes committed against the Palestinian people” and soften the opinions of Muslims towards Israel.
James Thring, who has apparently been linked to the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke and who spoke unchallenged about Holocaust denial at a Keep Talking event, claiming that no deaths were recorded at the Auschwitz concentration camp, also appeared at this meeting and said that Israeli policy is determined by how Jews “think they are the chosen people, they think they have the right to attack other people, to deceive other people, to rob other people.”
Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Muslims Against Antisemitism and the interfaith network Faith Matters, told the JC that “Those who seek to smear, falsify and undermine interfaith work do not understand what binds our communities together, and their malicious attempt to politicise this must be rejected.”
Mr Mughal has spoken at Campaign Against Antisemitism’s events in the past and in May, he appeared on Podcast Against Antisemitism, which can be listened to here, or watched in its entirety here.
Rabbi David Mason of Muswell Hill synagogue said: “I’m proud we have built positive relationships with Muslim communities in my borough and across London…The idea that such positive interfaith work is a Zionist plot grotesquely misses the point of our achievements.”
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2021 showed that almost eight in ten British Jews consider the threat from Islamists to be very serious.
