Anti-Muslim Hate and Antisemitism Rise Together

Anti-Muslim hate in the UK surged to record levels last year, an organization tracking all Islamophobia has found. Almost 6,000 reports to Tell Mama were confirmed by it as anti-Muslim incidents, more than double the number two years ago, with men targeted more than women for the first time since Tell Mama was founded in 2012. A government spokesperson called the findings “extremely concerning” and said it would “seek to stamp out anti-Muslim hatred and racism wherever it occurs”.

A total of 6,313 cases of anti-Muslim hate were recorded by Tell Mama in 2024, a 43% increase on the previous year – with 5,837 of the reports verified by the group; 3,680 cases reported – a 72% increase on the number two years ago.

And antisemitic incidents in the United States continued to rise to unprecedented levels for the fourth straight year in 2024, with 9,354 recorded cases of harassment, vandalism, and assault, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Also Harvard University President Alan Garber has apologized following the release of two internal reports into antisemitic and anti-Muslim prejudice at America’s oldest university. The two reports included testimony from students who described feeling alienated and pressured to conceal their identity from their peers and educators.

Both reports described a polarized campus where students and faculty were afraid to voice their views about Israel and the war in Gaza, and faced retaliation when they did so. But the culprits differed: The antisemitism task force blamed the student body’s increasingly hostile views toward Israel, and an embrace of more strident and disruptive forms of activism, for the painful sense of social isolation many Jewish students described.

In contrast, the anti-Palestinian bias task force reported that many Arab and Muslim students and staff felt that school administrators and official policies were deeply biased against them. “Ultimately, many feel that no one in leadership cares about them — that they have been abandoned,” the report stated.

In response to the findings, Harvard pledged to review its academic offerings and admissions policies – a key demand of the White House, which accuses the Ivy League institution of failure to stamp out campus antisemitism. “I’m sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community,” Dr Garber said in a letter accompanying the two reports. He said the Hamas attack on Israel of 7 October 2023, and the ensuing Israeli bombardment of Gaza unleashed “long-simmering tensions” on Harvard’s campus.

“Members of our community reported incidents that led them to feel targeted and shunned on the basis of their identities,” Dr Garber said. “Harvard cannot – and will not – abide bigotry,” his statement added. The twin internal reports list some “actions and commitments”, including that Harvard will review admissions processes. The college said it would aim to ensure applicants are evaluated based on their ability to “engage constructively with different perspectives, show empathy and participate in civil discourse”.

The Trump administration has threatened to ban the university from enrolling foreign students and strip its tax exempt status if it does not comply. In response, Harvard has sued the federal government to block the measures, including the freezing of more than $2bn in academic grants. Dr Garber, who is Jewish, last month wrote in a letter to students that he had personally “experienced antisemitism directly, even while serving as president which led him to understand “how damaging it can be to a student”.

All this teaches us that everyone should be constantly reminded that religious and political extremism is ultimately self-destructive to both its self and its supporters. In the words of the poet W. B. Yeats: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”

The time has come for all the best of religious conviction —especially from within the Muslim and Jewish minorities— to denounce and denigrate the activities and beliefs of those who are filled with the worst of religious convictions, before they desecrate and diminish all believers in the one God of Abraham.

Our religious and political leaders could help improve interfaith relations by constantly repeating the important lesson taught by the German Protestant Christian theologian Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis’ rise to power; and their subsequent purging of their chosen targets, one group after another:

First they arrested Socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Socialist.
Then they arrested Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they arrested Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.

And our religious and political leaders could also help improve interfaith relations by constantly repeating the important lesson taught by an eleventh century Spanish Muslim theologian: “Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see – Egoism, Arrogance, Conceit, Selfishness, Greed, Lust, Intolerance, Anger, Lying, Cheating, Gossiping and Slandering [i.e., scapegoating]. If you can master and destroy them, then will you be ready to fight the enemy you can see.”
Imam Al-Ghazali

Also a Senate committee is expected to vote on whether or not to advance a new version of the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Republicans added an amendment to the bill, a loophole that reinforces the First Amendment right to preach that the Jews killed Jesus and it protects the statement from being considered antisemitic.

The Qur’an clearly states that the Jews did not kill Prophet Jesus.