Board of Deputies of British Jews president Jonathan Arkush has been slammed for “fanning the flames of inter-community hatred” against Muslims in Britain following the London Bridge terror attack.
Almost 100 Jews from across the community signed an open letter accusing the Board of Deputies chief of contributing to “the atmosphere of anti-Muslim sentiment in the UK” after he penned an opinion piece calling on Britain’s Muslim community to “stand up and be counted” against terror.
“It is not the time to be fanning the flames of inter-community hatred, as Donald Trump has in attacking Sadiq Khan based on his ethnicity,” reads the letter, which went live Wednesday.
The letter’s signatories, who are hoping to gather more support for their protest, said they were “deeply troubled” by the article, in which Arkush urged “every British mosque” to stage protests against terror, and asked that imams and community leaders “make the point … that these attacks are a perversion of Islam and the attackers will be liable to be punished after death and not rewarded in heaven.”
Attacking the Board of Deputies president for “presuming to enforce a mandatory public reaction on the entire Muslim community”, with regards to the Islamist attack that killed eight people, the letter states “it is not for us to dictate how people in grieving communities should respond.
“We stand with all our Muslim sisters and brothers, and all people of faith and no faith, in love and healing from these atrocities – together.”
Responding to the criticism, Board of Deputies Vice President Marie van der Zyl argued Arkush “was echoing many eminent Muslim leaders in calling for their communities to reclaim their faith from the extremists,” and pointed out that he has “dedicated his presidency to engaging with Muslim communities around the country and calling out divisive anti-Muslim rhetoric”.
“The answers to this question of how to tackle extremism are certainly not simple, but we won’t get anywhere through spurious name-calling,” she said.