The President of the British Pakistani Youth Council (BPYC) has come under fire for comments made in a series of Facebook posts from 2014 in which he praised Adolf Hitler for killing Jews.
Mr Kamran Ishtiaq, who once hosted David Cameron when he wanted to “spend some proper time out of Westminster”, said he would “salute” Adolf Hitler providing he killed more Jews than Muslims.
““I know that [Hitler was a racist] and to be honest he would have killed Muslims too if he got a chance. But you know what, I would salute him still if he killed 90 Muslims and 92 Jews,” reads a Facebook post from 2014 attributed to the community activist.
“Now why he is my hero cuz, he just killed Jews, didn’t get a chance to kill Muslims… lol,” he added.
“If it’s on my Facebook, I said it,” Ishtiaq, 37, confirmed when interrogated about the posts by local media.
“To be honest with you, I feel that about the Jews who are killing the Palestinians now,” he told BirminghamLive, when asked if he felt the same way now.
“Not the Jews who are leaving Israel – there are Jews who support Palestine. I was reading today in the media that there are Jews leaving Israel because Israel didn’t live up to their expectations.
“OK, but Jews, American Jews, yes I feel like that about them. The ones who are murdering the Palestinians. I do feel that about them.
“And what I wrote there, it’s about the Jews.”
When asked his views about whether the Holocaust took place and whether he believed six million Jews were murdered, he said “To be honest, I don’t believe that. Every attack, anything on Jews is exaggerated. Yeah. I think that was an exaggeration too.”
Mr Ishtiaq claims on his LinkedIn page about his role as President of the BPYC, “As the President I lead to work proactively with the mainstream media to counter the negative stereotypes associated with British Pakistani young people and highlight the positive contributions we add to British society. This work has led me to work across the UK and Pakistan to build bridges.”
His remarks on Jewish people follow a survey for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) which found that 55 per cent of Muslims held at least one antisemitic belief, according to the BBC.
The 2017 report by JPR found that “the prevalence of negativity towards Jews and Israel is, on average, twice as high among Muslims than the general population”.
Journalist Mehdi Hassan, himself a British Muslim, claimed in 2013 that antisemitism within the Muslim community was a “dirty little secret”.
“It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism isn’t just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it’s routine and commonplace. Any Muslims reading this article – if they are honest with themselves – will know instantly what I am referring to,” he suggested in the left-liberal New Statesman magazine.