Geller: UK Chief Rabbi Says Teach Islam in Jewish Schools

Sean Gallup/Getty Images
Sean Gallup/Getty Images

British Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis recommended Wednesday that Jewish schools in the United Kingdom teach — Islam.

“It is more important than ever,” said a spokesman for Mirvis, “that our children have a better understanding of Islam and that we build strong relationships with British Muslims.” The spokesman added: “As such, the Chief Rabbi has recommended that schools take this opportunity to teach students Islam, a faith which is widely discussed but often poorly understood in public discourse.”

Mirvis’s recommendation is so off-the-charts monstrous that it cannot go by unremarked upon. This is a sickness, a moral sickness from which a large segment of my people suffer: The sanction of the victim. The number of reported anti-Jewish incidents in the UK has increased by more than 50 percent, driven by Islamic Jew-hatred. Anti-Semitism in the UK is rampant, with hate crimes against London’s Jewish community surging by 93 percent. Synagogues across the UK and Europe are targets of Islamic attacks.

In the face of all this, the chief rabbi is recommending that we submit, and even worse, force our children to submit. Has this dhimmi rabbi actually read what the Quran says about the Jews? Has the rabbi ever commented on Muhammad’s extermination of an entire Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayzah? Does the rabbi believe that Jewish children should be educated about the numerous Islamic texts and teachings that call for the slaughter of the Jews?

Mirvis also says that Islam is “poorly understood.” In response to that, I must ask the obvious question: how is it that millions of Muslims and Muslim converts “misunderstand” Islam in exactly the same way?

Also, where is the reciprocation? Why is it always and in every case up to the “infidels” to reach out in friendship to the Muslims and try to “understand” them, and is never, ever incumbent upon Muslims to reach out to the “infidels”? While the chief rabbi wants Islam to be taught in Jewish schools, and most of his supporters will no doubt think of him as wonderfully multicultural and diverse for saying this, you show me a mosque or Islamic school in the UK or anywhere in the world where Judaism is taught.

Does the chief rabbi have anything to say about the ethnic cleansing and slaughter of the Jews in Muslim lands? Where are the synagogues in Muslim lands? What happened to the ancient Jewish communities of Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere in the Islamic world?

The normalizing of Islamic Jew-hatred in Britain has given rise to a level of anti-Semitism that the world has not been seen since the Nazis. You cannot tackle this disease while ignoring Muslim Jew-hatred. Studying Islam is Mirvis’s response to the fact that walking down a street Jewish in London or any other major British city is dicey, risky for Jews? Having Jewish children learn deceptive nonsense about a group whose holy book calls them its worst enemies (5:82) is his answer to the fact that British authorities are so anti-Semitic that they banned me from speaking in the UK, mainly because of my unwavering support of Israel and opposition to jihad?

As the UK increasingly operates as a de facto Islamic state, the Jews there are increasingly assuming the role of the dhimmi, the subjugated class of non-Muslims under the hegemony of Islamic law. If you recall, when the UK Home Office banned me from entering the country, Jewish leaders in the UK actually supported the ban, but continue to maintain a deafening silence when Jew-hating Islamic preachers are allowed in ad infinitum.

If the British authorities ban Jews like me from entering the country just because of my support for Israel and opposition to jihad and Sharia, how safe can it be for the Jews who live there? And Rabbi Mirvis’s response is—teach Jews about Islam.

The approval of my ban from the country by the Board of Deputies of British Jews and now these statements of the chief rabbi present an enormously sad commentary on Jewish lay leadership, and worse, a stunning indictment of their culpability.

Britain’s Jewish leadership is mimicking the inadequate and ill-conceived political action of the Jewish Councils in Germany in the late 1930s and 40s. We are not supposed to say such things, but it is true. The brilliant political theorist and philosopher Hannah Arendt, author of The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition and once a darling of the intelligentsia, came under enormous fire and criticism for her analysis of Jewish acquiescence and collaboration during the Holocaust, which she wrote while covering the Eichmann trial in Israel.

Arendt was cast out of the Jewish intelligentsia and various academic circles and made a pariah for discussing the collusion of the Nazi-appointed Judenrat, or Jewish councils, with the Nazis to expedite the extermination of the Jews, but her reportage was accurate. Arendt spoke openly about the role played by the Jewish councils in the deportation and destruction of their own people.

Her observations were meant to serve a cautionary purpose, lest the horrors be repeated under different historical conditions. She was right then, and we are seeing the same thing happening again now.

If the Jewish councils had not collaborated to various degrees with Nazis like Eichmann, the number of those who were slaughtered might very well have been less. How much less? A life is a life.

If the Jews took away one lesson from Nazi Germany, it was this: You fight. You fight back. You don’t go along with your murderers. You stand with proud Jews and stand against tyranny and totalitarianism.

This craven quisling, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, is lower than a kapo. They had guns to their heads.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here. Like her on Facebook here.

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