LONDON — When thousands gathered in central London in late spring to protest against antisemitism, Fiyaz Mughal was among their number.

The founder of Muslims Against Antisemitism, Mughal was one of what he readily accepts as only a “handful” of British Muslims at the protest — and the only one to join politicians and community leaders in addressing attendees.

Mughal betrays no doubts about his decision to speak at the demonstration, nor his willingness to call out some fellow Muslims for their apparent public silence in the face of rising antisemitism in the UK.

In April, two Jews were stabbed in a terror attack in the heavily Jewish north London neighborhood of Golders Green — one of more than a dozen antisemitic attacks on synagogues and community centers in recent months, which follow the murder of two Jews at the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester last October.

“I decided to attend and speak at that rally because I have been quite downcast about the way that some within my community have made no attempt to deeply empathize or stand with Jewish communities publicly when it is needed,” Mughal tells The Times of Israel.

“Some within my community will make calls to members of Jewish communities and give them sympathy over the phone, but they’re not willing to make that publicly available and to set a precedent,” he says. “They’ll quietly play both sides, and for me that is unacceptable. You either live by your values or you get called out for being a hypocrite — and living by your values means sometimes you need to do the right thing.”

Mughal is no late recruit to the cause. A former government adviser and local authority council member who has worked extensively in the community and charitable sectors, he has long been on the front line in the fight against extremism, hate crimes and antisemitism, and is a strong proponent of Muslim-Jewish interfaith work.

While Muslims Against Antisemitism works to support education within British Muslim communities around antisemitism and the Holocaust, another organization founded by Mughal, Tell MAMA, records and reports anti-Muslim hate crime and provides support to victims.

Time for a new textual interpretation

Mughal is sharply critical of what he terms the “weasel-wording” of some Muslim community leaders. Rote condemnations of antisemitism or refusing to accept that it is linked to radical anti-Israel activism are simply not enough, he says.

“I stand in complete unity and solidarity with the Jewish community [and] I stand firmly with my position that the wholesale denial of the State of........

© The Times of Israel