Seth Freedman responds to an email campaign among the Jewish community calling for a ban on the so-called “mega-mosque” at Abbey Mills in East London:
“… for sections of the Jewish public not only to stay silent on the issue, but actively to jump aboard, is as abhorrent as it is absurd. For my part, I couldn’t care less one way or the other whether the mosque is built, since it has absolutely nothing to do with me and its erection wouldn’t impact on my world in the slightest. If the Jews campaigning against it can’t see that, then they’ve allowed their paranoid delusions to run away with them. It’s a mosque, for heaven’s sake, not an al-Qaida training camp. For Jews to cry wolf when a mosque is planned demonstrates how very completely they have tarred the entire Muslim community with the same demonising brush.
“And, if the tables were turned and a super-synagogue was scheduled to be built in the middle of Golders Green, you can bet that those Jews expressing outrage today would be the ones dancing in the streets when the new shul opened its doors. They wouldn’t complain for an instant that the money could be better spent on the NHS or London transport. They wouldn’t bat an eyelid at how many incoming tourists would notice the complex dominating the London skyline as their plane descended through the clouds. And they certainly wouldn’t stand idly by as a barrage of hate-filled emails raced around the country calling for the public to take up their cudgels and derail the project.”