Protecting the persecuted: Muslim and Jewish solidarity

Sunday 23 February 2020: the streets of Delhi are ablaze. Hindu nationalists storm the predominantly Muslim slums in the North-East. With 40 dead, and more than 200 injured, Muslim businesses and homes were left looted and destroyed. In a wave of instigated violence, aided by local politicians such as Kapil Mishra and the inaction of Delhi’s chief minister, an angry mob of zealots committed a massacre. The police were nowhere to be seen. It is nothing short of a pogrom, as Mira Kamdar expressed in The Atlantic.

Indeed, for any Jew, the word pogrom should be a stinging reminder of our troubled past. In fact, when I first read about the sectarian riots in India, I was reminded of Kristallnacht, where similar acts of racism were committed against the Jews in Germany. Upon examination, their similarities are all too apparent. Both were abetted by the provocations of furiously nationalist governments, intent on biologically alienating a certain group of people from their rightful homes. Both governments controlled the courts and moved the police how they wished. Trump’s appraisal of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's religious toleration couldn't have been more woefully inaccurate. To the contrary, Modi has made strategic moves, validated by his recent re-election, to slowly strip his country’s Muslims of their rights.

So where do we come into this? Whilst Jewish history is one of tremendous heroism and culture, as Graetz would happily show us, it is also one of suffering. In every age and under almost every ruler,the Jews have been treated as second class people, and sometimes not even as people.Yet, we have often had brief respite under our longest historical allies: the Muslims. We only need to travel to Al-Andalus or the Ottoman Empire to view the extended privileges we had compared to the rest of Europe. Not until the dawn of the Enlightenment and of secularism were we met with that much tolerance. It is only relevantly recently that our strong history with the Muslims has deteriorated somewhat, but this is something we must repair.

Our strong historical links to Islam aside, our experience and understanding of persecution should make us people who are strongly opposed tothe evils ofdiscrimination. In all our suffering, we cannot forget the people who stood in solidarity with us. In the same vain, we should open our arms widely to those who are under siege. Need we be reminded of Niemöller’s haunting poem First They Came, where the writer stood by whilst Communists, Socialists and Jews were persecutedby the Nazis? In the end only he remained, defenceless and with no one left to speak on his behalf, because he would not do the same for those persecuted.

As Yom HaShoah and Passover soon approach, we are reminded of our hardship. Indeed, with a rise in hate crimes against Jews and publicly condoned displays of antisemitism (such as the Aalst Carnival), it would seem our suffering is not over.

Yet with the world’s two most populous countries vigorously suppressing their religious minorities, we cannot stand by. Even if it is just by raising awareness of our collective hardship, we can hope to end all semblances of persecution. Let us be beacons of tolerance in a world in which it's seemingly been forgotten.

By Frank Allen

Header photo: Dome of the Rock, Jerusalem

This essay was shortlisted for the JR Young Journalist Prize 2020. Follow Frank on Instagram: @FrankJohnAllen.

Read the other prize entries on the JR blog.