“The overwhelming turnout and engagement from the community reinforced the urgency of fostering open and honest conversations about Israel and the Middle East.” While many are engaged in “open and honest conversations,” those in the IDF are killing the killers so they don’t kill Jews.
Special series for Ramadan 1446
In this series, Murtadd to Human looks at perceptions of Islam after a year in which Muslims went from euphoria in the wake of their October 7 “moment of triumph” to silence, bewilderment and depression as their “freedom fighters,” Hamas and Hezbollah, cling on for dear life, Iran and the Houthis nervously watch the skies and it turns out the indefatigable George Galloway is not so indefatigable after all. Well, those were the headlines. We want look at what in the old days we used to call ‘the inside pages’, news that doesn’t make the front pages, specifically, at articles, podcasts or videos of ex-Muslim perceptions of Islam and Muslim defence of Islam in light of events over the last year.
You can be part of this project — We invite you, dear reader, to:
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Pro-Israel MUSLIM Trailblazers Give Jewish Audience HOPE For Future
J-TV: The Global Jewish Channel
Commentaries:
Islamic extremism, no matter how fiercely its followers cling to it, is doomed to failure. Throughout history, every militant Islamist movement that sought to impose its ideology through force or coercion has ultimately been crushed. The Mongols annihilated the extremist Khwarazmian Empire in the 13th century, the Ottomans eradicated the Kharijites, and in modern times, groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda have faced devastating military and ideological defeats. Even when they claim divine backing and swear eternal war against Christians and Jews, reality exposes their weakness. Their tactics—whether violent jihad or ideological warfare—inevitably collapse under superior strategy, resilience, and truth.
This pattern repeats itself beyond personal experiences. Hamas, despite decades of warfare and declarations of annihilating Israel, finds itself weakened and increasingly isolated. The Taliban, despite taking power in Afghanistan, faces economic ruin and international rejection. Extremists fight battles they cannot win, fueled by arrogance and blind faith, only to be overpowered by superior forces. Their repeated failures, whether on the battlefield, in intellectual debates, or in political struggles, prove that extremism is a path to self-destruction. No amount of defiance, no oath sworn against Christians and Jews, can change that inevitable fate.
The Middle East has long been a region defined by deep-seated conflicts, historical grievances, and ideological divides. Yet, in recent years, a transformative shift has been emerging, one that challenges entrenched narratives and opens new pathways for dialogue and coexistence. This shift is not only political but also cultural and intellectual, as voices from within the Arab and Muslim world advocate for a fundamental re-examination of relations with Israel and Jewish history. A central theme in this evolving discourse is the recognition of Israel as an indigenous and historical homeland for the Jewish people. As highlighted in a recent discussion featuring prominent Arab thinkers such as Ed Husain and Amjad Taha, a growing number of voices from the region are calling for a reassessment of the long-held narratives that have fuelled hostility towards Israel and Jews.
The modern Zionist movement, often viewed with suspicion or outright rejection in much of the Arab world, is increasingly being understood in a different light. Zionism, as pointed out in the discussion, is fundamentally rooted in Judaism. The historical connection of the Jewish people to the land of Israel is not merely a political construct but a religious and cultural truth that has been preserved in Islamic texts as well. The Qur’an itself recognises the Jewish connection to the land, a fact that many scholars and commentators believe needs to be brought to the forefront of discussions in the region. Moreover, the perception of Israel as a Western colonial project is gradually being challenged. Instead, there is a growing recognition that Israel’s existence is not just a political reality but a spiritual and historical one. Acknowledging this could pave the way for deeper Arab-Jewish reconciliation and a more sustainable peace framework.
The Abraham Accords, signed in 2020, marked a significant turning point in the Arab-Israeli relationship. Unlike the “cold peace” agreements with Egypt and Jordan, the Accords introduced a model of “warm peace,” fostering not only diplomatic ties but also people-to-people connections. This shift has led to unprecedented levels of cooperation between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco, demonstrating that coexistence is not only possible but beneficial. As Amjad Taha pointed out, the Abraham Accords have thrived even in the face of adversity. The October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel could have derailed these diplomatic efforts, but instead, they reinforced the importance of standing against extremism. The UAE’s condemnation of the attacks sent a clear message that terrorism, regardless of its perpetrators or victims, is unacceptable.
A critical aspect of the evolving Middle Eastern landscape is the growing opposition to Islamist extremism. The Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots, including Hamas, have long sought to use the Palestinian cause as a tool for their broader ideological ambitions. However, their approach has come under increasing scrutiny from within the Arab world itself. Countries like the UAE have banned the Muslim Brotherhood, recognising its role in perpetuating instability and radicalism. Amjad Taha drew attention to the way Hamas has manipulated the Palestinian people, subjecting them to suffering while pursuing its own radical agenda. The indiscriminate violence of October 7th, including the kidnapping of an eight-month-old baby, was not only a crime against Israelis but an affront to humanity. Such actions do not align with Arab values or Islamic teachings, and an increasing number of voices in the Arab world are rejecting the Brotherhood’s ideological grip.
If there is to be a lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it must begin with a fundamental shift in education and cultural narratives. The current educational systems in Gaza and the West Bank, which promote hatred not just against Israel but against Jews as a people, are a major obstacle to peace. As Ed Husain noted, genuine progress requires rethinking how history and identity are taught. At the same time, Israel’s leadership must also recognise the power of religious and cultural identity in shaping Middle Eastern geopolitics. The Arab world is deeply rooted in faith, and for many, religious legitimacy carries more weight than Western-style political arguments. If Israel embraces its own spiritual heritage and presents its case in a language that resonates with its neighbours, it could open new doors for understanding and acceptance.
The discussion also highlighted Britain’s relative inaction in fostering Arab-Israeli relations. While the United States has played a central role in promoting the Abraham Accords, the UK, despite its historical connections to the region, has not taken an active stance in encouraging further peace agreements. There is an opportunity for Britain to use its diplomatic and economic influence to help bridge the remaining gaps between Israel and potential future partners, such as Saudi Arabia and Indonesia. The winds of change are blowing through the Middle East. The old paradigms of division and hostility are being challenged by a new generation of thinkers and leaders who seek a future of coexistence and mutual respect. The Abraham Accords have laid the groundwork, but the journey towards peace requires continued efforts to confront extremism, reform education, and embrace historical and religious truths. If these changes continue, the vision of a reconciled Middle East–where Jews, Muslims, and Christians live side by side in peace—may not be as far-fetched as once imagined.
Jalal Tagreeb
Former imam
I was a student of a group of rabbis in Prague. None of them had even once hinted at the war raging in Israel, let alone discussed it. The closest that any of them got was during one lesson, when he stressed, repeatedly and without mentioning any context at all, “To get peace, you must give something.” That’s it, like it was some kind of universal law transcending all else. By this point I’d had enough and shortly thereafter, having sat through yet more vacuous nonsense from one of his colleagues, I walked out. Jew-empowering rabbis there certainly are, and my by then two-year search resumed.
Such Jew-enfeebling rabbis have their counterparts, both amongst lay Jews, and amongst Muslims. One such Jew is Ollie Anisfeld, host of the YouTube channel J-TV, and one such Muslim is the Briton, Ed Husain. Amjad Taha, from Kuwait, who represents a snapshot of a Muslim reclaiming his humanity, stand in sharper contrast to his fellow-Muslim, Ed Husain, than he does to non-Muslims. The three appeared together in an Anisfeld-moderated interview hosted by the Israel/Jewish advocacy organisation StandWithUs. The interview took place before a live Jewish audience on 13 February 2025, one week before the grotesque Hamas death fest over the bodies of Israelis they had murdered, including 10 month old Kfir Bibas and his four-year-old brother, Ariel, both of whom they killed “with their bare hands”. This time marker is relevant because it is after this macabre Palestinian family event that Muslims, “moderates” and “extremists” alike, went into overdrive doing what Ed Husain does all the time: deceive non-Muslims as to the nature of Islam.
Whereas the Prague rabbi urges Jews, “To get peace, you must give something,” Muslims like Ed Husain tells his Jewish audience exactly what that something is, and they leave happy, having heard what they want hear. In StandWithUs’s own write-up of the event, they muse:
In a time of increasing misinformation and divisive narratives, the event underscored the importance of informed dialogue and critical engagement in addressing pressing geopolitical issues.
They dove directly into the details:
The conversation took a gripping turn when an audience member posed a pointed question: “Where is the Jewish community going wrong in its fight against rising antisemitism?”.
To this Ed Husain responded:
You must truly believe that Israel belongs to you, as granted by God. If you continue to be apologetic about your right to Israel, your enemies will continue to see Israel as a colonial venture.
So that’s it: they do not believe truly enough that Israel belongs to them. The Jews unlikely to be in such an audience includes those at that very moment were risking their lives in Gaza, Lebanon and Judea and Samaria defending Israel that belongs to them, regardless who believes it or how truly they do so. Husain is right in accusing his audience of being “apologetic about your right to Israel.” One would not expect Husain to know that such an attitude is but a contemporary incarnation of being apologetic about being Jews, a state of mind that exercised Ze’ev Jabotinsky so much that he was moved to write about it more than a century ago, in his short essay “Instead of Excessive Apology” (1911). Of course, Jabotinsky’s remedy the Jews never did want to hear:
Respond to all these and all future accusations, reproaches, suspicions, slanders and denunciations by simply folding our arms and loudly, clearly, coldly and calmly answer with the only argument that is understandable and accessible to this public: ‘Go to Hell!’
The majority of them preferred asinine counsel, such as “You must truly believe…” and Ed Husain is there to feed them such twaddle by the spadeful. You will know that you are believing truly enough when “your enemies [no longer] to see Israel as a colonial venture.” This would be a risky thing to say to a Jewish audience, had this is not been the Diaspora. Increasingly, Israelis know that their enemies are engaged in a religious war, the same religious war that they have been engaged in for 1400 years, and for the same religion that Ed Husain sugarcoats to achieve “interfaith dialogue” with Jews. Husain must get the Jews to accept that Islam is just like Judaism:
It is a mistake to focus solely on the Holocaust as the reason for Israel’s existence—it’s not. It comes from ancient history, from the Bible, and from God, our shared God. (My emphasis)
They may be secular, they may be only loosely-religious, but a Jewish audience reminded by a non-Jew of their ancient history, the Bible and God is bound to induce introspection and guilt, rather than the knee-jerk rejection and abuse likely to be heaped upon a “Messianic settler from the Palestinian territories” telling them the same. They would be too reticent to expose their shame to this Goy. Husain will never know the extent to which they agree or disagree with him. Either way, he has them exactly where he wants them and can now pull the pin from the grenade:
This recognition is the starting point and the fundamental condition for any discussion on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state.” (My emphasis)
And just like that, Israel’s right to exist is no longer a fact, but a matter for discussion, and all this with enthusiastic Jewish approval.
Ed Husain concentrated on that which will have exactly no effect on the travails of the Jews, but instead, plant in them the seed that their own state is illegitimate, all while pleading brotherhood in God.
Amjad Taha comes closest to the interfaith dialogue of Ed Husain and his audience when he considers the need for expunging the effects of Palestinian education on their children’s minds. Taha is concerned to bring across:
Why still the education system in Gaza and Judea and Samaria and other places teach hate against Judaism—not Zionism, not Israel, but Judaism—which means right now, you sitting there, if someone is educated in Gaza comes to this platform right now, sees you as an enemy, not a friend, not a person that deserve life, just for being a Jew.
That education system, even if you’re going to give a state today or you’re going to have peace, If the education system carries on, we’re going to have another the 7th of October in few years time, or another genocide. So the revising and changing the educational system or the culture of hate or racism towards the others, is where we should start, is the start conversation, rather than the two-state solution.
There is not hint between the lines that Taha traces this educational problem back to Islam, or that it affects all education in all Islamic societies, only that amongst the Palestinians it takes its most destructive form. But, clearly, he is a million miles ahead of Ed Husain.
According to Ed Husain, the consequence of October 7th is:
The heinous cruelty and the evil of Hamas, the mass rapes and the mass killings and the mass hostage taking insult us as Muslims, insult our own tradition and insult the region, because that ugliness is not Arab ugliness. That is not the way of the Arabs…
It is beyond disingenuous for Husain to say that Hamas’s killing and hostage-taking “insult us as Muslims, insult our own tradition and insult the region, because that ugliness is not Arab ugliness.” But compartmentalisation into virtue-competing communities is what counts in the mind of a multiculturalist, and so it must for everybody else. By the time of this interview, 13 February, Muslims had taken enough hits to have swallowed their October 7 bravado and go quiet. Hamas’s parade of the coffins and the murder of the Bibas children still lay a week into the future. Muslims were not yet out doing damage limitation, going flat out to dissociate Islam and Muslims from October 7. Yet that is what Ed Husain was doing already.
When he claimed that it insulted them “as Muslims”, he did precisely what Sheikh Dr Yasir Qadhi revealed was his immediate reaction to 9/11: “Oh Allah, please let it not be Muslims,” without any thought or feeling whatsoever for the thousands of lives ruined, or the grotesque nature of the acts of mass-murder, or the monstrous minds that carried out such deeds. All that mattered was the image of Muslims. And, of course, we all know that Hamas did not insult the Muslims, far from it. It was their “moment of triumph” that they celebrated around the globe. Husain knows that we all know this, yet he could not but lie about it. It took the moderator later to put before Ed Husain the Arabs in his own city, London:
We saw on the streets of this very city, people coming to celebrate what Hamas did on the very day of October 7—in Edgeware Road [interjected Taha]—in Edgeware Road [the heart of Arab London, Ed.], in many of the streets in London. We learned recently about, I think it was the Palestine Solidarity Campaign,—right? [checking with Taha]—who were already organising as the news was unfolding on the day. (Emphasis original)
So much for “that ugliness is not Arab ugliness.” That Arab ugliness was on full display when Arab spokespersons, from Arab Members of Knesset to the PA to US Arab academics, refused to condemn Hamas, and instead engaged in clumsy tawriyah games like, “I condemn all violence”. That was insulting to anyone with healthy ethics and a functioning brain.
After offering his one, already threadbare, consequence of October 7, Husain realised that it was a bit sparse, but could not think of anything else to add. So we got this:
The other reason why October 7th matters to us is that that barbaric cruel behaviour towards our Jewish neighbours, our Jewish cousins, has to end. And for us who are not Jewish, those of us who are not Jewish, and I think the UAE is important in this, um, and I’ll answer, I’ll end my answer on this, is just if, if you, you know, where, where in Egypt, or in Jordan, they’ve had peace with Israel, but it was what we can call a cold peace, the UAE and Bahrain and the, the Moroccans, in particular these three countries, have gone towards a warm, people-to-people peace, to the point that the millions of Israelis that have now gone to Dubai. Why is this important? It’s important because I, I, you know, I’m not an Emirati, but I genuinely think Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayed’s vision was to break the back of the Muslim Brotherhood in Hamas by saying that you can no longer play that game. Are you on the side of Israel? If you are, you’re kind of, you know, outside the fold, um, and if you are not on the side of Israel, then you’re with us. So no amount of, uh, appeasing the fascism of the Muslim Brotherhood could, uh, be accepted in, I think, in in the Gulf by allowing the Brotherhood to use the Israel issue. So I think it’s on the basis of that, that, um, Abraham Accords was built, continues to thrive, and I think October 7th was a direct attack on that vision by taking so many Jewish people hostage and killing so many innocent lives, and that’s why I think the Abrahamic–the, the October 7th, um, consequences, uh, resonate so much with us.
From the first idea in this astonishing ramble, Husain struck out in one direction after another to close it, but failed, in the end landing gracelessly like an albatross. In Muslim and postmodern echo chambers, coherence is a distinct disadvantage, and when they do need it, they cannot fake it. As for “people-to-people peace,” Husain ought to ask Israeli football fans how much of that they received from Moroccan fans and the Qatar World Cup.
By this point, Amjad Taha was clearly well fed-up with Ed Husain’s multiculturalism, his perfunctory empathy with the victims of the massacre, his complete lack of outrage towards Hamas and the Palestinians for what they had done, his ignoring the Muslims who celebrated October 7 around the world, and for clearly lying through his teeth or having no idea of what he was talking about.
Afraid that his highly-charged response to Husain might run away with him, Amjad Taha prudently backed out a bit, and reentered the discussion from a more controlled angle:
I’m proud to be from the UAE, a country that few hours after the 7th of October genocide against the humanity—and it wasn’t just against Israel—my country condemned it, because it’s a clear message against humanity, that genocide was against Muslims. Hamas kidnapped Muslims. It kidnapped Arabs. It kidnapped Jews. It kidnapped Christians, and even atheists. It kidnapped all. Hamas message was against all, including the Palestinian themselves by doing so.
My country has clear morals and values when it comes to this. We stand against all types of terrorism, and there is no justification for kidnapping an 8 month years [9 month, Ed.] old baby Kfir from his mom. Nothing can justify that. No cause, no reason gives you the right to kidnap an 8 month years old baby, and we still up to this point pray for the safety of that baby, which nothing can explain to us why is that baby still a hostage? Why was he taken? Why is it he’s still a hostage?
Against Amjad Taha, Ed Husain came across as a man of neither substance nor principle, a lightweight inhabiting the tolerable end of the Tony Blair-Nicolas Sarkozy spectrum. Husain is fundamentally dishonest. He is an Islamic apologist who may lack the brashness and bravado of a Mehdi Hassan, but for that operates by skirting around the pitfalls of his apologetics. Whereas Hassan simply intimidates his way out of problems, that MO doesn’t work Husain’s genteel intellectual image. When the issues he avoids, or pre-empts by lying about, such as the global Muslim celebration of October 7, are put to him by others, he squirms his way out of them and pre-emptively defends the doctrinal presumptions of his class before anyone can embarrass him, such as the catastrophe of mass Muslim migration to the West. October 7 has done nothing for this Muslim, except refine his skills in duping Jews.
But the perils of playing his kind of game are many. If you avoid mentioning the butchering that took place on October 7, you had better hope that no one else brings it up, because if they do, they might mention all the babies that were brutally murdered and then you would come across as either monstrously insensitive or dishonest. This is exactly what happened when, after Husain had had ample opportunity to mention it, Amjad Taha made clear in no uncertain terms how he felt about the killing and capture of babies, and of nine-month-old Kfir Bibas in particular, and all this a week before anyone knew that Palestinians had murdered the babies. Taha was not jumping on a bandwagon. His feelings were genuine. By then, of course, it was too late for Ed Husain to recover.
Amjad Taha represents a very different kind of Muslim to Ed Husain, one who knows that Islam and Muslims are antithetical to humanity. He is not necessarily able to yet articulate, or perhaps even appreciate, the full implications of the contradiction, but his knowledge, cognition and intuition all tell him that there is something seriously wrong with Islam and Muslims. He understands that the rulers of his country, the UAE, have the same understanding, and he is taking advantage of this unique opportunity to humanise himself, propelled in no small measure by October 7, while Ed Husain doubles down. The thrust of Taha’s position is that when someone gives you war, you give nothing for peace but war. To give anything else is to give your humanity.
The problem with this interview is its very premise: “how we get towards peace,” instead of how we get to victory. How we get to peace, has been the consistent drumbeat throughout this war, a drumbeat that, by its very formulation, banishes the war from reality, which means it presupposes that peace is not possible unless you give something, as the stupid rabbi insisted to his students. The fact that peace was taken from you features in neither the rabbi’s conception, nor in that of Ollie Anisfeld. How far they both are from the fact that it is Muslims who took that peace from the Jews by war, and that there is nothing to be given for peace, but to take it back by war.
StandWithUs concludes that “The overwhelming turnout and engagement from the community reinforced the urgency of fostering open and honest conversations about Israel and the Middle East.” In the meantime, while many are engaged in what they smugly imagine are “open and honest conversations,” those in the IDF are killing the killers so they don’t kill Jews.
Editor
Picture credit:
Saimi Gluck via the PikiWiki – Israel free image collection project
Thank you to Jalal Tagreeb for his commentary. The next that you are invited to write a commentary on is a video on YouTube: “Hezbollah Leader’s Son Admits: He Was in Tears After Israeli Pager Attack”, Atheist Republic, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o6aDUEW2ok. Deadline: Thursday 20 March.
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