Richard Stone argues that it is time to take a more determined and positive approach to Jewish-Muslim relations in Britain, both on a human level and in the interests of wider social cohesion.

Disturbances in northern English towns in the summer of 2001 led to government inquiries and reports in 2002. Government responded with “Social/ Community Cohesion” schemes to help excluded communities “integrate with the mainstream.”

But integration is not a one-way programme. What makes people resistant to “integration” is mostly the negative behaviour of that “mainstream” rather than the other way round.

What is missing are programmes to change “mainstream” behaviour so that “excluded” people no longer feel they need to build what are at the moment perfectly justified self-protective walls around themselves.

I remember in the ’60s people saying: “You Jews don’t want to be part of British life like the rest of us.” Really? “Well, look at the way you set up Jews-only golf clubs.” Of course we set up our own golf clubs. We weren’t allowed to join most of the existing ones. Then we were blamed for setting up our own. And so it goes on.

If you feel unwelcome outside your community, are called names and spat on; if you face discrimination at work or in school; if you or your friends are attacked for no reason other than being of your community; it is hardly surprising that you prefer to keep yourself inside the safety and warmth of your own world.

Anti-black racism is not in the heads of black people. It is in the heads of white people. Anti-Semitism is not in the heads of Jews, and Islamophobia is not in the heads of Muslims.

Most of the “excluded communities” in the towns of northern England are Muslim. As with all British Muslims, they have not only been blamed for the local disturbances, but are also divided from the rest of society by issues from abroad. Since September 11 2001, they have had to face the common attitude: “You’re a Muslim. How do I know you’re not a terrorist?”

The war on Iraq has served to increase tension further. During the first Gulf War, 12 years ago, a number of racist attacks was launched against British Muslims, and still there is the perception — usually erroneous — that Muslims here are supporters of Saddam Hussein, against whom our own British forces have been fighting.

There are fractures throughout our society. Violence in Gujarat and Kashmir has divided British Hindus and British Muslims. And contacts between British Jews and British Muslims have been strained to breaking point by the renewed and sustained Israel/Palestine conflict.

Harsh new asylum laws and media responses to asylum-seekers have fuelled Islamophobia and racism against settled black and Asian UK communities.

The Runnymede Trust, the race-relations research charity, established a commission on anti-Semitism which in 1995 produced a report called, “A Very Light Sleeper.” One of the commissioners was Cambridge Professor Akbar Ahmed. He saw obvious parallels between British anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim prejudice, and this led to a commission recommendation that Runnymede also set up a commission on anti-Muslim prejudice.

I was appointed to this commission — on British Muslims and Islamophobia — which, in 1997, produced its own report: “Islamophobia, a challenge for us all.”

I wanted to get on with implementing the 60 recommendations but was invited by the Home Secretary to be on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. Emerging from that work in 1999, I found to my dismay that few of the Islamophobia recommendations had been implemented. I decided to revive the commission.

In both phases of the Islamophobia Com-mission, non-Muslim commissioners were horrified to hear of the constant stream of verbal and sometimes physical abuse that many British Muslims experience. More shocking was the reason for not reporting these incidents: “But that’s how British people are.”

So, thousands of British Muslims feel they are not wanted here and that white British people are racist and Islamophobic. Yet over 60 per cent of UK Muslims were born and/or educated here. No wonder they do not take kindly to programmes for them to “integrate with us.”

It was not surprising to read in reports on the the northern unrest that the mainly Muslim Asian communities live in self-imposed ghettos.

Immigrants, when they are ready, almost always want to take part in mainstream activities. Refugee doctors from Nazi Germany scrubbed hospital floors in the UK, rather than lose contact with medicine. Today, a Somali refugee consultant gynaecologist has spent seven years taking blood tests for other doctors rather than let her skills deteriorate. She has just been permitted to return to clinical practice, but why were her talents wasted for so long?

Lessons in English and citizenship should be made available, but in ways which do not force participants to run the gauntlet of racist chanting to get to a class.

The way to encourage wary Muslims to integrate is for white, non-Muslim citizens (like me) to alter the way we behave towards our Muslim fellow citizens.

It helps if British Muslim and other British Asians learn more about Britain, although many already know more than most so-called “indigenous” Britons.

Promotion of social cohesion would be better served if we who are outside those communities found out more about their cultures and religious practices. A one-way approach is patronising, and smacks of a new form of colonialism. New responsibilities are required not just from minorities but also from dominant communities.

Three years for the second phase of the Islamophobia Commission was about right, but the work has to continue. In any event, is a commission the best method of dealing with new tensions and divisions?

Maybe we ought to start with “the personal is the political” — I am white, middle-class, middle-aged, male… and Jewish. Many British Muslims are more positive about my Jewish background than I expected. This is even though they may have never met a Jew, just as many British Jews have never met a Muslim.

British Muslims and British Jews cannot push aside the Israel-Palestine conflict. I used to think we could.

Now we each have to listen, and be listened to, enough so that we know that our loyalties and fears are respected. Then we can find the courage to voice our frustrations with the political leaderships of “our” respective sides. Although views may differ, our differences usually turn out to be fewer than we thought.

Rather than leave our Middle East baggage behind, we should move forward together with our baggage respected, and still on our shoulders.

If we can be seen to be maintaining and deepening contacts despite pressures from the Middle East to divide us, then tensions dividing British Hindus from their Muslim neighbours may not feel so irresistible. White Catholic and Protestant churches, or black-majority churches, may feel energised into inviting in members of their nearby mosques.

I am sure there are many other ways to pick off a few bricks from the outside of the walls of self-imposed Muslim ghettos. It is important that we do so.

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