Of course, it would be ridiculous to suggest ISIS sympathisers in the West discriminate when targeting various types of kafirs or ‘non-believers’. Their hatred embraces many faiths. In 2016, ISIS-inspired teenagers firebombed a Sikh temple in Germany; and in France, later that same year, ISIS supporters murdered a Catholic priest.
Still, Islamists do seem to loathe Jews in particular. Last year, Amber Rudd, the UK home secretary, confirmed ISIS had specifically identified British Jewry as a ‘desirable and legitimate target’. No doubt it was this specific threat that contributed to the government’s decision to renew the £13.4million worth of security funding provided to the Community Security Trust for the protection of the Jewish community. Compare this to the £2.4million spent by the Home Office in 2016 on the security of ‘places of worship’ for all other faiths combined, and you get a sense of the predicament British Jews find themselves in.
It is not just Jews in Britain who find themselves the object of Islamists’ hatred. In France, Mireille Knoll, an 85-year-old wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor, was stabbed 11 times and set alight by a Muslim neighbour and a homeless man. The motive appears anti-Semitic, given one of the two men arrested is reported to have said, ‘She is a Jew, she must have money’. And in Germany, earlier this year, the Bundestag voted to appoint an anti-Semitism commissioner – a response to a rise in anti-Semitic incidents.
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