The impact of Antisemitism and Islamophobia on Jewish-Muslim relations in the UK : memory, experience, context.

Abstract

The relationship between the Jewish and Muslim communities of Europe is often constructed by public discourse as polarised due to the Israel–Palestine conflict. Indeed, in the summer of 2014, the mass media presented numerous reports suggesting that the relations between Europe’s Jews and Muslims were deteriorating following the military action between Israel and Gaza. At the same time, it has been argued by social scientists and humanities scholars that the discussion of Jewish–Muslim relations needs to be situated in the wider context of the position of ‘minority’ communities in Europe. In this chapter, we will adopt the same approach in focusing on the case of the UK and will use ethnographic analysis to highlight the context-dependent nature of Jewish–Muslim relations.