Both Jews and Muslims in Britain are experiencing moments of fear and vulnerability

Something troubling is happening in Britain. A sense of fear has quietly returned to everyday life for many Jews and Muslims.

Jewish parents worry about children wearing a kippah openly in public. Muslim families feel anxious when daughters travel wearing hijab. Synagogues and mosques once again review security arrangements. And children, far removed from geopolitics, inherit fear and suspicion they did not create.

This should trouble all of us.

Britain’s Jewish and Muslim communities are both relatively small minorities within the wider national story. They do not agree on everything, indeed, at times they profoundly disagree. They may differ on politics, history and even suffering. Yet beneath those differences lies something deeper; a shared Abrahamic moral inheritance.

Within the Abrahamic moral tradition, compassion, justice and responsibility towards one’s neighbour are not optional virtues; they are signs of devotion to God. To protect the vulnerable. To preserve human dignity. To care for one’s neighbour. These are sacred responsibilities shared across our traditions.

One of the passages in the Torah that has always stayed with me is the simple but transformative command: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Rabbi Hillel would later express the same ethic with remarkable clarity: “What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” Civilisations endure when such moral truths are lived, not merely admired.

The Prophet Muhammad similarly taught: “None of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” The Qur’an reminds humanity that we were created into different peoples and tribes “so that you may know one another.”

Yet, I must admit that, whilst I quote the Qur’an’s call to know and understand one another, I fear we have reached a deeply painful moment in which the mere mention of the Qur’an is met with hateful responses. That in itself says something about the times in which we live.

And yet, what gives me hope are words such as those of Rick Sopher, spoken candidly before sixth formers. Having taken the time to read the Qur’an within its proper context, he openly challenged the misconceptions surrounding it. To paraphrase, he remarked that he did not find it hateful to others, rather, he recognised it as a text in conversation with earlier revelation, noting that some narratives within the Torah are expressed even more starkly.

That moment stayed with me. Because understanding does not emerge from slogans shouted across divides. It emerges from the harder discipline of listening, reading carefully and encountering one another in good faith.

Holy books are rarely the problem, nor are Sacred spaces. The problem begins when human beings allow fear, anger, or hatred to speak louder than conscience.

Which is why the normalisation of hatred in public life should alarm us all. Hatred does not confine itself to one community. It spreads. It feeds on fear. It creates an atmosphere in which suspicion replaces trust and anger replaces neighbourliness.

The damage is not only physical, though attacks on places of worship and intimidation on our streets are deeply serious. In recent months alone, dozens of mosques across Britain have reportedly suffered vandalism or threats, including the recent attack on a Muslim prayer space in Blackburn. Synagogues, likewise, continue to carry the heavy burden of security and vigilance.

Nor is hatred confined solely along religious lines. Recently, a Sikh woman was subjected to a horrific Islamophobic attack after being mistaken for Muslim; a reminder that hatred does not pause to distinguish carefully between communities. It simply searches for visible difference.

But the deepest damage is less visible. Communities retreat inward. Children inherit anxiety. Trust, the fragile foundation of any healthy society slowly erodes.

The spirit of Drumlanrig last year was built upon a simple but important idea: that people can disagree deeply and still remain agreeable. Coexistence does not require the erasure of difference. We do not need identical histories or identical opinions to recognise one another’s humanity and shared stake in society.

For some of us, Drumlanrig taught something deeper still: the power of shared human concern.

In recent months, both Jews and Muslims in Britain have experienced moments of fear and vulnerability. Yet I cannot recall a single major incident in which rabbis and imams did not immediately reach out to one another. When a Muslim prayer space was attacked, messages came from senior rabbis asking simply: “Are your people alright?” Likewise, after antisemitic incidents, Muslim leaders were quick to ensure that their Jewish neighbours did not feel isolated.

Those gestures matter more than many realise.

We cannot end every war or heal every wound in the world. But we remain responsible for the people living beside us. Compassion is not diminished because suffering exists elsewhere. On the contrary, it becomes more necessary.

And perhaps it is often women, especially mothers, who understand this most instinctively. They simply want their children to grow up without fear.

If we fail to strive for peace whilst we still can, we may eventually discover that peace is no longer ours to preserve.

History teaches this lesson repeatedly. Societies do not become stronger when minorities feel unsafe. They become more fractured, more anxious and ultimately more unstable. Families withdraw from public life. Businesses suffer. Young people inherit suspicion instead of confidence in one another.

There must therefore be moral consistency. Compassion loses its meaning when it becomes selective.

The future of Britain will not be secured by communities retreating behind walls of fear. It will be secured when people of different faiths and backgrounds recognise that they have far more to lose from division than from one another.

Our children are watching carefully. They will inherit what we choose to build: a society shaped either by fear and suspicion, or by courage, dignity and neighbourliness.