I am a British Muslim government minister, and I am proud to stand with British Jews

I have often spoken about how growing up in a gritty part of Glasgow to a working class Pakistani family, while attending one of Scotland’s foremost educational establishments on a scholarship, shaped my political thinking and outlook.  Part of that shaping was because at that school there were alongside me the largest number of Jewish pupils of any non-denominational school in Scotland.

My first foray into a religious institution other than a mosque was the beautiful Queen’s Park synagogue in Govanhill. I remember, as the only Muslim in my school class at the time, marvelling at the ability of my Jewish friends being able to attend Jewish assembly and using religious terminology comfortingly similar to my own. I also found solace in not being alone in needing to exercise “due diligence” when going to the school canteen, occasionally needing extra days off school for religious observance and sharing stories of little baby brothers going through similar “rites of passage” shortly after they were born.  I also remember the light bulb moment when my Quran teacher told me I was allowed to eat Kosher food. Being Jewish, being Muslim felt very easily symbiotic in those days.

As we grew up together I learned and drew inspiration from the Jewish story of migration (albeit at the time ignorant of the full horror of its necessity), realising it was about two generations ahead of my family’s own. I was entranced by what could be achieved over the course of only a few generations of effort and hard work. Unlike my parents, uncles and cousins who were shopkeepers and taxi drivers, my Jewish friends’ parents were doctors, lawyers and, dare I say it, even politicians. I also looked at envy with what was a Jewish community light years ahead of my own, in feeling comfortably Scottish, British and but confident enough to advocate for and then provide culturally and religiously sensitive health, social and pastoral care. I have always viewed services like Hatzola as the perfect blend of that tradition; of public service, integration and community, a bar to aspire to.

That is primarily why when I woke on Monday morning to the news of the vile antisemitic attack on the ambulances in Golders Green, it was with quite a unique sense of repulsion.  It felt a very personal attack on my own values and what I saw as a north star and exemplar of community service by the Jewish community. The attack was an attempt to instil fear, to intimidate and to erase parts of our country’s proud Jewish story.

To do it to ambulances and healthcare workers touched a particular nerve for me too. As a surgeon, I have proudly taken many medical handovers from Hatzola paramedics when they have safely and skilfully delivered sick patients to my care when I worked in the Royal Free Hospital. It was why, attending the Eid reception later that same day at Downing Street, I found little cause for celebration. The consensus in the room, from the Prime Minister, Mayor of London and Home Secretary down, was very much that none of us are safe until our Jewish brothers and sisters are safe.

The Jewish community of Britain, over multiple episodes, understands better than anyone how much intergenerational damage is done when the oldest hatred takes hold. That is why to me it was unsurprising yet still uniquely heartening to see members of the Jewish community individually, collectively and in print in this newspaper stand up for the right of Muslims to be just Muslim in Trafalgar square.

In my view, religious practice is interwoven into British society with a quite different flavour to our American and European cousins. We should cherish its uniqueness. We are a Christian country yes, but we have developed a singular comfort in our ability to wear religious belief openly so long as it does not infringe the rights of others. And over time this has become accepted as an inalienable right and a core British value. That evolution is in no small part due to the footprints consecutive Jewish and Muslim communities have placed on the sands of these isles over centuries. We children of Abraham certainly have much more that unites than divides us.

And more specifically, our shared historical trajectory in Britain, present day challenges and future offers, I believe, an opportunity in these times for a new natural allyship between British Jewish and British Muslim traditions and communities.  For instance, when some British Jews tell me they are questioning if they have a future in Britain despite living here for multiple generations, I genuinely feel their pain.  Because the same live dinner table conversations are occurring in Muslim households including in my own family, where I worry if my mixed race children (with very Old Testament sounding Arabic names) will feel as free as I have felt to practice their Muslim faith.

Allyship of course should not be simply about sympathy and avoiding difficult conversations, quite the opposite.  It should be an opportunity to deepen conversation, to embrace debate and to feel safe and comfortable engaging in it in each others’ spaces.

The Glasgow schoolboy in me who felt so enriched by Jewish friendship thinks that begins by rediscovering the ingredients of our symbiosis, intrinsic to being Jewish and Muslim in modern day Britain.  What better way to start than for this Scottish British Muslim MP to say loudly to his own constituents; that whenever British Jews are under attack in our country I will stand up and show up and they all should too.

Dr Zubir Ahmed is Labour MP for Glasgow South West