AVI YEMINI recounts his shift from liberal interfaith dialogue in the UK—marked by clashes with figures like Muhammad Hijab and Ali Dawah—to a harder stance after October 7th, citing escalating threats against Jews. He contrasts Tommy Robinson’s consistent anti-extremism focus with Jewish establishment’s rejection of him while embracing Douglas Murray, blaming class bias and political alignment. Platform bans (TikTok for mentioning "Zionism") and online debates exposing Quranic verses like striking unbelievers’ necks highlight the need for nuanced activism. Ultimately, his journey underscores how ideological battles demand realism over optimism to protect Jewish interests amid radical Islam’s politicized expansion. [Automatically generated summary]
Joseph Online: Jewish Refugee from the West00:06:51
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Welcome back to the Yamina Report, where you never know where our guests come from.
And this time it's confusing because this is somebody that I've met before in the United Kingdom, probably in my most cringy days, but has since moved to Israel.
There's a lot to unpack in this story.
Joseph, welcome to the show.
It's Joseph, Yellow, do you call yourself Yosef?
I'm pretty sure it's Joseph.
Did I get it wrong?
So it's Joseph online, but we had the question when we hit immigration.
Are you going to be a Yosef or are you going to be a Joseph?
And my wife pointed out I would regret if I remained Joseph.
So here I'm Yosef online.
I'm Joseph or Joseph the Zionist amongst certain circles.
Yes.
Well, look, there's a long history here because I remember the last time I met you, I think I saw you when you were hanging around the streets of actually Speaker's Corner around there, probably 2017, 18, if I'm not mistaken, around that period.
I've got to say, when I watch back some of those videos from that period, I can't help but curl up into a little ball and just feel, take in the embarrassment.
And a lot of that has to do with watching somebody like you nowadays and the way you handle almost the same sort of conversations in a much better way than I ever did.
So tell us firstly, before I get into that, because I do love the work that you're doing at the moment, I'm obsessed with a few people who do those.
I've been trying them out myself because you guys have inspired me, those kind of online debate discussions, whatever.
But before we get to that, I want to know what happened because the last time I saw you, like I said, was in Britain.
And now you've moved.
Why?
So I'll be frank.
The UK is not safe for Jews and particularly Jews who have any sort of profile.
There is not a day goes by when I don't receive a death threat.
I've had knives pulled on me, physical altercations, people trying to dox me.
And I've got a family and it's no place for the Jews.
with the trend of the west i think i'm one of the the early adopters i think many many jews will be following unfortunately yeah i think look maybe maybe i could even sorry i was just gonna say maybe you could even call me a jewish refugee from the west from the west It sounds crazy.
But listen, I understand I get these dramas here in Australia.
And I back then when I saw you, I was hanging around somebody like Tommy Robinson and in the Jewish community, especially within the establishment, he was like the worst person on the planet.
And they often even cuddled up to some of the people who today were a far greater threat, especially to the Jewish community than Tommy ever was.
But I experienced kind of that hate early on, especially from the same parts of the community in which the broader community is now finally waking up and realizing we're always a threat.
Has something shifted in the UK in that aspect?
Because back then, I don't think you, were you getting hate back then?
You were considered kind of moderate.
I was considered moderate, but a moderate Jew is still a Jew.
And so I was still getting hate even back then.
Even back then.
Okay.
Yeah.
And so I get the Tommy thing.
I get why the community was nervous.
I think they misjudged Tommy.
I think the most sensible strategy the Jewish community could have had in relation to someone like Tommy Robinson is if you don't agree with everything he says, then let Tommy be Tommy and you can go separate ways.
And that's kind of the attitude I took.
My strategy is I work with the same problem that Tommy works with.
I work with the same problem that you used to work with and still shine a huge spotlight on, and that is radical Islam.
My strategy is very different.
My strategy is extend the arm of peace to those Muslims that you can make peace with.
And those that want to raise the sword, then it's on.
But I believe one of the mistakes that people like Tommy Robinson make, people in this space make is they at times go to war with 2 billion Muslims and that's a stupid thing to do.
I would much rather make friends with and amplify voices in the Muslim community that we can coexist with.
From a Jewish perspective, if you were to tell my ancestors 500 years ago that the closest friends that the Jews have today are the Christians, they would look at you like you were crazy.
Because back then Christians were slaughtering us.
And today we could not ask for better, closer friends.
The Christians are often more pro-Jewish and more pro-Israel than many of the Jews are.
And I think we can get to the same place with Muslims.
So that's the strategy I've taken.
And I think it's where the community's gone wrong with someone like Tommy Robinson is they've just only focused on the negatives and not focused on the positives and created a division between these two communities that doesn't need to exist.
Look, Tommy, to be fair, is not coming at it from the Christian perspective.
And that's probably not the reason why they don't like Tommy.
It's the persona, the football hooligan, the Tommy Robinson, what the media have created of this person, in which the mainstream Jewish community establishment has always just latched onto that, hoping that if I don't know, I actually don't know.
I have theories as what they're hoping because, you know, even back then, the Jewish community leadership here in Australia used to put out statements against me.
And suddenly, fast forward to today, they're literally saying the exact same things that they condemned me for saying back in 2017.
Quds: A Sacred Misnomer00:08:42
And I kind of have a laugh with some of those leaders now going, oh, welcome to the party.
Isn't it weird that now you're finally saying what you were condemning me for saying?
Because they realize all that interfaith work that they've been doing was for nothing because the people that they did that interfaith work with just turned on them as soon as October 7 hit.
But the thing that's interesting to me is back then, I would have never looked at what you're doing and said, there's something in it.
I like it, right?
Because I just didn't believe it was possible.
It was actually for me, the Abraham Accords that changed something that I realized, hold on, you know, you don't just have to read the Quran, you know, from cover to cover and pick the bits that are clearly hating of me, because there is a chance here that people who do identify as Muslims are willing to extend a real hand of peace.
And I felt that in somewhere like the UAE.
Felt like, in fact, today, if I go to the UAE, it is one of the only places on the planet that I feel you can show a star of David without a worry.
In fact, many people will show you genuine respect for it.
I've been to places where Israel made peace with, as well, like Jordan and that, and you don't feel that.
You're not safe there if you show your star of David.
But in the UAE, it's genuine.
And that has changed it for me.
And that's why when I even engage with people on it, I don't argue with them on the religion like I used to.
You know, I did all these courses when I was younger to study the religion, how to debate the religion.
And I realized it's like all for nothing.
I'm not an expert in their religion.
I'm also like, I'm not a sheikh or an imam.
I'm not a, and I'm not a rabbi by any means.
So I don't actually understand both our religions that well.
I was just seeing what many people who practice their faith were saying about me doing with me.
So I was trying to find a point to it.
Now, now that I do see that there is a chance for peace, I watch what you do and I think it's fantastic because you explain to people who don't want your stuff.
How do you approach the discussion, not just extending a hand of peace, but how you approach the discussion when it comes to dealing with Muslims in general?
So I think Islam has been politicized heavily since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.
The Ottoman Empire was the last major caliphate that stood.
And we've seen a politicization of a religion which has taken many Muslims away from what their text actually says in the same way that Christianity went through a reformation.
And so quick history lesson.
Most Christian Zionists come from Protestantism.
They come from the, there was Christian preachers like Thomas Brightman who started reading the scripture and realizing that the Catholic Church had had a monopoly on interpretation and they began to think that returning the Jews back to Israel was actually part of biblical prophecy and they started working towards that end.
Those British Christians then went to America and exported that mentality there.
And you have the same seeds in Islam.
If you show Muslims their own scripture, they're shocked.
So for instance, one of the lines I use is how many times does the word Palestinian I've stolen that off you.
I've gotten into this.
I've used it so many times and it's such a good argument.
But you know what they all counter back with, which I find so bizarre?
They all say to me, what do they say to you when you when they don't know when they don't know that, but they go, but but they say something weird.
Do you know what it is?
I would imagine that the major answer they'll give you is that the land was.
And I'm like, how does that, how is al-Quds got to do anything?
So they're perfect, perfect.
So I'm going to teach you some Arabic.
So when they say that to you next time, the simple answer is the word Quds comes from holy.
Bayt al-Makdis from Beita Mikdash.
So it's coming, it's coming from the actual Jewish temple.
That's how they get the Quds.
Al-Quds, the holy city, comes from the temple standing there.
But if they actually trace that back to its roots, there's a verse in the Quran, and it goes, Yaqawmi, oh my people, enter.
So this is Moses talking to the children of Israel.
Enter.
Udhulu, al-Adal Mukudasa, the holy land, that Allah, that God has assigned to you.
So next time a Muslim tells you that it's Quds, say, yes, it is Quds.
And Quds gets its name because the Jewish temple stood there, Beit al-Makdis.
Beit al-Makdas comes from the Hebrew word Beitamikdash.
and Beit HaMikdash, and this whole land is holy, and it was assigned by God in your religion to the children of Islam.
Al-Quds itself is actually referring to, gets that name, it means holy city, which is from...
It means, yeah.
Okay, what does it mean?
What does it originally mean?
What does the word actually mean?
It comes from, so the land is called, so in Hebrew we'd say Eretz HaKodesh.
the holy land.
In Arabic, it's Adal Mukodasa.
And so it's the holy city, Ir HaKodesh Al-Quds.
The holy city, which is based on the fact that the Bet HaMikdash was there, what they call the...
that's actually really interesting i am going to use that one because like it just seems so ridiculous when they say it to me even without knowing all that because i'm like okay but that doesn't that where does it say palestinian Are you telling me that Muhammad didn't know what Palestinians were?
Why is the Quran so anti-Palestinian?
It also doesn't say Quds in Al-Quran.
It says Al-Aqsa, which is the furthest, and it's talking about the furthest mosque.
And there are Hadith and later commentaries that attribute the furthest mosque to the mosque that now stands on HaHabayat on the Temple Mount.
And it's not my place to come in and tell Muslims what their religion are.
Many people will argue that's not really.
Al-Aqsa Aqsa was actually in Mecca, sorry, in Arabia.
But that's an argument a lot of the people have.
I'm happy to work with their scripture because the way they interpret it, because the way they interpret it is Zionist.
The way that Muslims interpret their scripture is Zionist.
You just need to point it out to them.
So how do they get around it?
How does a Muslim scholar get around that?
So on the app we're using, apps like Omi TV, there's a very simple get around, and that is skip.
They hit the next button and they run.
But when you put this argument to somebody like Muhammad Hijab and his terrorist companions, what was his name?
What's his name?
Ali Dawah.
Ali Dawah.
Yes, the Dawah boys.
How do they get around that argument?
So Muhammad Hijab would first have to hide his muata wife, his temporary hotel wife, which is a huge scandal.
Yeah, yeah.
He's got multiple wives, which is I do follow some of that stuff just out of, I don't know, it's like a train wreck.
You can't look away, yeah.
And so once he's finished hiding his wives, his secret wives, he would probably say that the children of Israel then are not the Jews that are in Israel today.
Yeah, I've heard that again.
And it's easily refuted because you go to the Quran again, and in the time of Muhammad, the Jews of that period are mentioned in the Quran.
And it says that the Jews should be judged.
The Jews should judge from their scripture, from the Torah, from the Torah.
And so those Jews that lived in the Hejaz in Arabia then, many of them live in Israel.
Most of them went either to Yemen or to Israel or to Iraq.
And some of those families are preserved.
They've even preserved the surnames in Israel today.
And so we can very easily draw a line from those Jews to the Jews that live in Israel today.
So they have to come up with a whole Megillah.
They have to come up with a whole script of how the Jews that Allah promises the land to are not the Jews that live in Israel today.
The Jews in Israel today because are Europeans, they're fake Jews.
Malik And The Jews00:09:25
I live here.
I'm the whitest guy in every room.
We're a very, very diverse people.
And most Jews that live in Israel never stepped foot in Europe and that ancestors never stepped foot in Europe.
Yeah, well, I always find that conversation interesting when it comes to every expert now on the street who knows everything about Israel and are convinced that Israel is a European colony and everybody's European in Israel.
And they're literally looking at me in my face and telling me that Israel is a European country.
It's a country that was colonized by Europeans only.
And it's just everybody.
They just assume everyone's white there.
But we've hashed that out a lot in that.
I guess I wanted to go back to the period of time that I knew, that I met you.
And I vaguely remember, I think that horrific debate I did at in Speaker's Corner that day with Ali Dawa and Muhammad Hijab.
I think you were in the crowd then.
And I'm just wondering, because you were, I think you were always, I don't know if you were arguing or you were debating Islam with, were you debating Islam with them then?
So I'll be absolutely candid.
I went to the park over a decade ago, maybe closer to 15.
I'm old and I've been going there a long time.
And when I first started going, there were no cameras.
And I went there as an interfaith brother.
I was like, look, guys, your religion says X.
This is what I was getting at.
What the history of it was for you.
And back then, every Muslim in the park, they'd see me, you're so big hugs.
There was like nothing but love.
And then somebody brought a camera and started filming.
Then another person brought a camera.
And suddenly the atmosphere changed and it became much more hostile.
And so I became much more confrontational.
And this is probably after you.
So you came in the in-between period where it used to be all love and peace.
And isn't it amazing?
We all descend from Ibrahim, Elihi Salam, Abraham, the patriarch.
And then it started getting more toxic.
And then you came and Tommy came and boom, it exploded.
And you guys tarnished it for me because suddenly I'm probably going to be number one as well.
In fairness.
Look, we were accidentally exposing what it actually was.
Go on.
But more than that, you actually, you were ahead of the curve.
I remember one time there was a guy there called, what was his name?
Abu was it Abu Ismail?
I forgot his name.
But an extremist.
And every time he saw me, I mean, this guy looked big.
He looked like he was, I mean, he definitely was.
He was lifting.
He was a fighter.
When Tommy came, you'll remember him.
He was the guy that had the chain, the metal in his gloves.
There was a whole thing about him.
I vaguely remember this, yeah.
I think maybe it was something al-Fasi, maybe Abu Ismail Al-Fasi, the Persian.
Oh, he's a Persian.
was a sheer every time he's yeah i know he's he was a a sheer that apostated to So they're always the most fun to revert.
Well, I was going to get to that with you in a second, but go on.
And so the so this guy, every time he saw a big hug, you said, I love you, Khabibi.
That's incredible.
And then one time I noticed a comment under one of my videos and he'd forgotten he'd given me his Islamic name.
And because he obviously had his normal name and then he had his jihadi name.
And it was like, Zionist, your days are coming.
And I was like, bro, you told me this is your name.
I know who it is.
You snake.
Your hugs and kisses in the park.
And then online, you're sending me death threats.
And so you saw the reality that optimists like me were unable to differentiate because I fell into the trap that most liberals fell into.
And I say Tommy Robinson fell into the other camp, and maybe you're a bit the other way.
So I would cluster all Muslims together and say we can make peace with all of them.
They're all the same.
It's just this big homogenous block of Muslims that if only you speak to them correctly, they'll see it beyond their bigotry, their prejudice, and they'll be your best friend.
And I say on the other side, the activists who were on the counter jihad side, they did the same, but we can't make peace with anyone, any of them.
And in between was the reality.
So say someone like Tommy, I think one of the reasons why Tommy is toxic to the Jewish community today, because I have a similar background.
I'm from a working class community in the north of England.
He's from a working class community in the south.
And he said things that if someone said to them about Jews, it was beyond the pale.
I remember one time he tweeted, he called Muslims Musrats.
This is a working class football casual.
And so he's not going to be as eloquent.
Maybe he's not going to be as sophisticated and nuanced in his thinking as a kid as he would be as an adult.
And I think the Jewish community falls into the trap of viewing him by maybe things he said 20 years ago rather than what he's saying today.
And I think that's the disconnect there.
And to bring it back to us in Speaker's Corner, I think people like you and Tommy were just, okay, this is a problem.
This is Islam.
Everyone's the same.
And I was like, no, guys, you're wrong.
Muslims are lovely.
You just have to speak to them correctly.
And the truth was in between the two.
There's some, the Islamist, the extremists, I don't like the term Islamist.
They don't use it.
We use it.
But the extremists.
Well, honestly, it's just a way to get around censorship, to be fair.
Completely, completely.
It's a word that describes Muslims that I don't like.
And you cannot define one because is it a Muslim that supports the caliphate?
Well, all Muslims support the caliphate in theory.
Is it a Muslim that wants to follow Sharia?
Well, all Muslims should be following Maria.
Well, to me, it's just a Muslim that is not willing to ignore the parts of his faith which are obviously abhorrent.
So he's willing.
And that's the argument that Tommy Robinson has always made.
It's like, you can be a good Muslim.
It just means you're not a real Muslim.
Like you're not actually practicing what it's telling you or what it says in the scripture.
And I know that the scripture itself is so contradicting, like probably most scriptures.
The difference is that there are so many more of them that act out on it.
But this goes back to that conversation that we said before, that there is clearly a progressive part of the Muslim community that is willing to ignore the hateful parts towards us and want to build, you know, build bridges and, you know, want to focus on the good parts of the Quran that talk about the people of the book, not the ones that's telling them to kill us.
So I guess you have that in any faith, but it's a bit more pronounced in Islam just because it's so blatant.
And it's probably, like people ask me, why do they hate us?
I'm like, it's probably also chronological.
Like we had, in the Torah, like who do we hate?
A Malik.
But they never existed after us.
They were always before us.
So if there was a Malik today, would some nutcage settler groups want to actually hunt and kill them?
100%.
If we knew that, like any ultra-Orthodox would want to kill them.
That would be, it's written in the Torah.
So chronologically, the Muslims came last.
Islam came last, and their enemy was us as Jews.
We just still exist.
So the hate is still there.
I can understand that.
Yeah, completely.
And it's more than that.
Imagine if the Jewish religion depended on a Malik recognizing their religion.
It would be even more so.
So the issue we face is Islam.
And it was the same with Christianity, Sufi.
You struggled to find anti-Semitism in lands that weren't Christian or Muslim.
And though where you do find it, they were influenced by Christian and Muslim anti-Semitism.
And the reason for that is the Jews rejected Jesus as the Messiah.
So that was a problem for some Christians historically.
we were accused of killing Christ, killing God.
That's a major, a major charge.
And in Islam, we rejected Muhammad as the prophet.
We to this day, we say Musa as a Rasul, we say Moses is a messenger, but not Muhammad.
And so the rejection, and with Islam, it's even more.
If Islam says it came to affirm the Jewish tradition, it came to affirm what Moses said.
It came to affirm Judaism.
And the Jews rejected.
And that causes resentment and anti-Semitism.
And so, yeah, you're absolutely right.
We would have a very different relationship to religions that came after us, that we were born out of, if those religions existed today.
But they don't.
Those people don't exist.
And so we don't suffer that same problem.
I would say when it comes to violent sentiment in scripture, you can make the same arguments against the Torah and the Old Testament that you could make against the Quran.
But our escape from that is that the people it's talking about no longer exists.
Islamic Community's Strategic Response00:15:33
But that's exactly what I just said.
They just no longer exist.
No doubt, 100%.
I grew up ultra-Orthodox family.
I know for sure if there was still a Malik today, which is why the Islamic community was so smart in jumping on the Amalek comment from Bibi Netanyahu, because they just wanted to tie that genocidal kind of language from the Torah to the aftermath of October 7th.
So I think it goes over most people's heads, but anyone that knows knows.
Yeah, yeah.
And also, though, knowing the context matters as well, because the way I view words like Amalek and Idom are almost like the way that when Ghazal use these terms today, when Jews use these terms today, we use them in the same way that liberals use the term Nazi.
How many times is someone that's described as a Nazi actually a Nazi?
And with the Nazis, like we had the biggest war that the West has ever experienced to end this regime.
When you call someone a Nazi because they're eating meat, do you really want to end them in the same way?
Do you want to carve on dressed?
Being on the receiving end of in real life of people chanting Nazi, I wouldn't be surprised, especially after what I've seen in the last couple of years.
I wouldn't be surprised if they would want to see a similar end to me in the way that the Nazis, what the Nazis did and how we dealt with the Nazis at the end of it.
Let me ask you.
So you're saying in that period, so that I did see you, because I was thinking about this with my brother.
My brother's a massive fan of yours.
Less of mine, more of yours.
And we were talking about it.
And I go to him, I really wonder.
So now it's interesting because you told me the progression for you, going from a liberal to somebody, from a liberal to a realist.
Where were you in that period that, so that day on Speaker's Corner, I don't know if you remember it, but that day on Speaker's Corner, which you were, do you remember being there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I remember it.
Remember it well.
So that day on Speaker's Corner, where were you on your journey?
And how did you view that?
How were you?
Because you didn't get involved in the conversation.
You said hi to me and you said hi to me a couple of times.
Like in that period, I was coming to London, to England a lot.
So every time I did see you, you came and said hi and whatever.
I really want to know how you actually viewed what was happening.
How I perceived you, how I perceived.
Not just me.
And what was going on at that time was I recognize there is a real threat of jihad.
There's a very, I mean, Muslims, extremists have been killing Jews for a long time.
And you have to be naive to not recognize that.
But I thought some people would take it.
So I recognize that Muhammad Hijab, Ali Dawa, at that point, I thought we could still work with them.
So I remember at one point there was a call to ban prayer at Speaker's Corner because you're not allowed to pray in public.
And I was going to gather a minion of 10 Jews to pray in support of the Muslims being able to pray there because I thought that was a violation of freedom of speech.
With hindsight, I recognize that was a strategy of dominance rather than, and as a minority, as a much smaller minority, which is what we would from the Tommy camp.
Yeah, exactly.
And if I'd have brought an army of 10 Jews to pray next to the Muslims, all we would have been doing was propping up and supporting an assertion of Islamic dominance in Speaker's Corner, which would have been a naive thing to do.
So I definitely made mistakes.
But likewise, I think you guys made mistakes as well, which is why we recognize the value that we were both bringing.
But at the time, we didn't really work together so much because I would Tommy's the best example.
I think Tommy has done more to combat.
And I've been saying this for years.
It's not the post that Elon R. Trump.
Tommy did more than anyone else in the UK to combat the grooming games.
When they were coming over with the bodies of dead British soldiers, it was Tommy that was jumping over the barrier and giving Al-Mujaharun a slap.
Yeah.
And so for me, Tommy, I always said he did a lot of good, but then he'd always go too far.
And I think that's, it was, they were, the counter jihad type would take it too far and the liberals wouldn't take it far enough.
And so I would mistake enemies as friends.
And I wouldn't be able to differentiate between a more moderate in terms of their political outlook, a more moderate Muslim and one who would stab me in the back given half the chance.
And it's not just you.
I think the examples are far more, and not even just the Jewish community.
I think it's far-reaching.
You look at even social media platforms.
They listen to people like Muhammad Hijab and Ali Dawah in their campaigns to have people like Tommy Robinson kicked off.
And then fast forward to October 7, they were preaching far worse, and still till today, their content is far more direct, dangerous, hateful, all of that than Tommy ever was.
Tommy was probably, I think, Tommy didn't try dress it up as anything.
He would, yeah, probably the worst part of it is, and it's something that I can recognize in myself as well, is back then is just kind of say it in the most outrageous way, just to say it in the most outrageous way.
Whereas today, you can actually just have, but that means the conversation ends there.
You can't actually go further than that because already the person is super defensive because you just call them essentially a name, right?
But what they do is, I feel is far more dangerous because they don't dress it up as anything.
They pretend like they're actually, you know, good, decent, moral people.
But they're actually, when you're listening to what they're saying, it is far more insightful.
They're inciting people in a far more dangerous way than Tommy ever did.
And they were still, not only did they never lose any platforms, they were paid to do it.
Like if you look on YouTube and that, these guys made big money while they were the leaders and the Jewish community got behind their campaigns to basically de-platform people like Tommy Robinson, who I feel in all this period of time, think what you want about Tommy Robinson, he's been the most consistent.
Yeah, I would agree.
Actually, no, I don't think he's been consistent.
I do think he's matured.
Otherwise, I don't know.
No, no, but I think the true, but you can say that about me.
Maturing doesn't mean he didn't change his fundamental beliefs.
You look at so many people in this space and you see, you know, the best example is like the Christian, the Christ is king group of fake Christians, not like the real Christians that are actually our friends.
We're talking about the ones that, you know, publicly go and baptize and then the next day they're full-blown anti-Semites.
Those guys, if you look at them five years ago, like Cantersollens is a great example.
You look at her 2017.
When did they move the embassy to Jerusalem?
Was it 2017?
Let's say yes.
Yeah, it was around 2017, 2018.
It was around then, right?
And she was there, part of it, championing it, making all the doing all the talking points against herself, Canton Solan's today, right?
All the same talking.
Nothing changed.
But she shifted her political views because it suited her, right?
It suited whatever her grift was.
Whereas when you look at somebody like Tommy Robinson, I always knew it when I spoke to him and I was friends with him because I could see it was he was he had every reason to turn against the Jewish community.
The Jewish establishment did not help.
They called the police on him at one point at the rally in London since October 7th.
They literally called the police on him.
So that guy had more incentive to turn on the Jewish community than anyone, but didn't because his ideology was always consistent.
His delivery has changed and matured.
But I think his ideology, his belief in what he witnessed happen in Luton was always the same problem.
He's always pinpointed the same problem.
So I'd agree.
There's definitely a lot of consistency there.
I think most people, so I think Candace turned on the Jews when the Jews called out, I think the first thing she made, she went to the UK and she made a conversation, a faux pas when somebody asked her, should they rebrand nationalism?
And she said that the Austrian painter, as the right call him, the far right, the Austrian painter was a nationalist.
And if it wasn't a nationalist, he was an internationalist.
If he hadn't invaded other countries, it would have been fine.
And so Jews took on Bridge and said, well, well, he kind of killed six million of us.
And that's a bad thing.
And that was the start of her journey.
So when the Jews, Jewish community said, you can't say that, her response was gradually to get more and more anti-Semitic.
Whereas Tommy, I think you're absolutely right.
The Jewish community has not been a friend of his, but he has been a friend of the Jewish community.
And he's been absolutely consistent in that.
I'd be interested to know if he's changed in respect to how he views Muslims.
Because I can remember him going to Manchester and looking around and saying every one of these people are enemy combatants.
Would he still feel that way?
We live in Israel.
I live in Israel.
And there are Muslims that sacrifice their lives to keep my family safe in the IDF.
When they join the IDF, they swear in on the Quran.
And He's definitely been consistent, Tommy, with his view of the Jewish community, with his view of radical Islam, with his view of extremism within the Muslim community in the UK, with his view on the demography and how changing demographics impacts the indigenous population.
I think all of that he's been consistent with.
My question would be, has his view of Muslims matured?
Or would he still view everybody living in a Muslim neighborhood in Manchester or wherever as an enemy combatant?
I think that's – honestly, even back then, I thought it often was hyperbole.
It was just like a way of delivering a message saying, if you actually believe this, then you are an enemy combatant because you're believing this scripture that says that.
I don't – I think I was around him enough on the streets day to day to see anyone would come up to him.
So many Muslim lads would come up to him for photos and, you know, they weren't even necessarily fans.
They just wanted to like show the boys in the WhatsApp group.
Look, I got Tommy Robinson on a photo and he would make a video for him.
Like he, he did, it wasn't, it's not like a blind hate for a person.
It was always about, when I say consistent, it was always about the threat, the threat that's underlying everything.
And that if we can't actually talk about it, even with this person in front of me, then that's a problem.
Do you, so going back to that day, so how did you view, because you were watching that interaction, which I'm super embarrassed about, right?
How did, how did it look like?
Well, my view is very simple.
From my view, I love seeing brave Jews, particularly in Chutzlaris.
In Israel, there's no shortage of Jewish heroes.
You walk down the street here and you recognize that this is a nation of warriors, a nation of warriors.
On my street, I live on one road.
Two people have fallen in the war.
And I'm not, I'm just in an ordinary street.
You walk down and there's people who've been trained to defend our people, armed and totally willing to sacrifice their lives to save their neighbors, their families.
And that fills you with real pride.
The Jew of today, certainly here, is brave.
But the Jew of Chutzlaris, the Jew outside of Israel, they're terrified.
And so when you see a Jew that goes and confronts those that speak out against our people and proudly does so with a kippah, remember you wore kippah when you entered to speak this kibbutz?
I used to wear it.
Mashallah, brother.
I used to wear a daft because they used to call me a Nazi.
That was my prop.
It was my prop that the only people that were offended by it were liberal Jews because every Orthodox Jew I knew were just happy that I wasn't walking four Amos without it.
They didn't care why.
And so for me, I saw that as positive.
I would have disagreed or I did disagree with the delivery, but the action itself, nothing but respect for.
No, no, I get that.
I'm genuinely intrigued because I know I look back at it and I wish I had the chance again to do it in a much, much calmer way because I think the best antidote to that group is actually staying calm, actually being cool, not falling into their escalation, let them look like the nutcases where I almost fell into it.
I know it's hard.
Like when you look at the video, it's hard to see that you're actually just surrounded by a mob of them and like the adrenaline dump you get and like this guy is towering over you.
But put that all aside, like I would have loved to be, I never did that.
Like I was never consciously calm in any kind of interaction.
That's what I regret is not being come, but if we apply what you're saying, I understand what you're saying, but if you apply that to someone like Rabbi Shmuley, I look at that and I think that guy generates anti-Semitism.
But if I'm applying your logic now, you would say, well, no, he's actually, this guy's so brave.
He's walking up and he's literally picking fights with innocent people, but he's also picking fights with genuine anti-Semites.
Too bad at the end of their interaction.
I sometimes, like even with Candace Hollands, I watch it and I think, gosh, I can feel myself siding with her.
So I can't imagine somebody who doesn't feel strongly about this issue not being a bit persuaded by her position.
So I don't know if necessarily that logic would follow through there.
Does it like, do you think Rabbi Shmuley is a good example of somebody that's brave in Khutzar?
It's that you'd be proud of?
So I think with any activism, you have to know who your target audience is and the message that will resonate.
And so your audience when you were confronting Ali Dawah wasn't Ali Dawah, it wasn't the Muslims, the Speaker's Corner.
Racist Protests and Target Audiences00:11:50
You were speaking to working class, or not even working class, just British people, Australian people, ordinary Western people.
And so the message that you were saying will have resonated.
It did resonate.
That's why you grew in popularity in the way that you did.
It's why Tommy exploded.
The way you described it was you need to be hyperbolic to get that momentum.
But that's because you understood which message would resonate with the target audience.
I think, and I don't like to speak ill of another Jew, so I'm not going to speak ill of Rabbi Batek.
But I think one of the traps he falls into is he's speaking to an audience that doesn't exist anymore.
And so you see when he's on with Piers Morgan.
What audience what he's doing liberals from the liberals from the 90s, liberals from the 90s.
So when he's speaking to Muhammad Hijab, and Muhammad Hijab's going hard at him, Rabbi Batek's complimenting Islam, complimenting Muslims, and his message isn't going to land with anyone on the left.
His message isn't going to land with any ordinary Americans.
His message isn't going to land with the Jewish community and it isn't going to land with the Muslim community.
So it's about understanding who your target audience is.
So with the content I make, I've got two audiences.
One are Jews.
Jews like to see all the Zionists, not just Zionists, people who like Israel, because they like to see someone who can hold their ground in these conversations.
They find it inspiring, uplifting.
And the second audience for me is Muslims.
So I'm very careful.
I've got a video going out at the moment.
Spoiler alert.
But I approach Muslims and I say, I've heard this beautiful line from the Quran.
Can I sing it for you?
And they're like, yeah.
And so I sing the verse and I say, can you tell me what the words are?
It sounds so heavenly and beautiful.
And they're like, and the verse I sing to them is, when you meet the kuffa, strike the neck, which is like a very problematic.
And I'm doing that to highlight the, as you were saying, how do Jews, how do Muslims interpret problematic scripture?
And so what I'm hoping for in this exchange, I haven't finished it yet because I'm going out and I kind of have an idea of how people are going to respond.
I'm hoping I encounter one sheikh, one knowledgeable Muslim who's able to give a very good idea.
You're just going out, you're going out physically or you mean online?
Just on these web chats, on these video chats.
And so there actually are some knowledgeable Muslims on there.
But with that, you've got to be for me.
I've got to be very careful how I present that message because I don't want to alienate Muslims.
I want to show them here's why Jews have a problem with this scripture.
And here's a way that you, as a Muslim, listening to this wise sheik can reconcile this verse with the Jewish community today.
And so you have to know who your audience are.
You have to, and maybe someone like Rabbi Batayek, he's speaking to an audience that doesn't exist anymore.
That would be the polite way I would try and deal with that.
It's a very polite way.
I can tell you right now, if I came across him, I would probably, I know I say that I would go in and calmly.
That's the new me from compared to 2017, but I think with Shmule Batek, I would probably get a little bit rolled up.
He was doing a tour here only a few weeks ago for the Jewish community.
He started in Sydney of how the irony of this tour, it was called How to Combat Anti-Semitism Effectively.
And I'm just, you're giving that because unless you're getting up on a stage and saying, do everything the opposite to what I do, there's nothing you could teach us.
And, you know, it became quite clear that nobody in Australia was seeing he got booed out of synagogues and he never ended up coming to Melbourne because I was planning to have a chat to him when he got to Melbourne.
And when I saw that all got kind of cancelled, fizzled out and cancelled, I emailed him, but he hasn't gone back to me.
I just, I just, to me, I feel like there's so many times, even me as just one content creator that actually lands on the streets, I feel like I'm picking up the pieces of someone like that.
And I've never experienced that before.
There's, of course, there's lefty Jews that I disagree with most of their politics on most issues.
And on Israel, we somewhat agree, you know, to varying degrees, especially since October 7.
I think everyone's sort of shifted to a place where we can mostly agree outside of Israel.
I know in Israel, there's more politics.
You know, I've got one brother that goes to anti-Bibi protests and my mum goes to pro-Bib protests.
But outside of Israel, like, we don't even really, it's not really about whether Bibby or not Bibi.
It's about finishing this war.
What was I about to ask?
I wanted to ask you more about the British establishment, the Jewish community establishment there.
Because I always looked at you as like a British Jew.
And obviously now you've moved.
I think most people still perceive you as that in a way.
What was your relationship with the Jewish community in England?
With the Jewish establishment, the Jewish community I'm part of, I was part of.
I'm a synagogue attending, lived in the Jewish community, relatively well known.
With the establishment, there was almost a bit of a Tommy thing.
So I think one of the reasons the British establishment has rejected Tommy, but accepted someone like Douglas Murray is class.
Douglas Murray says the same thing in a posh accent.
They're friends, but that's the funniest part to it.
Like they were always friends back then.
They were saying exactly the same thing.
One did it in a posh accent, one said Musrat.
Yeah, and I think that's one of the issues.
I think I suffered the same.
The Jewish establishment is, they tend to come from a similar pool of people.
And I wasn't in that pool.
I was raised in a working class village in the north of England.
I was raised on Marks and Engels.
We put marks on our conflicts in the morning.
Very different experience.
Didn't go to university.
Very rough around the edges.
I was on the street campaigning against jihadis while they were trying to knock on the doors of Whitehall to make a change.
And so the Jewish establishment never accepted me.
I was invited and I still am invited to their annual meeting.
Have regular meetings to discuss how we approach certain strategies with anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism in the UK.
Because I've been, I've been around a while.
I founded the campaign against anti-Semitism.
I founded the Israel Advocacy Movement.
So I've set up serial organizations that have gone on to do good things in the Jewish community.
So, wait, the campaign against anti-Semitism, that organization you were part of founding that.
Is that what you said?
I founded it, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
That's the because that's the organization that ended up kicking Tom or calling the police on Tommy, isn't it?
So, you're friends with that.
Are you friends with the guys that run that or not?
I'm friends with the guys that run them.
Um, I'm friends with like most organizations, but particularly that one because I founded it, but I have nothing to do with this and had nothing to do with the no, no, I know, I know, but I'm just, I just wonder if they regret like they realize what they did that day was wrong, or do they step?
Do you think they stand by it?
I can't speak for them personally.
I think they made a mistake if they were the ones.
I don't know if they were the ones that called the police, but if they were, I mean, I don't know how much I trust the police.
If it wasn't them, then you would think they would say they didn't, but they didn't.
They never what I would if it was the campaign, I'd say that was a mistake.
I think if you have an issue with Tommy Oris' message and you're a Jew in the UK, just don't ignore it.
Don't make an enemy of someone that's a friend.
Don't make an enemy of someone that's friend.
If someone's showing up to your march to express solidarity with your cause in terms of there is rising anti-semitism in the UK, if you don't want them there, fine, but don't don't make an enemy of them.
I think it was a stupid mistake.
If it was then, but especially today, when there is clearly grassroots support today compared to a few years ago, there is clearly grassroots support for Tommy Robinson within the Jewish community.
There's always been grassroots support for Tommy Robinson in the Jewish community.
The Jewish establishment and the Jewish community are two very different functions.
And the campaign against anti-Semitism is actually a disruptor.
The Jewish establishment don't necessarily see it as an integral path.
So my issue with the Jewish establishment is most people that are involved at the higher levels are more interested.
And by the way, just to clarify, I'm pretty sure I remember them putting a statement against Tommy Robinson coming on X at the time.
Because that became the British guy that lives in Israel that was friends with Tommy.
I know him.
Brian of London.
Brian of London.
Yeah.
I remember him fighting with them publicly on X. Anyways, yeah.
So I can almost 100% sure.
And I know where the temptation comes from to do that.
And it's, yeah.
So the establishment, but I think the Jewish establishment that's like at that level is most interested in, and it's sensible, is making sure that their values align with the government, with the because as a minority, you don't want to be in opposition to whatever the zeitgeist is, whatever the government is.
And so the government has always been very hostile, be it a right-wing or left-wing government, to Tommy Robinson.
And so I think most in leadership positions in the Jewish community see it as dangerous to align themselves with that.
And you kind of see that you see that.
You saw in the riots recently, they just are two-tier policing.
Anyone that so much as sneezed at one of those protests got a six-year jail sentence.
And so there is a level of toxicity.
So in the gangs of Muslims with big bats were told to just put down where they said, yeah, leave your weapons in the mosque, was it?
It was like some insanity.
Insane.
And so I think the Jewish leadership is very fearful of associating with anything toxic.
And I think, rightly or wrongly, most, a huge section of Britons, particularly those of the more educated classes, see Tommy as a racist.
He's not a racist.
I mean, you could say he's got prejudices against Muslims, but I think it's hard to say he's a racist when some of his best friends are.
As an example, a darker skinned Jew.
I know people say that, like, I have a friend, but he's genuinely the least racist guy.
And the funny thing is, he knows, like, I talk about a lot on my podcast at the moment because it's, because this has become the conversation since October 7th, but like, my own stepkids are Muslims.
And Tommy's always known, knows what, like, he's, he does not, it's not an issue about the person as an ethnicity, which is what essentially defines you as that racist.
He has a problem with the ideology and all those things that you mentioned before, what it's doing to the demographic and all that.
You're what we call a baultuva, I think, in the, in the Jewish community.
Moving Between Faiths00:04:29
And what I find interesting is when you talk to Muslims about Islam, I can see you actually are seriously knowledgeable on intricate parts and specific.
You've clearly like studied up and honed in on certain points so that you can discuss them from an educated perspective.
But what I do notice is that when you talk like Arabic or even Hebrew, I can hear that you're like somebody that didn't come from speaking in that tongue.
Your Hebrew is and I can even.
I can even resonate with the Muslims that I see you sometimes debating online, where they're like they're so confused because well, first you've got big Zionists, then you're, you're reading or you're reciting by, by heart, a part of the Quran which they know is true, they couldn't recite it, but you've got this little twang in your accent which doesn't really make sense.
Um, how did you so?
How did you go firstly to become a religious Jew, then educating yourself on that, and then going to study Islam to be able to actually debate it to a point where you're actually reciting the Quran by heart?
And did the first part help you get to the second part?
Um yeah, so my journey is like.
I think I was a.
I was an early adopter of Wokeism, and so we were.
Our only Jewish identity was Anti-Semitism.
My father couldn't tell you the difference between a Hasidic Jew and a reformed Jew.
Yeah, but the National Front was a Neo-Nazi organization in the UK, still smashed our window, still gave us hell, and so our only identity was one of Anti-Semitism.
Now, for those that aren't Jewish, the Jewish contribution to humanity has been phenomenal.
We, we helped shape the the, the values that the West is based on.
We've contributed to the sciences, the arts, etc.
And so there's so much to be proud of as a Jew.
And yet the only identity we had was anti-semitism, and so I would clash with the National FUND, I would clash with the BMP.
Back in the day, and I realized that the only place that Jews would be safe is here, where I am today Israel, and so I thought, i've got, i've got a little um, I've got to learn the language.
The only place that taught the language in the north of England where I came from was a Reformed synagogue.
So Reformed Jews are Jews that don't see the Torah and the oral law as necessarily divine, but they still keep many of the traditions in, albeit slightly modified form often.
And so I started with them and that introduced me to the religion.
I encountered a philosopher called Maimonides and I started reading A Guide for the Perplexed, where he lays out why one should be monotheist if you're coming from a more philosophical or academic background.
It resonated with me.
And so I started becoming Torah observant.
And it was, I then thought, okay, I lived in a village, a pit village in the north of England.
So there were ex-miners and farmers.
That's all that lived there.
And there wasn't a synagogue.
There wasn't kosher food.
There wasn't anything.
So I moved to London to live a kosher and observant lifestyle.
And I encountered anti-Muslim bigotry in the Jewish community.
I thought, okay, I'm going to fix this.
And so I launched a website called Judaismislam.com, which promoted the commonalities between the two faiths.
And I started studying Islam and Judaism.
And that put me in contact with the Muslim community.
I thought, boy, if I thought it was bad in the Jewish community, the prejudice against Jews and the Muslim community is a little, they've turned it up a notch more than we have.
And so I realized that was the real issue.
And so I launched a campaign against anti-Semitism.
And so my journey came from one of interfaith and coexistence.
And can't we all just get along?
And yeah, and that's how I became more versed in God, relatively well versed in the Quran and then the Sunnah, as well as my own tradition.
So you actually started, that's incredible.
I was wondering, how did you end up?
Banned on TikTok00:06:48
Because you sound like a shiver boy when you approach the conversation.
And the thing that baffled me is that it was clear that you didn't grow up with it.
Like I could imagine my rabbi brother, Chabad rabbi brother, just, you know, he would have all the hand signals when he's talking to these guys.
I don't know how relatable that is.
And then we take that.
I don't know if that's relatable to Muslims.
No, it isn't.
Yeah, it's a great story.
I love it.
Anyways, where can people find you when they want to see these, especially those who have never seen it?
I encourage you to watch it.
On all social media.
Yeah, if you want to watch Neo-Nazis Pull Guns on Me, if you want to watch Jihadi's Threaten to Set Me on Fire, if that's the kind of content that flows your butt, then you can find me on the Israel Advocacy Movement.
And you can find that on any platform except, I know we are on Mumble, we just never post, but Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, still, you know.
Do you have problems with TikTok?
That was one that I just had the most surreal experience with TikTok a few weeks ago.
I've only just recovered my account.
So my logo was IAM for the Israel Advocacy Movement.
My name was Israel underscore advocacy.
It still is, my username.
And my bio said, we do Zionism.
My bio got a community violation.
They deleted my name.
They deleted my bio and they deleted my profile picture because I said we do Zionism.
Now, the insane thing about that is a Zionist is anyone who supports a Jewish state.
Habibi, if you support Palestine and Israel coexisting alongside each other, you're by definition a Zionist, but that was a violation of TikTok's terms.
And they literally nearly took down my entire account.
It was a battle to get my username back.
So, yeah, I do have problems with TikTok.
I lost my account there years ago, and I just some actually some Jewish kids started up a new one for me.
And so I've just started being posing, and now they've got this new thing where you can do content, it can do content checks for you.
But I just like I was banned from nothing.
Like Facebook, I remember banned me for hate speech or whatever back then in that period we were talking about.
But TikTok banned me for like just ridiculous, automated content.
Like it just, nobody could watch the content and say it was hateful.
It wasn't even about any of this type of stuff, Islam, Judaism.
It's nothing to do with that.
It was about my life was the last post that got banned for hate.
And I just don't know how people succeed on there now.
Although now they've got that new button where it checks your content.
It's really easy to succeed on TikTok.
You just convert to Islam.
Oh, well, that's every platform.
That's every platform now.
And that's why so many people are doing it.
Converting to Islam gets you converting to Islam and throwing in some anti-Jew, either direct, hateful slurs or even just like an undercurrent of anti-Semitism.
Depends how quickly you want to rise on those platforms.
I mean, it's worked for Sneeko and it's worked for Andrew Tate.
Oh my God.
Andrew Tate, that's a whole nother discussion.
That's probably one thing I vehemently disagree with Tommy Robinson about, but I guess they're two loot and boys.
And just like no one will convince Tommy Robinson to hate the Jews, they also won't convince him to hate his buddy from school that he absolutely thinks is the fakest Muslim on the planet because he's not an idiot and he knows that Tommy, that Andrew Tate doesn't let alone doesn't even know anything about Islam, let alone practice anything for real.
It was just like his desperate attempt at a point where he got cancelled to not end up like Tommy Robinson.
And you've got to give it to Andrew Tate.
He was kind of right.
He was right.
He picked up billions of followers and he upped his anti-Semitism.
And even when the Muslims realized he wasn't real, he continued with the anti-Semitism because they'll still play along as long as you do that.
It's a wild, wild world we live in.
Mate, thank you so much for joining us today.
I appreciate everything you do.
I'll continue watching.
I encourage anyone, all of you viewers out there, go check out some of the content.
It's stuff that I put it on while I'm in the sauna and I just listen to the debate and I think, oh, how does he do that?
I want that's an image I want in my head off you in the sauna watching my content.
I don't know why I was so honest about it, but that's the truth.
It's the place where I get time just to listen to, and it's the best place to listen to debates because you've got to be in there.
You've got to burn half an hour, 40 minutes.
And you do it well.
There's not many people doing it well.
There are different people doing different styles.
You know, there's a few Israelis I've been following that Saha.
And there's a couple of guys that are doing some really cool work and they're engaging in ways that inspired me to start doing it.
It's a completely different game than I'm used to doing.
And my followers, I don't think they're used to it because they're used to seeing me on the street, some my security jumping in, a fight happening, and some funny jokes in the middle.
So now they've got to get used to seeing me in this place.
I think that you can get to a lot more substance when you're not fighting with the person to just be there.
They choose to be there.
But when we watch yours in comparison to many others, you actually come from a really interesting angle, which is like, I'm not just going to fight you for...
And I'm genuinely inspired.
If you watch my conversations now online, you will notice some of your lines because I'm like, that is a brilliant way. to engage with that point.
And it doesn't have to be Tommy Robinson and Avi Yamini, me against the world kind of interaction every single time.
Sometimes it's called for though.
No, I think the balance is important.
I think we need you on the streets when they're on the streets.
And we need you online in the more calm, considered conversations where people can actually grow and learn.
It's very rare you learn from a street clash.
It's more you're there for the drama.
No, no, interesting.
Like yesterday, let's end on this point is that I had the jizya conversation in my live, like because I've been live streaming the thing because I thought might as well double up on the content.
So I live stream and delete straight away because there's always people hail Hitler and all this stuff that I think is going to get me banned.
So even though they're saying it at me.
But there was, you know, there was a guy trying to, it was funny because he started with, you know, Hitler was good and all this.
Jizya: Paying the Price00:05:47
And then he goes on to, no, Jews were, he was a Muslim that Jews, the narrative is Jews have always been protected by Muslims in every Muslim land and no Muslims have ever turned on Jews.
It's complete nonsense.
Kaiba is just was a lovely place, whatever.
But then, you know, we get onto the conversation of they talk about Zaka, that they're 2.5%, whatever.
And then he goes, and I say, you know, what about the Jizya?
That we have to be the dhimmis and we have to pay.
And he goes, oh, go look it up.
The jizya is actually less than the zaka.
What would you say to that when they tell you the jizya is less than the Zakah than the Jews doesn't have to sell Zakah?
I'd ask for a source because there is no source.
In the Hadith, you mentioned Khaybah, the Jews of the Hejaz had to pay 50% of their produce, which they did in the Hijaz in the entire way.
So Khayyabah, Medina Mehmed, so that region.
So that was 50%.
And they paid 50% to remain in the Hejaz.
And then Umar ibn al-Khattab, the guy that they will say that the Jews back into Jerusalem, which is true, he did.
So thank you, Umar ibn al-Khattab.
He also ethnically cleansed us from the Hijaz.
So we're, because there's a hadith that said it was one of Muhammad's dying wishes that two religions couldn't coexist in the Hijaz.
And so Umar ibn al-Khattab saw that through and ethnically cleansed every single Jew.
And so there is no, there is no in the Quran.
look it up while we were live and I'm like, I'm like, actually, no, like I couldn't, I could find that the Zakat was 2.5, but I couldn't find any, they said it's often less than the Zakat, but I couldn't.
It was, it said that they could choose, the leader could choose.
No, so this is all lies.
If you go to Jewish sources and you read what you pay, you'll find that there were women in hiding, peasant women in hiding because they couldn't afford to pay the jizya.
What I always bring it back to is the foundational text.
So in Al-Quran, in the Quran, the word jizya is mentioned once.
It's in Surat Yunus, 29th, the 29th verse.
And it basically says, fight the Jews and Christians until they pay the jizya.
Until they are humbled, humiliated.
And when you read the tafsir, the commentary by Ibn Kathir, he says this is a tax of humiliation because they refuse to accept Muhammad.
Where is the best?
Where is the best?
Look, at the end, I came back to him with, listen, I don't know your religion that well, but all I can say is it sounds like a bikey gang who's extorting businesses to pay a tax for them to protect them, usually from themselves.
Which I think is the valid argument as well.
But it is great to be armed with these points.
What are the best places to search, in your opinion?
Because when you Google it, Google automatically takes, I can see it's all the Islamic sites, which are dawah sites or, you know, they're literally twisting everything in the best possible interpretation.
I'll give a shout out to my friend Apostate Prophet.
So if you go to people like Apostate Prophet David Wood, the Christian apologists, they have extensively documented almost every source you could possibly want when exploring subjects like the jizya.
They have it on their websites.
These are all YouTubers.
They've got a million videos.
Yeah, and I'm trying to find it.
But what they will do, so what they will do, they will tell you which, so the way that Islam works is you have the Quran, which is the foundational text.
So they will provide you the sources from the Quran, which are of interest to you.
And then just go to Quran.com, read the ayah.
Well, in Quran.com, it has the tafsir of Ibn Kathir, who's like the Rashi.
He's like the main commentator to go to.
And so you get the traditional Sunni Islamic understanding of the Quran.
But like in Judaism, we have the Talmud, which contains the oral law.
They have the Hadith, which are the sayings of Muhammad and the Companions, the Sahaba.
And there's many problematic, much problematic content there.
So for instance, if someone tells you, how could Muhammad be anti-Semitic?
He married a Jewish woman.
And so if you go to the Hadith, you understand who she was and how he married her and how he had children.
A husband and a father.
It was the chief.
Yeah.
The chief and the treasurer of Banu Nadir, one of the Jewish tribes of the Hijaz.
And then there was a whole conversation amongst the Sahaba.
They didn't know whether she was going to be Sabaya, a slave, or she was going to be his wife.
And she came out wearing hijab, which meant that she was his wife.
But it's not your typical romantic story.
It's not even a Tinder story.
This wasn't a Tinder date.
This is a little bit more extreme.
And so people like Apostate Prophet will give you these hadith.
Then you can just go to sunnah.com and you can read the hadith.
So it's Quran.com and sunnah.com.
Yeah, Sunnah for the Hadith, Quran for the Quran.
I got you.
Yeah, no, I would wonder if you can.
And just use the search as well.
Just type in due into sunnah.com.
It's always funny and interesting reading.
Like, just think of a crazy keyword, type it into sunnah.com and you'll find some fascinating things.