Kasim Hafeez grew up in a devout Muslim family in England and later described himself as born to hate Jews. He named the sources of that hatred: speakers in mosques and schools through the 1990s, a university culture in which hostility to Israel was a badge of honour, and a narrative in which Jews were occupiers and the West their instrument. His hatred ended when he read the other side of the argument and then travelled to see the country for himself. Critics use stories like his as evidence that Islam breeds antisemitism. The story, as he tells it, is about political indoctrination. The question is whether the Quran supplies what the indoctrination claimed.
“Do not take them as allies”
The key word is awliyāʾ (allies, protectors, patrons). It belongs to the vocabulary of political and military alliance, and the verse was addressed to a Medinan community surrounded by hostile coalitions, some of whose members, the next verse says, hastened toward the other side for fear of misfortune (5:52). Sūrat al-Mumtaḥanah draws the line explicitly: kindness and justice toward those who do not fight Muslims, and no alliance with those who do (60:8 to 9).
The decisive evidence comes from a verse in the same chapter, which permits Muslim men to marry Jewish and Christian women.
Marriage in the Quran is defined by mawaddah (love) and raḥmah (mercy) placed between the spouses (30:21). A scripture that commanded Muslims to hate Jews could not also invite a Muslim to build a home with a Jewish wife, share her table and raise children with her. Sūrat al-Māʾidah does both in the same chapter because 5:51 concerns political allegiance in time of conflict.
“The worst of creatures”
The verse describes a specific group, “those who disbelieve among” the People of the Book. The same chapter defines them by what they rejected: they divided only after the clear proof came to them (98:4). The judgement falls on rejection of truth once recognised. A Jew as such is not its subject.
The Quran says so directly elsewhere.
Sūrat al-Māʾidah 5:69 promises that Jews and Christians who believe in God and the Last Day and do good need have no fear. A text that names some Jews among the righteous cannot be read as a verdict on Jews as a people.
“Be apes, despised”
Sūrat al-Baqarah 2:65 recalls a punishment: those who broke the Sabbath were told to become apes. Sūrat al-Aʿrāf 7:163 identifies them as the people of one town by the sea who devised a trick to fish on the Sabbath. The account concerns one community’s violation of its covenant, told as a warning to believers who might do the same. The same book says of the Children of Israel that God gave them the Book, judgement and prophethood and “preferred them above the worlds” (45:16; also 2:47). Modern polemicists who turn the Sabbath-breakers into a slur for all Jews have done something the Quran never does.
The hadith of the stone and the tree
The report is authentic, and its form determines its meaning. It opens “the Hour will not come until,” the formula of prophecies about the end of time, and it describes stones that speak. It foretells a battle in the final events before the Day of Judgement. Nothing in it commands Muslims to seek out or harm any Jew living now. The rules that govern how Muslims treat Jews today come from texts addressed to the present, such as 60:8, which commands justice and kindness toward all who do not fight Muslims.
How the Prophet treated Jews
The Prophet’s own conduct shows what these texts meant in daily life. When a funeral procession passed and he stood, his companions told him it was the bier of a Jew.
A Jewish boy served in his household, and when the boy fell ill the Prophet went to visit him (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1356). At his death his armour was held in pledge by a Jew against thirty measures of barley (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2916). The man whose example Muslims are commanded to follow stood in respect for a Jewish dead man and died in a relationship of commercial trust with a Jewish creditor.
The Quran did record conflict. Sūrat al-Māʾidah 5:82 says the believers would find the Jews and the polytheists most intense in hostility toward them, and the Christians nearest in affection. The verse reports the posture of particular communities toward the early Muslims in Arabia, and it legislates nothing.
| Text | What it addresses |
|---|---|
| 5:51 | Awliyāʾ (allies): political and military alliance, addressed to a Medinan community surrounded by hostile coalitions |
| 5:5 | The food of the People of the Book is lawful to Muslims, and Muslim men may marry their chaste women |
| 98:6 | Those who rejected the truth after the clear proof came to them (98:4) |
| 3:113 to 114 | “They are not all alike”: an upright community among the People of the Book, counted among the righteous |
| 2:65; 7:163 | The Sabbath-breakers of one town by the sea |
| Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 2926 | A prophecy of a battle among the final events before the Day of Judgement |
Politics and hatred
A Muslim can hold strong views about the policies of any state, including Israel, and remain bound by the Quran’s rule on enmity.
The verse assumes that Muslims will sometimes feel hostility toward a people, and forbids that hostility from corrupting their judgement. Hafeez describes a youth in which grievance became hatred and hatred became a plan to join a training camp. By his own account that path ran through sermons and campus politics. The Quran commanded the opposite of what he was taught: to stand for justice when hostility is at its strongest.