‘Shocking failure’: Government’s former extremism adviser blasts decision to not charge imam who called for destruction of Jewish homes

The preacher at an east London Mosque told his followers: “Oh Allah, curse the Jews and the children of Israel. Oh Allah, curse the infidels and the polytheists.

“Oh Allah, break their words, shake their feet, disperse and tear apart their unity and ruin their houses and destroy their homes.”

After the police’s initial decision not to treat the incident as a hate crime caused outrage, the Met told the JC at the time that it would conduct a review into the decision.

However, on Thursday, the police said that no further action would be taken following the advice of senior independent counsel and an academic with recognised expertise in this field.

“It is undoubtedly a shocking decision,” said Lord Walney, adding, “Jews in Britain will be dismayed by this ruling.

“It risks increasing their sense of vulnerability as individuals and a sense that the law cannot fully protect them.”

However, the Met has implied that the limits of existing legislation are to blame for a lack of further action against the imam.

“Where the evidence meets the threshold for us to take action we absolutely will,” a Met police spokesperson said, citing how police have made more than 300 arrests for anti-Jewish hate crime offences since October 2023.

“Two investigations have now found that in this case that threshold was not met. We recognise that this will be frustrating to many, but we police to the letter of the law and we must weigh the evidence against the legislation as it is, not as some may want it to be,” the spokesperson added.

“It is for Parliament to determine where the line is drawn, not the police.”

Lord Walney is now calling on the police and the CPS to publish in full the reasons why the case was dropped, so that the public can understand where the “failure” lies.

“If the CPS is right that there was little chance of a successful prosecution here, then the law needs to change,” he said.

“But the Met and CPS face huge questions over this fiasco - they should immediately publish in full all advice that led to the decision to abandon the case.

“Our starting point should be that this is the wrong judgement. It shouldn't be allowed to happen — and we should try to understand where the fault lies: with the interpretation of the law, or with the law itself,” he told the JC.

He said that in cases of sermons based on scripture, there is a potential “loophole” against the CPS considering the language incitement to hatred because of the religious context of the speech.

In contrast, comments published on social media are treated more harshly by law enforcement, he said, because they are interpreted as having been written with the intention of being “openly broadcasted” to the world.

On the topic of social media, Lord Walney cited the “patent nonsense” of Lord Ian Austin being investigated by the West Midlands police after he tweeted calling Hamas a "death cult of Islamist murderers and rapists” in February 2024. Lord Austin is one of the directors of The Jewish Chronicle.

The religious context of the comments made by the Redbridge imam was considered as a defence against the sermon being treated as a hate crime, said Lord Walney.

“I think it is a problem with the law if the defence of religious preachers is effectively: ‘I was just talking to fellow Muslims in a mosque, Jews weren't there so Jews couldn't be offended.’”

He added: “This does call for a re-examination of the bars for incitement and spreading hate speech, because in the modern world, if you say something to an audience, it is common sense that those words can get a wider hearing than the particular people in the particular context in that room.”

He noted that in a “world where everything can be recorded and instantly disseminated,” words preached in a mosque should be treated no differently to comments published on X.

“I would like the government to urgently examine that issue so it doesn't become a loophole that extremist preachers can exploit,” he told the JC.

In this particular case, Lord Walney indicated that one defence being used by the imam was that his words were taken out of context from the broader sermon, which was allegedly positive towards Jews.

Another is that the Arabic being used in the sermon “was in some way less antisemitic than the English translation”, said Lord Walney.

“This will ring alarm bells for everyone who's looked at the way that the BBC has justified recent editorial decisions,” he noted.

In February, the Campaign group the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (Camera) claimed that the BBC mistranslated the Arabic words “Yahud” or “Yahudi”, meaning Jew or Jewish, as “Israeli” in its now-dropped documentary on Gaza.

In an interview with one person who praised Hamas’s leader Yahya Sinwar for waging “jihad against the Jews”, her remarks were translated as Sinwar “fighting and resisting against Israeli forces” in the documentary.

There is no blanket exemption for religious preachers, however, meaning the failure to prosecute in this case may lie with the Crown Prosecution Service and how they’ve interpreted the law. “It is alarming that apparently extreme rhetoric is not being pursued now,” said Lord Walney.

He recommended that the government leads the way on a re-examination of the law, “so that we understand where the boundaries are, and be prepared to change them, to ensure that Jews and we are all, protected from the risk that radical extremist thought can be propagated through religion to harm people”.

Lord Walney also expressed hope that the situation would trigger a “national conversation” among leaders from different religions, such as Islam, Judaism and Christianity, who can “take the lead on recognising the potential for damage in parts of their texts” and work together on a solution.

“Something can exist as part of religious scripture, but there ought to be a common understanding that it is deeply inappropriate and potentially offensive and illegal to preach it openly,” he said, noting that the problem is not confined to the Quran, and it would be “wholly unacceptable” for a preacher to quote certain parts of Leviticus about homosexuals and adulterers.

Jewish communal organisations expressed disappointment with the Met’s decision.

A spokesperson for the Community Security Trust said: “Many in the Jewish community and beyond will find it hard to understand how these outrageous comments apparently did not break the law.

“If that is truly the case, then it is very worrying and suggests a gap in the law that ought to be addressed.”

A Crown Prosecution Service spokesperson told the JC: “We take hate crime and hateful language extremely seriously and recognise the profound impact it has on communities. We will never hesitate to prosecute these cases where there is evidence to do so.

“The CPS gave the police early investigative advice in this case in November 2024. We did not receive a full file for a charging decision. The police decided that no further action should be taken."