What Muslims Believe About Non-Muslims

When someone advocates for or commits a violent act, and they claim to do so in the name of a religion, are we to conclude that they must be adopting an “extremist” view of the religion, or could there be a problem with the religion itself? This issue was raised in a recent case brought by two Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) officials alleging racially offensive conduct by Muslim preacher Wissam Haddad and his Al Madina Dawah Centre in Bankstown.

Justice Angus Stewart found that Haddad’s lectures on the Jews of Medina were unlawful under the Racial Discrimination Act because they were reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate Jewish people because of their race.

Haddad argued that he had a defence because he spoke or wrote reasonably and in good faith in the course of a statement or publication made for a genuine purpose in the public interest. The stated public interest purposes were (a) delivering religious, historical and educational lectures or sermons to congregants of the AMDC and other practising Muslims; and (b) responding to requests from the Islamic community to provide sermons which address the Gaza war, and engaging in commentary on the Gaza war from a religious perspective.

Justice Stewart rejected that defence, finding that Haddad had not acted reasonably and in good faith:

The thing is, Justice Stewart’s striking findings that Islamic canonical texts—the Koran and the Hadith—do not “teach that Jews have any inherent negative qualities as a people” and do not support the view that strife with the Jews of Medina can be extrapolated to modern Jews, are very hard to reconcile with many contemporary statements by leading Muslim clerics, including those cited in expert evidence relied upon by Justice Stewart. His Honour’s findings, and problems concerning the basis of those findings, raise important questions about how we are to counter the rising tide of anti-Semitism.

In late 2023, after the October 7 attack, Wissam Haddad, a Sydney Muslim preacher, gave a series of three lectures on the “Jews of Al Madina”, which were recorded on video and uploaded to various social media platforms. These lectures discussed Muhammad’s dealings with the Jews of Medina. It later became known that the younger of the accused Bondi shooters, Naveed Akram, had been in the habit of attending worship at Haddad’s Islamic Al Madina Dawah Centre.

In response to Haddad’s 2023 lectures, as well as two other messages posted online, two ECAJ officials lodged a complaint under the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. The complainants’ submission objected to a long list of offensive stereotypes attributed by Haddad to Jews. Their complaint was upheld by Justice Stewart in July 2025.

The Racial Discrimination Act prohibits offensive behaviour based on racial hatred: acts that “offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate” others based on their race, colour, or national or ethnic origin. It allows exemptions for artistic, academic and public interest purposes, but not for religious purposes.

Each side in this dispute produced an expert witness whose opinions led Justice Stewart to come to certain conclusions about Islam.

The expert for the complainants was Professor Gabriel Reynolds of the University of Notre Dame, a Catholic scholar who is one of the most eminent experts in the field of Koranic studies. Appearing for the respondents was Sheikh Adel Ahmad Muhammad Ibrahim, who was reported to be active, officiating in the Western Sydney area, including at Lakemba Mosque. Both experts were asked to comment on Haddad’s lectures, and they agreed that he was generally accurate in quoting sources from the Koran and narratives of the life of Muhammad: his lectures were based on genuine canonical sources.

The religion of Islam is based on two forms of guidance. One is the Koran, which is believed to be a text sent down letter-perfect but piecemeal from heaven over many years to Muhammad. The other is what is known as the Sunna, which is the customary way of life and teaching of Muhammad, who is believed to be the best example for Muslims to follow. Sources for the Sunna are the Hadith—oral traditions about Muhammad—and biographies of Muhammad. In his lectures, Haddad quoted extensively from both Koran and the sources of the Sunna.

The Koran includes some positive references to Jews, as well as many negative references which Islamic tradition links to Muhammad’s interactions with Jews in Medina. These interactions ended up being deadly for the Medinan Jews. Muhammad drove two Jewish tribes out of Medina and destroyed the last remaining Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayza. Later, the Muslims attacked and subjugated a Jewish community in the oasis settlement of Khaybar, where some of the Jews from Medina had sought refuge.

In this case, the issue on which the two experts disagreed was whether the negative qualities attributed 1,400 years ago to Jews by the Koran and the Sunna can be generalised to Jews today. This was what Haddad had done in his lectures, drawing upon sources from the Koran and the Sunna to help explain contemporary events, especially the Palestine–Israel conflict. Was this an extreme approach to the sources, or a mainstream interpretation?

In contrast, Professor Reynolds’s testimony implied that it had been idiosyncratic of Haddad to generalise the negative attributes attributed to Jews in the Koran and the Sunna to present-day Jews. Reynolds said:

To support his point, Professor Reynolds quoted two conservative Muslim clerics. One was Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, the current Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in Egypt, who addressed the UK House of Lords in 2015, saying: “Islam does not see non-Muslims, Christians and Jews from the perspective of enmity, tension and violence, but from the perspective of human brotherhood and kindness.” The other was Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, who said in 2006:

There is no specific defence in the Act of engaging in racially vilifying conduct on the basis of religious belief, which is why Mr Haddad argued that his statement or publication was made for a genuine purpose in the public interest. Justice Stewart avoided having to decide whether religious belief can ever be a justification for propagating racist bigotry and hate, by finding as follows:

On the basis of the experts’ testimony, Justice Stewart found Wissam Haddad’s views to be “idiosyncratic and therefore without good faith—there is no reasonable basis on which he could have in good faith believed that what he was teaching was indeed the teaching of Islam”. The effect of this ruling was to paint Haddad in a worse light, as a bad-faith actor, who had no reasonable basis to believe his own message was supported by Islam.

Justice Stewart concluded that:

This was seemingly based upon a summary statement by Professor Reynolds that:

However, Sheikh Adel’s opinions were more nuanced and complex than this summary suggests. It is true that on the one hand he stated that “the Qur’an makes clear that not all Jews are the same”, and Muhammad “did not innately hate the Jews”. This, Sheikh Adel argued, is demonstrated by the good relations Muhammad had with some Jews: “he had Jewish neighbours in Medina with whom he did business and with whom he was able to maintain peaceful relations”. Sheikh Adel concluded that the Koran’s rulings against Jews applied only to those who do wrong and “not to every Jew in every era”.

On the other hand, Sheikh Adel argued that at the time of Muhammad, Jews “were known for unjustly killing their prophets, disobeying Allah, distorting divine laws, and wronging themselves through sins”. This negative reputation was “especially during the time of the Prophet”, but by no means limited to this period.

Sheikh Adel also endorsed Haddad’s generalising of negative anti-Jewish tropes from the Koran and Sunna to the present day when he repeatedly called the lectures “Islamically correct”. He also considered that the Koran’s criticisms of Jews extend to their collective wrongdoing in the past, not just of Jews in the lifetime of Muhammad. For example Sheikh Adel cited Surah 3:112, a reference to Jews as killers of prophets who have been consequently “branded with misery” by God:

There was a fundamental problem with the way Professor Reynolds cited the two conservative Muslim voices, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb and Al-Qaradawi: the statements he quoted show an apparent inconsistency with the two scholars’ many other public statements about the Jews.

For example, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, appearing on Egyptian national television, cited Koran 5:82 to justify permanent Muslim hostility towards Jews. He said in an interview in 2013:

Likewise, Al-Qaradawi has made many statements that generalise negative attributes of Jews from the Koran and the Sunna to the present day. He has argued that the Israel–Palestine conflict is a continuation of the war that began with Muhammad and the Jews of Medina. He has also used Koranic verses about the sins of the Jews to highlight the evils of Jews in general, including present-day Jews. For example, he tweeted in 2017:

Al-Qaradawi has also said:

This Al-Qaradawi tweet was even cited in the very same article from which Reynolds sourced Al-Qaradawi’s supposedly positive comment on the Jews. Furthermore, in the same article Al-Qaradawi was also reported to have given the following explanation of why the Koran has so much to say about the Jews:

Al-Qaradawi clearly believed that the Koran gives advice to present-day Muslims concerning the negative attributes of Jews.

These two eminent Muslims were cited by Professor Reynolds as examples of leading Muslims who do not tar the Jews of today with the same brush as the Jews of Medina in Muhammad’s time. However, their public statements, reported even in a source Reynolds himself cited, show just the opposite: that they consider the criticisms of the Jews found in the Koran and the Sunna to be applicable to Jews today. This even led Al-Qaradawi to make a genocidal call for a second Holocaust, a “divine punishment” against present-day Jews, to be perpetrated by the hands of Muslims.

To these two scholars can be added an equally eminent third Muslim voice: that of the late Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, former Grand Mufti of Egypt and Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University, whose PhD dissertation, “The Jews in the Qur’an and the Sunna”, criticised Jews through the interpretative grid of the Koran and the Sunna. In it, Tantawi states:

We can conclude from such statements that Wissam Haddad’s views on the Jews, which he communicated in his lectures, were neither idiosyncratic, nor expressed in bad faith, since similar views have been put forward by some of the most eminent and expert Muslims of the modern era.

How are we to reconcile these apparent inconsistencies? On the one hand there are the seemingly positive statements about the Jews made by Al-Tayyeb and Al-Qaradawi, which were relied upon by Professor Reynolds to the exclusion of their other statements; and on the other there are these two scholars’ many negative judgments about the Jews, as well as Tantawi’s dissertation. All these judgments, in lockstep with Haddad’s, look to the Koran and Sunna as the basis for understanding the essential nature of Jews today.

When Al-Tayyeb addressed the House of Lords, what did he mean by his claim that Islam does not see Jews “from the perspective of enmity, tension and violence, but from the perspective of human brotherhood and kindness”? How are we to reconcile this with his citing of Koran 5:82 on Egyptian television to assert that Muslims will find Jews to be the most “violent in enmity” to Muslims?

It is true that there are principles in the Koran that could cause Muslims to distinguish Jews today from the Jews of Medina. The two experts pointed this out, each in their own way, both citing the Koranic verse: “no bearer of burdens shall bear the burden of another” (Sura 17:15). Sheikh Adel uses this verse to reject the idea of collective punishment.

However, the Koran itself, when making negative comments about Jews, does not limit them to Medinan Jews. For example, Koran 5:82 does not say that Muslims will find “Medinan Jews” to be the most violent in enmity to Muslims, but simply “Jews”. Furthermore, in the following verse the Koran extends its negative judgment of Jews to the end of the world (the “Day of Resurrection”):

There may be some pious Muslims who do not look to the Koran and the Sunna to help them understand non-Muslims today. However, this would go against the whole system of Islam, for which the Koran and the Sunna are the supreme sources of guidance. It is entirely uncontroversial in Islam that this guidance is to be applied to contemporary issues, including the example of Muslims’ relationships with Jews and other non-Muslims, albeit not in a way which goes beyond what the Koran and Sunna have laid down to be followed.

Moreover, discerning timeless negative judgments in the Koran against the Jews is hardly a modern-day invention: it has been the settled approach of mainstream Muslim commentators down the centuries. For example, consider the commentary of Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), which Wissam Haddad told the tribunal he follows. Ibn Kathir comments on this verse, “certainly you will find that the most violent of people in enmity to the believers are the Jews” (Koran 5:82), making clear that the Jews’ negative attributes applied in the past when they killed their prophets; they applied at the time of Muhammad, when they reportedly tried to kill him as well; and they will apply in the future. Ibn Kathir called down Allah’s curses upon them until the end of the world:

There is an Islamic liturgical practice which bears on just how mainstream is a negative Muslim attitude to Jews. The first sura of the Koran, known as Al-Fati’ah, “the opening”, is recited seventeen times daily as part of Muslims’ ritual acts of worship. It contains within it a prayer that the worshipper will be on the right path, of someone who enjoys God’s favour, not of someone who has gone astray or is under God’s wrath. In a hadith Muhammad explained that those who have gone astray are Christians, and those who are under God’s wrath are Jews. Pious Muslims, seventeen times a day, recite a verse which, understood in accordance with the teaching of Muhammad himself, characterises Jews as objects of God’s wrath. This is not a reference just to the Jews of Medina.

We also need to understand that Al-Tayyeb, Al-Qaradawi and Tantawi would all insist that they have not prejudiciously projected the faults of the Medinan Jews onto the Jews of today. They would agree with Sheikh Adel that Islam itself guarantees that “Muslims remain fair in their dealings with all people”. In holding their negative opinions of present-day Jews, discerning in them the very traits that the Koran and Sunna deplore, they would not accept that this is based on prejudice, but only on a fair and objective assessment.

There is a theological characteristic of Islam that needs to be understood in order to fully reconcile the statements of Al-Tayyeb and Al-Qaradawi quoted by Professor Reynolds with their other statements. When Justice Stewart concluded that “the experts agree” that “neither the Qur’an nor the Hadith teach that Jews have any inherent negative qualities as people”, he said that he based this in part on the following statement made by Sheikh Adel:

Here Sheikh Adel is asserting that Muslims are invariably fair in dealing with Jews, but he is not actually saying that the Koran and Sunna’s criticisms of Jews do not apply to present-day Jews. To fully understand what he meant, we need to take into account his immediately preceding paragraph, in which Sheikh Adel stated:

What the Sheikh is saying here is that there are two kinds of Jews: bad Jews who reject the prophets and good ones who do not. The standard of goodness the Sheikh uses is piety towards prophets, including towards Muhammad. He cites Islam’s acceptance of Jews who recognised Muhammad as a prophet and converted to Islam, in order to demonstrate Islam’s fairness towards Jews. Such “good” Jews are referred to by the Koran in several places, for example:

Mainstream Islam teaches that biblical figures like David, Solomon, Abraham, Moses and Jesus were all prophets of Islam. Their immediate followers are said to have been Muslims. According to this logic, if these ancients were alive today they would be calling Jews and Christians to follow Muhammad by converting to Islam. As Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi put it, “all Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims, the bad ones do not.” Seen in this light, Islam is the true Judaism and the true Christianity.

These observations provide a key to the statements quoted by Professor Reynolds from Ahmad Al-Tayyeb and Yusuf Al-Qaradawi. When Al-Qaradawi said that “Jews, as followers of a heavenly religion, remain close to us”, he is invoking the doctrine that Judaism was originally a form of Islam. That is why he calls it a “heavenly religion”. Thus, in so far as Jews remain true to the original Islamic foundations of Judaism, they are “close” to Muslims. Al-Qaradawi is not referring to all Jews, but to those sincere souls who would embrace Islam and confess Muhammad as a divine messenger. This allows Al-Qaradawi to simultaneously believe—without contradiction—that most, if not all, Jews today show the same negative attributes described in the Koran and the Sunna, including rejection of the prophethood of Muhammad.

It can be hard for outsiders to understand Islam. This is made more difficult because of seeming contradictions in how Muslims present their faith. Some can insist that Islam is peaceful, while celebrating acts of war. Some can insist that Islam rejects collective punishment, while celebrating as just Muhammad’s genocide of one Medinan Jewish tribe and the expulsion of two others. Some can insist that Islam was never spread at the point of a sword, while citing the three choices Muhammad offered to infidels—conversion, surrender, or the sword—as evidence of non-compulsion. Some can insist that Islam only prescribes warfare in self-defence, while celebrating a proud history of conquest of many nations. Some can insist that the Palestinians’ war against Israel is not religious, while calling it a jihad and commemorating the death of combatants as martyrs. Some can insist that Islam doesn’t have a problem with the Jews, while attributing negative attributes described in the Koran to Jews as a whole. It does not help that key words do not always mean what people think they mean.

Non-Muslims can be tempted to look at Islam through the spectacles of their own religious and cultural worldview. There can also be a preference to assume the best of others. Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has taught generations of Western school children to be wary of making negative assumptions about people we do not know. In the face of this reticence to judge, we need to make the effort to understand Islam better. It deserves to be taken seriously for the ways it manifests itself, in all its diversity, not for what we wish it might be or what some Muslims might claim it to be. To be sure, hatred and violence can have complex causes, including social, cultural, political, psychological and economic factors. But in explaining human behaviour, the influence of religion also needs to be given the consideration it deserves.

Many have been asking in the wake of the Bondi shootings, “Is the problem extremism or is it the religion?” Some Muslim leaders insist that Islam is pristine and that it is Islamophobic even to allow this question to be asked. However, this is a serious question of great importance which we cannot afford to dismiss. When we dismiss this question, leaving it unexamined, are we not leaving a door open to further acts of violence?

Certainly, it does not help when the well-documented, publicly available teachings of the most eminent Muslim scholars of our time, such as Al-Tayyeb, Al-Qaradawi and Tantawi, are summarised for a judge on the basis of a sentence or two taken out of context. The public deserves to know what influential Muslim religious leaders have been teaching about Jews. They need to understand this teaching in the light of Islam’s canonical texts, and to consider how such teaching might influence people’s behaviour.

Unless we can discuss such things, how can we ever find a way out of our current crisis? We cannot prevent what we do not understand.

Published originally on September 24, 2026.