Gary Mond is an important figure in British Jewry: he is — or was until January 12 — a vice president of the Jewish Board of Deputies and the treasurer of the Jewish National Fund (JNF-UK). Some of his past comments on social media that have recently come to light caused such a furor that he felt compelled to resign. 

Robert Spencer wrote about this here, and an additional report on the events surrounding Mond’s reluctant resignation is here: “British Jewish leader resigns following comments about ‘war with Islam,’” by Cnaan Lipshiz, Times of Israel, January 14, 2022

A senior member of British Jewry’s main communal organization has resigned following his suspension over social media posts seen as hostile to Muslims.

Gary Mond, a vice president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the treasurer of the UK branch of the Jewish National Fund, a pro-Israel charity committed to strengthening the Jewish state, had written on Facebook that “all civilization” is “at war with Islam,” among other social media activity unearthed by a news investigation.

Was Gary Mond wrong? Isn’t “all [non-Islamic] civilisation” at “war with Islam”? Or, to put it more clearly, isn’t Islam “at war with all” of the non-Islamic world? Don’t the texts and teachings of Islam tell Muslims that they are the “best of peoples”(3:110), while non-Muslims are the “most vile of created beings” (98:6)?

Aren’t Muslims instructed “to fight” and “to kill” and “to smite at the necks of” and “to strike terror in the hearts of” all non-Muslims? What do those who pressured Gary Mond to resign know of the Qur’an, and in particular, of such blood-curdling verses as 2:191-193, 4:89, 8:12, 8:60, 9:5, 9:29, and 47:4? Perhaps they have never bothered to read the Qur’an. Or, still worse, perhaps they have done so, but remain unwilling to recognize the uncompromising war on Infidels that it prescribes.

Haven’t Muslims been making war for the last 1,400 years, conquering many lands and many peoples – Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists and all other non-Muslims?

And after those conquests, they offered those non-Muslims they conquered only three choices: conversion to Islam, death, or – for Christians and Jews, privileged as “People of the Book” – the permanent status of dhimmi, enduring a host of economic, social, and political disabilities, of which the best known is the tax known as the Jizyah, payment of which allowed the dhimmis to be protected from attack by Muslims themselves; in other words, the payment of the burdensome Jizyah constituted extortion.