Good morning.
When societies argue about definitions, it can sound technical, the sort of debate lawyers or policymakers care about. But definitions are about something deeper. They show what a society is prepared to recognise, and what it refuses to ignore.
This week the government introduced a non-statutory definition of anti-Muslim hostility. Predictably, the conversation has turned to questions of free speech and its limits.
Those are important questions. But definitions of prejudice carry another purpose. They tell us whose dignity we are prepared to defend.
As a rabbi, I hear these debates with particular sensitivity. Jewish history contains long periods when hostility towards Jews was so normal it barely needed a name. The word antisemitism only entered common language in the nineteenth century, though the prejudice itself was far older.
Naming something does not solve it. But it does change the silence around it.
I was thinking about that while sharing an Iftar meal during Ramadan. Around the table were Muslims, Jews and others, gathered to break the fast together.
Among them was Maoz Inon, an Israeli peace activist whose story carries immense grief. On October 7th his parents were killed when Hamas attacked their home in southern Israel.
Many people in his position might understandably turn inward. Instead Maoz has chosen something more demanding: continuing to work for a shared future between Israelis and Palestinians, insisting humanity must survive even deep violence .What struck me that evening was the atmosphere in the room. Everyone arrived with a strong sense of who they were, Muslim, Jewish, secular. No one was asked to soften their identity in order to sit together.
In Jewish tradition there is a phrase, b’tzelem Elohim, that every human being is created in the image of God. If every person carries that divine imprint, dignity is not something we negotiate depending on who we agree with. It becomes something we are bound to protect in one another.
The debate about anti-Muslim hatred is therefore not only about Muslims. It is about the kind of country we are still trying to become.
A Britain confident enough to protect open debate, but serious enough to recognise when prejudice corrodes our common life.
Around that Iftar table it felt possible to glimpse that Britain. Not one where difference disappears, but one where faith and identity are brought honestly into the room.
Because perhaps the real contribution of religion in public life is this: the insistence that dignity is not a limited resource. And that a confident Britain will be built not by setting identities aside, but by bringing the best of them into the same room.
New Zealand