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The UK is reeling after Jewish worshippers at a synagogue in Manchester were killed and injured in an apparently unprovoked anti-Semitic terrorist attack yesterday (October 2, 2025).

Two men – Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66 – lost their lives when 35-year-old Jihad Al-Shamie rammed his car into people outside the Heaton Park Synagogue in Crumpsall before stabbing others. Three more victims remain in hospital with serious injuries.

The attack is being treated by police as terrorism. The attacker was shot dead at the scene.

It took place on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish religious calendar – and it would be foolish to think the timing was not intentional.

But why did it happen? What was the motivation?

It might be tempting to think that it was prompted by the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas terrorists in Gaza – but I think this would be misleading.

British Jews are not the government or military of Israel. While Jewish organisations and representatives here – like Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis and the Board of Deputies of British Jews – may voice support for what that nation’s armed forces are doing, many oppose the assault on Gaza – some vocally. Targeting them is not only cruel but absurd.

This was not resistance, and it was not a blow against Israel. It was the deliberate targeting of British Jews, here in the UK, who were simply practising their faith on the most holy day of their calendar.

That makes it unambiguously anti-Semitic.

Let me be clear: holding British Jews collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli state is racism.

And now I find myself worrying for my own Jewish friends, here in the UK.

To be clear (again): they don’t support aggression by Jewish people against anybody – certainly not against the people of Gaza or those who are trying to keep those people alive in the face of Israeli aggression. They deserve to live their lives in safety, to worship in peace, and to walk the streets of our towns and cities without fear.

I can’t guarantee that they will continue to enjoy those freedoms in the UK while we all live under the current tide of racism.

The logical next step, then, is to ask: why did this happen – and how do we prevent it from happening again?

We are told that Al-Shamie was a UK citizen of Syrian descent. Some may (let’s face it – will) seize on this to argue that immigration itself is the problem.

That is both lazy and dangerous.

The overwhelming majority of people who have come here from Syria – or from anywhere else – want nothing more than to live peacefully, raise their families, and contribute to society.

We need to remember that Syrian refugees fled from extremists like Islamic State in the first place. To blame them collectively for the actions of one man is as absurd as blaming all British-born Christians whenever a white far-right terrorist carries out an attack.

Al-Shamie’s attack is not the result of immigration – it is due to radicalisation.

Just as we have seen white Britons radicalised into neo-Nazism or violent anti-Muslim hatred, so too can people of other backgrounds be manipulated into Islamist extremism.

The common thread is not nationality but extremist ideology – and a society that sometimes fails to detect or disrupt it before it turns deadly.

More concerning is that Al-Shamie was not known to counter-terrorism police. That raises troubling questions:

• If he had never appeared on the security services’ radar, how was he radicalised?

• Was he acting alone, or did others encourage him?

• And, perhaps most importantly, how does our society allow hatred like this to fester until it erupts into murder?

The name “Jihad” means “holy war”. That does not make everyone with that name a terrorist – but the fact that his name was such an obvious indicator does highlight the need for better ways of spotting and challenging extremist beliefs before they manifest in violence.

Suppose an anti-immigration protester changed his first name so he was now called (for example) Xenophobia Jones. Would the cops think he was perfectly harmless and not pay any attention to him?

That being said, the name in itself should not be enough to justify surveillance; it is only if it is combined with other factors that it would become a flag for continued attention.

The issue here is not simply the abhorrent beliefs of one individual; it is about how hatred is incubated.

Islamist extremists, far-right agitators, and racists of every stripe exploit international conflicts, cultural anxieties, and political failures to persuade people that their neighbours are the enemy – and those behaviours should be detectable, meaning their result – acts of violence like we had yesterday – should be preventable.

I have previously stated my belief that a fundamental qualification for people to be allowed to immigrate into the UK is that they support the prevailing way of life here; they should be coming here because they want to be British – not because they want to set up a mini-version of their home country in England, Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland.

We should expect people coming here to integrate into our society. It occurs to me that there should be some form of probation system that monitors their progress in that direction over time and that may detect any racist or terrorist sentiment before it can erupt into violence.

That is not to say that we should suspect all immigrants as possible terrorists; the system I’m proposing would be about helping people, who may come from radically different societies, to adjust and integrate into ours.

If we want to prevent attacks like this, we need to act:

• Protect vulnerable communities: synagogues, mosques, churches, and other places of worship should be guaranteed safety without having to become fortresses.

• Tackle radicalisation at its roots: that means honest conversations within communities, education in schools, and better systems for early warning when people are sliding towards extremism.

• Challenge scapegoating across the board: whether it is anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or anti-refugee hatred, all forms of prejudice create the conditions for violence.

• Stand in solidarity: none of us can afford to see Jewish safety as a “Jewish issue” or Muslim safety as a “Muslim issue”. If extremists succeed in making one group a target, it will not be long before others follow.

It is likely, of course, that the authorities will focus on what is easiest, most visible – and cheapest: increased police presence, extra funding for synagogue security, public statements condemning the attack. All of that is necessary – but it is only surface-level action.

What will cost more – and require more courage – is tackling the roots of terrorism, racism, and xenophobia in our society. It means asking uncomfortable questions about how hatred is incubated, how extremist ideologies take hold, and why communities sometimes fail to speak out or act before violence erupts.

If we settle for easy, visible gestures, we will leave ourselves vulnerable to future tragedies. If we are serious about protecting all communities – not just Jewish ones – we must commit to long-term, hard work: education, integration, dialogue, and the dismantling of the ideologies that allow murderers like Al-Shamie to act.

Yesterday’s attack should not just shock us – it should mobilise us to confront the deeper problems that make such violence possible.

Anything less is a failure of both policy and conscience.

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