Manchester, England, October 2, 2025: In the most violent act of antisemitic hatred Britain has seen in years, a Muslim man rams a car into a group of Jews on a sidewalk in front of a synagogue, exits the vehicle and begins stabbing other Jews. He is shot by the police. Two Jews are killed, one by the murderer and another who was shot accidentally by police.
Antisemitic violence has become deeply entrenched in the country. Since Hamas's jihadist massacre of October 7, 2023, in Israel, it has increased considerably.
For more than 30 years, successive British governments have promised to fight antisemitism but never did. Now they deny reality. Antisemitism in the UK is now mostly Islamic antisemitism, perpetrated by radicalized Muslims. Islamic antisemitism in these times has become closely linked to a hatred of Israel, and it is now widespread and shared by a large part of the political "left." On the evening of Hamas's October 7, 2023 massacre, thousands of Muslims celebrated it in major cities across the country.
In London, the very day after Hamas had murdered 1,200 people in Israel and seized 251 more as hostages, Muslims and "leftists" organized and gathered together in anti-Israel demonstrations, which have continued ever since.
Two years later, on October 7, 2025, protesters assembled in London, Glasgow, and Edinburgh to "celebrate" the second anniversary of the massacre. The demonstrators shouted slogans such as "Israel is a terrorist state" and "death to the IDF." "
We will continue to fight for the abolition of Zionism both in Palestine and in our own Jewish communities," one speaker said.
Islamic violence in Europe has not been limited "just" to Jews. Some of the deadliest Islamist attacks in recent years appeared to be against all "infidels": the jihadist attacks of July 7, 2005 on London's mass-transit system; the slaughter at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the jihadist massacre at the Bataclan Theater in Paris; the truck-ramming attack in Nice on July 14, 2016 ; the Madrid and Barcelona terrorist attacks in Spain; New Year's Eve mass rapes in Cologne, Germany; the Christmas Market rammings in Berlin in 2016 and Magdeburg in 2024; a murder at the Krudttønden cultural center in Copenhagen, Denmark, as well as countless individual murders: Father Jacques Hamel, Fusilier Lee Rigby, Ilan Halimi ; Theo van Gogh, Sarah Halimi, Mireille Knoll, to name just a few. In the United Kingdom, in 2017, at the end of a concert, a British Muslim suicide bomber of Libyan ancestry attacked the Manchester Arena: 22 people were murdered and 1,017 wounded.
For years, in the Muslim neighborhoods of London, Paris, Brussels, Malmö and major British cities, radicalized Islamic preachers have been spreading hatred against Jews, Israel and Western civilization -- and calling, with impunity, for armed jihad. Anyone who so much as questions this call is labelled a racist or an Islamophobe.
British non-Muslims bemoaning Islamic terrorism are being jailed. In 2018, Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, leaders of the right-wing movement Britain First, were sentenced to prison for having distributed leaflets allegedly showing "hostility toward Muslims and the Muslim faith."
In November 2024, former soldier Daffron Williams posted on Facebook a simple observation about the rise of Islamic violence in the country: "Civil war is here. The only thing missing is bullets, that's the next step." He, too, was imprisoned.
In September 2025, Pete North, a blogger who had shared a meme saying "F*ck Hamas," was arrested at his home and charged with "spreading racial hatred" – among many other such arrests.
Although Muslims make up only 6.5% of Britain's population, successive governments, like those in France, Germany and the Netherlands, have shown signs of gradual submission to Islam. Since UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was elected, this trend has intensified. In March, as antisemitism was exploding in the country, Starmer attended a Ramadan fast-breaking ceremony in Westminster Hall, where he announced that 2024 had been the "worst year on record" for "anti-Muslim hate crimes."
Surveys have been exposing what British Muslims think. In March 2024, a poll conducted by the Henry Jackson Society reported that 32% of British Muslims favor the implementation of Sharia law in the UK; 48% feel more sympathy with Hamas than with Israel; 80% believe that Israel is committing genocide. 49% think Israel has no right to exist, and 46% think Jews in the UK -- only 0.5 % of the population -- have too much power.
Starmer recognized the non-existent "state of Palestine" in September and claimed that his decision helped US President Donald Trump strike a Gaza peace deal. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio responded that Starmer had bowed to pressure created by politically active "foreigners" and that his decision had actually been an "impediment to peace" in the Middle East.
The situation in the United Kingdom is worrying: what affects the UK affects all Western Europe. While the situation in France may seem a bit better, it is probably worse.
In France, a rabbi and three Jewish children were murdered by a radicalized Muslim in Toulouse on March 19, 2012. Jews were murdered in a kosher supermarket on January 9, 2015. Compared to the rest of Europe, it is in France that the largest number of individual Jews have been murdered by radicalized Muslims and the deadliest Islamic attacks have occurred.
The massacre at the Bataclan on November 13, 2015, left 130 dead and 413 wounded. A July 14, 2016 truck-ramming attack in Nice on people celebrating Bastille Day left 86 dead and 458 wounded. In 2020, the school teacher Samuel Paty was beheaded, and in 2016, a priest, Father Jacques Hamel, was beheaded while celebrating mass.
After each jihadist attack on Jews, government officials say they will combat antisemitism. They never have. Only one French politician, former MP Meyer Habib, in 2020, dared to denounce Islamic antisemitism explicitly. A text signed by 300 prominent French figures repudiated this "new anti-Semitism": "In our recent history, eleven Jews have just been murdered – and some tortured – because they were Jewish by radical Islamists." The statement was quickly forgotten. When a march against anti-Semitism was organized on November 13, 2023, roughly a month after the October 7 massacre, French President Emmanuel Macron chose not to attend.
In many mosques throughout France, imams preach hate. Sometimes, rarely, one is expelled. Commentators in France who criticize Islam are sentenced by the courts to heavy fines. The leader of the National Rally Party, Marine Le Pen, widely predicted to win the next presidential election, was sentenced to prison and banned from holding public office for alleged "embezzlement". Former journalist Éric Zemmour, for instance, had to pay thousands of euros. Author Renaud Camus, also fined, now finds that no publisher will publish his books anymore. Hundreds of lesser-known figures have also been sentenced to fines and censorship.
Demonstrations against Israel in Paris have been as abundant as in London. Muslim and "leftist" protesters shout slogans hostile to Israel, including "Death to the Jews." Polls conducted among French Muslims produced results as disquieting as those conducted among Muslims in the United Kingdom: in 2020, a poll showed that 38% of French Muslims think that Sharia law is more important than the laws of the Republic. A poll conducted in December 2023 showed that 45% of French Muslims think that the October 7 massacre was an "act of resistance".
Similar conditions can be seen in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Sweden.
While the UK Labour Party expelled its former leader, Jeremy Corbyn in 2024 over accusations of anti-Semitism, a French political party, La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), includes several MPs who are on record as having made anti-Semitic remarks. One of its MPs, Rima Hassan, openly supports Hamas.
France has a larger Muslim population than the United Kingdom: 10% of the total in 2019-2020. The number of Muslims in both countries keeps on growing. France also has a larger Jewish population than the United Kingdom: 438,500, or 0.88% of the French population, compared to 0.5% in England and Wales. French Jews, however, are fleeing the country, so their number is decreasing, as is the number of Jews in Western Europe altogether.
When Macron, at the UN General Assembly in September 2025, formally announced France's recognition of a non-existent "state of Palestine", he was quickly followed by United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Portugal and Belgium. Rubio slammed Macron's decision as a "slap in the face to the victims of October 7" that served Hamas propaganda. Macron, who had not even made his "recognition" contingent upon Hamas releasing the Israeli hostages, declined to react.
US Ambassador to France Charles Kushner wrote in an open letter to Macron: "Public statements haranguing Israel and gestures toward recognition of a Palestinian state embolden extremists, fuel violence, and endanger Jewish life in France."
Macron called Kushner's words "unacceptable".
Millions of people in Western Europe appear anxious about the future they see taking shape in their countries and have been turning to political parties that address their concerns. Since these parties have been growing in strength, current leaders are doing everything they can – such as preventing their leaders from running for election, or forming a coalition, or branding their policies as "fascism" and "Nazism" – in an apparent effort to bury these concerns. These are virtually the only parties that support Israel and denounce rising anti-Semitism by actually calling it by its name.
Nigel Farage's Reform UK party is leading in voter polls, but the next elections will only take place in 2029. During the next four years, the ruling Labour Party can continue to radically transform the country.
In France, the next presidential election is scheduled for 2027. Le Pen, as mentioned, was leading the polls, but was declared ineligible to run in 2027 by a French court. Jordan Bardella, the current president of Le Pen's party, has a good chance of winning, but in July 2025, on the order of the judges who charged Le Pen, masses of documents were seized from the party headquarters. Many judges in France practice "political justice". Former President Nicolas Sarkozy recently began serving a five-year sentence handed down by leftist judges – despite no evidence of guilt and before his appeal has been heard. He is now behind bars. Bardella is already the subject of a complaint, allegedly for a pseudonymous online account that was racist. Bardella has stated, "I am sorry to disappoint you but I only have one Twitter account. I will not stand by comments I did not make."
In 2024, in the last French legislative election, called by Macron, he established quarantine to contain the National Rally party, leaving conservative voters with a choice of only left-wing parties, resulting in a hung parliament and the impossibility of forming a stable government.
In Belgium, the Flemish Interest party is gaining ground, but is only present in the Flemish-speaking regions of the country and similarly facing a quarantine. The center-right New Flemish Alliance has been in power in the country since February 2025. It refuses to include Vlaams Belang in any coalition, supports "controlled migration", has no clear position on Islam apart from objecting to the hijab headscarf in public, but did join the government in recognizing a "state of Palestine" and imposing sanctions on Israel.
In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom won the most seats in the November 2023 elections, but Wilders was prevented from becoming prime minister by a coalition of other parties that formed a barrier. He recently withdrew his support for the government, and elections held last week resulted in his party receiving the second-largest share of the vote.
Alternative for Germany (AfD), that country's second-largest party, is also being kept out of power by other parties. Germany's domestic intelligence agency stated -- apparently innocent of all irony -- that the existence of AfD was "incompatible with the free democratic basic order". AfD could be banned altogether.
The possibility that these parties will triumph over those anti-democratic maneuvers appears remote. The politicians in power who are carrying out these maneuvers show no intention of responding to the growing concerns of much of their public.
What is taking place in Western Europe is likely to get worse.
"The great replacement" -- the eventuality of a basically Christian Europe being slowly replaced by a Muslim one -- is not a conspiracy theory. It is rapidly underway. The birth rate of Muslim populations remains higher in Western Europe than that of non-Muslim populations, whose birth rates have been collapsing and are now vastly below the replacement level. Muslim births add to the numbers of those who have immigrated from the Muslim world. The proportion of Muslims in Western European countries continues exponentially to increase. Data further shows that Muslim populations are integrating less and less, and that the influence of radical Islam has also been exponentially increasing.
If profound changes do not occur, Western Europe tomorrow will be unrecognizable.
"If we do not stop Islamification now," Geert Wilders said in 2007, "Eurabia and Netherabia will just be a matter of time".
Eighteen years later, the Islamification of Europe seems only to have begun.
Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
