Muslim migration to the United Kingdom (UK) has made Islam the second largest religion there. Muslims outnumber Jews 13 to 1 and now threaten the fifth largest Jewish community in the world by holding attitudes like Jihad al-Shamie, who boasted, “I have killed two Jews in the name of the Islamic State,” after he attacked a UK synagogue on October 2, 2025.
Worshipers had gathered at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, England, for the 9 a.m. Yom Kippur service on the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Shortly after the service began, security guards outside confronted a suspicious man, who then walked away.
At 9:30 a.m., the man—35-year-old Jihad al-Shamie—returned, driving a car into the security guards standing near the front gate. One guard was injured. The terrorist then exited the vehicle and attacked worshipers with a knife, stabbing 66-year-old congregant Melvin Cravitz in the upper torso and head. Mr. Cravitz was pronounced dead at 10:45 a.m. Al-Shamie also stabbed another congregant, who sustained serious injuries.
Then he called the UK’s emergency services. “I have killed two Jews in the name of the Islamic State,” he told the operator. Witnesses also heard him yell, “This is what you’re going to get for killing our children,” apparently referencing Israel’s military response to Hamas’s slaughter of 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping of 251 hostages on October 7, 2023.
Al-Shamie then attempted to storm the synagogue, charging at officers with his knife. Police opened fire, and he collapsed.
Inside, 53-year-old congregant Adrian Daulby was holding the doors shut to prevent the killer from entering when he was accidentally struck in the chest by a police bullet aimed at the terrorist and was pronounced dead at the scene. Another congregant, also shot accidentally, was hospitalized but later released.
Upon spotting what appeared to be a suicide belt (later determined to be fake) on the wounded terrorist, one officer shouted, “He’s got a bomb!” When al-Shamie lifted himself off the ground, police shot him again, killing him.
Al-Shamie, whose first name “Jihad” means “holy struggle,” came to the UK as a child and became a British citizen in 2006. Though he had no prior terrorism record, he was out on bail following an alleged rape.
A neighbor called al-Shamie “a straightforward, ordinary lad”; but some friends said he had become radicalized. One told Sky News that al-Shamie “started using [encrypted messaging app] Telegram and searching for ISIS videos.” Another reported that he “changed a bit; I felt his thoughts were a bit too radical for me.”
Evidently, he also was influenced by others who were known for antisemitic, anti-Israel rhetoric. In 2023, his mosque, Masjid Sunnah Nelson, was reported to the UK’s Charity Commission for a sermon in which the imam, Abul Abbas Naveed, blamed the war in Gaza on the “plotting of the kuffar [a slur against non-Muslims] against Islam.” Only six days after Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Naveed “described Israelis as ‘Europeans’ who had oppressed Palestinians since the state’s creation in 1948.”
Al-Shamie’s father, Faraj, a trauma surgeon, said his family “strongly condemns this heinous act, which targeted peaceful, innocent civilians. We fully distance ourselves from this attack and express our deep shock and sorrow over what has happened.”
However, in an October 7, 2023, Facebook post immediately following Hamas’s massacre, he praised the terrorists: “The scenes broadcast by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades of a group of fighters storming an Israeli army camp using simple means, namely balloons and motorcycles, prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israel will not remain.”
Antisemitism has become a feature, not an anomaly, of British society. During the Holocaust, the UK sheltered Jewish refugees, including 10,000 children rescued by the Kindertransport. Today, as Islamic extremism rises, British Jews would be wise to prepare an exit plan.
