The Manchester synagogue terrorist attended a mosque where the imam described Jews as “treacherous”, the Telegraph can reveal.
Jihad al-Shamie began worshipping at the Masjid Sunnah Nelson, 25 miles north of his home in Prestwich, Manchester, in 2022.
The mosque is associated with the Salafi movement, a fundamentalist branch of Sunni Islam, which also inspired the Islamic State (IS) terror group.
Al-Shamie pledged allegiance to IS in a 999 call during his attack on the Heaton Park synagogue last week, which left two people dead and three others injured.
Witnesses said the terrorist shouted “this is what you’re going to get for killing our children”, in an apparent reference to the war in Gaza.
The imam of the mosque, Abul Abbaas Naveed, has made a series of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel comments in his sermons.
In October 2023, he described Jews as “treacherous” in a sermon about a hadith, or Islamic holy text, which claims a Jewish woman tried to kill the prophet Mohammed with poisoned meat. “This also shows us the traits of the Yahud [Jews], how treacherous they are and how much they betray and oppress people, because they did this with the greatest of the humans,” he said.
Earlier this month, on Oct 1, the imam derogatorily said anyone who did not act based on their “knowledge” had a “resemblance” to Jews, who he said had rejected Islam despite previously receiving revelation from Allah in the Hebrew scriptures. “Whoever has knowledge and does not act by his knowledge, then he has a resemblance to the yahud [Jews],” he said.
In a third sermon, on Aug 15, Mr Naveed branded Israel a “murderous Zionist regime”. “The people of Gaza … are being suffocated of life, and starved by death,” he said. “And each day when you think that the murderous Zionist regime cannot become more evil and more depraved, they surpass themselves, and they add a new level of cruelty and brutality not seen the day before.”
A spokesman for Campaign Against Antisemitism called the preachings “emblematic”. He added: “Radical preaching at a mosque reportedly attended by an Islamist terrorist. When are regulators going to wake up? It will no longer do just to give mosques like these a regulatory slap on the wrist. They need to be severely sanctioned or shut down and the message that radical extremism in the name of religion will no longer be tolerated needs to be broadcast loud and clear.”
Speaking to The i newspaper, Mr Naveed denied that his mosque was responsible for radicalising al-Shamie, who he said was “not a good Muslim”.
Al-Shamie attended a three-day “knowledge conference” at the mosque with Kenan, his younger brother, in November 2022. In a message al-Shamie sent to one of his three wives, who has said he raped her, he wrote: “I rly [sic] love the mosque there.”
Mr Naveed suggested that al-Shamie was radicalised online.
The mosque was opened by Fountains of Knowledge, a charity, in 2021. In 2023, the group was reported to the charities regulator over a sermon in which the imam linked the war in Gaza to the “plotting of the kuffar against Islam”. “Kuffar” is a derogatory term for non-Muslims.
In the sermon, given six days after the Oct 7 2023 terror attack, Mr Naveed said Israelis were “Europeans” who had oppressed Palestinians since the state of Israel was created in 1948.
The imam condemned al-Shamie’s synagogue attack in another sermon, posted on Instagram on Wednesday. In it, Mr Naveed branded Israelis “genocidal Zionists”.
He said: “When we speak about Palestine, why do we speak about Palestine? Because it’s oppression and transgressions. “So those genocidal Zionists, they have shed the blood of children, destroyed the houses of the innocent, violated the honour of innocent women. . . ”
Mr Naveed said it was “illogical” to “equate between Judaism and Zionism”, and that “jihad” was “not terrorist actions” but military intervention by an army against “oppressors”.
Mr Naveed has also attacked other religions in his sermons, and in December 2024 claimed Christmas was “rooted in paganism”.
