A couple of years ago, I took a shuttle train at London’s Heathrow airport, heading to the medium- and long-haul gates. I was standing at the end of the carriage, and as the ends of the carriages were mostly made of smoked glass, I could see into the carriage behind. A group of Orthodox Jewish men stood on the other side of the glass in full sectarian fig — beards and sidelocks, long coats and vaguely Habsburg Homburgs, the Bronze Age waistcoat of the tallit katan and its knotted fringes.
Through the glass, I could see the other passengers staring with curiosity; fair enough, given that almost everyone else in the carriage seemed to be wearing Lycra and sweat-wicking leisurewear. But I could also see faces expressing a gamut of discreditable emotions: irritation, contempt, rage, loathing. This, I realized, might not be how they saw me, but it was certainly how they thought of me. Anti-Jewish attitudes are the dark mirror of the mind that used to be Christian, but is now merely Western. As the diverse joys of mass immigration have proven in Europe, the same usually goes for the mind that is still Muslim. When a couple of the passengers saw me watching them as they stared at the others, they looked away, perhaps in embarrassment, perhaps in shame. Call it progress.
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