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THE Birmingham-based president of the British Pakistani Youth Council once said he would ‘salute’ Adolf Hitler if he killed more Jews than Muslims.

Kamran Ishtiaq, 37, famously hosted David Cameron when the then Tory leader wanted to ‘experience life outside of Westminster’.

On his LinkedIn profile he says he is President of the Council, which was set up to “focus on issues affecting our lives as British young people”. He adds that he has worked for the body from January 2009 to the present.

(Image: collect)

But a Facebook post from 2014, and the comments he made at the time, show he said of the Nazi dictator: “I would salute him still if he killed 90 Muslims and 92 Jews.”

When quizzed by BirminghamLive this week, he said: “If it’s on my Facebook, I said it.”

After a picture of Hitler appeared on his Facebook page, he was admonished by another poster who pointed out that the Nazi leader was a racist.

Mr Ishtiaq had replied: “I know that and to be honest he would have killed Muslims too if he got a chance.

“But you know what, I would salute him still if he killed 90 Muslims and 92 Jews.”

He added: “Now why he is my hero cuz, he just killed Jews, didn’t get a chance to kill Muslims... lol.”

The 2014 comments, seen by the BirminghamLive earlier this week, appear to have been deleted from Facebook recently.

Asked by our reporter if he felt the same way now about Jews, Mr Ishtiaq said: “To be honest with you, I feel that about the Jews who are killing the Palestinians now.

“Not the Jews who are leaving Israel – there are Jews who support Palestine. I was reading today in the media that there are Jews leaving Israel because Israel didn’t live up to their expectations.

"OK, but Jews, American Jews, yes I feel like that about them. The ones who are murdering the Palestinians. I do feel that about them.

"And what I wrote there, it’s about the Jews.”

He added: "When I say Jews, it’s not the Jews fighting the Jewish killers of Palestinians, the Jews who are with Muslims, but the Jews which are killing the Palestinians, yes. The murderers.

“I mean if anything happened to any Jewish community here my youths would be there frontline to support them. Jewish people here are not Palestinian-killing like the Jews over there.

"They’re peaceful like us Muslims here. They don’t want nothing to do with that.

“It’s like the terrorists. You can’t hate all Muslims because you hate terrorists. You can’t hate all Jews because you hate the killing Jews.”

Asked about those killed by the Nazis, Mr Ishtiaq said he did not believe that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

“To be honest, I don’t believe that,” said Mr Ishtiaq. “Every attack, anything on Jews is exaggerated. Yeah. I think that was an exaggeration too.

“He killed Jews, yeah. He did kill Jews, there’s no doubt in that. He killed Jews. But that figure is a question mark for me.”

Asked why he thought the Nazis killed Jews, he replied: “We don’t know what happened then. If they were doing this now, killing Palestinians, we don’t know what they done to the Germans at that time.”

(Image: collect)

Asked why the figure would be exaggerated, Mr Ishtiaq said: “It gives the Jewish people a reason, you know retaliation – ‘Look what’s happened to us?’ ‘We were nearly being ethnic cleansed and have to stick together’.

“It gives them a point of unity, it gives them a reason to retaliate, revenge, you know, empathy, whatever, you could say.”

Asked if he thought Hitler was wrong to kill the Jews, he said: “Er, no, I can’t think for Hitler. I can’t think why Hitler killed them. I just made that statement (the one on the internet). So why and how, I couldn’t tell you.

"I stand by the statement I made, yes."

Mr Ishtiaq said his views about Jews were shared by young people he worked with. “They feel ten times worse,” he said.

“My job is to get that feeling out of them, but I need positives to erase that feeling out of them.

“The Jews, the Israel (sic), have not given me a positive. Them feelings are getting day by day worse after what the Israelis are doing.”

During the telephone conversation with BirminghamLive, Mr Ishtiaq said he was the man who had invited Nafees Zakaria, the High Commissioner of Pakistan, to a meeting at Birmingham Council House, which took place on Wednesday.

But Khalid Mahmood, MP for Perry Barr, said Kamran Ishtiaq’s remarks had no place in society.

“Clearly, these are very inflammatory, offensive, anti-semitic remarks which have no place in society, in Birmingham, in the UK or anywhere else in the world, for that matter,” he said.

“Nor should we in any way look to try to justify that in the way he’s tried to justify that.

“It is purely wrong. Hideous comments have been made about killing people and killing the Jewish community – and the non-recognition of the Holocaust is absolutely absurd for someone to make comment."

Mr Mahmood added: “These sort of people do not represent the views of the Pakistani or the Muslim community in Birmingham, and where these people exist they should be sought out and held to account for their views.”

On Mr Ishtiaq’s claim that his views on Jews who support Israel are shared by youths he says he works with, Mr Mahmood said: “He is holding these views, he has access to young people.

"I think it is a serious matter for the authorities to look at.

“The authorities need to have a clear look and investigate this issue, because it certainly brings the whole of the community into disrepute and certainly we’re not where the community wants to be at all.”

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(Image: Birmingham Post and Mail)

KAMRAN Ishtiaq previously worked as a store manager at his family’s business, with which he is no longer linked.

He says he took over as President of the British Pakistani Youth Council in 2009 and talks about the group ‘building bridges’ on his LinkedIn page.

He writes: “The BPYC is a national group of young people who, whilst recognising our faith and ethnic heritage, focus on the present and look to the future.

“We focus on issues affecting our lives as British young people. As the President I lead to work proactively with the mainstream media to counter the negative stereotypes associated with British Pakistani young people and highlight the positive contributions we add to British society.

“This work has led me to work across the UK and Pakistan to build bridges.”

(Image: collect)

David Cameron visited his family’s Raja Brothers grocery business in Ladypool Road, Sparkbrook, in 2007, when Mr Ishtiaq was manager.

“As the Store Manager for this branch I was the key contact for running one of Birmingham’s busiest inner city district supermarkets. Such is the standing of our store that David Cameron visited us for some training on our checkouts,” he writes on LinkedIn.

He later recalled how the future PM appeared to be a ‘normal bloke’.“He was relaxed, cool and chilled – you couldn’t tell he was the opposition leader,” he said at the time.

“When he came here he seemed like a down-to-earth guy. His background didn’t show, it was like he was just a normal average guy.

“He was easy to communicate with. I would definitely have him back to work in the shop.”

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BY CLLR JOHN COTTON, Cabinet Member for Social Inclusion, Community Safety and Equalities

(Image: Birmingham Mail)

BIRMINGHAM is a welcoming city and one of the most diverse in the UK. We are proud of our diversity of cultures and communities, with over one million people from over 200 countries making this city their home.

However, we have been appalled to see attempts to divide the people of our city by using insulting and incendiary language. This has no place in our city.

Birmingham is a place of tolerance and mutual respect, where people of all faiths and none, all sexualities, all ethnicities, come together in pursuit of a common aim. This council will continue to champion these values and support all communities in putting them into action.

On November 7, 2017, Birmingham City Council passed a motion at full council to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism, which will be embedded in our equalities objectives and align with our priorities to promote equality and social cohesion across all communities.

The definition is an important tool for public bodies to understand how anti-Semitism manifests itself in the 21st century and when put to council members it was carried with strong cross-party support.

* Working with Jewish faith leaders and the Jewish community, on policy and engagement initiatives, including the community cohesion consultation.

* Through raising awareness of the Holocaust through commemoration events, such as Holocaust Memorial Day, with survivors sharing their stories to illustrate the impact of hatred and dehumanisation of a race.

* Offering support through community events to promote a more outward-looking sense of communal confidence across communities.

* Supporting the National Holocaust Project, called Echo Eternal, to obtain funding through the Building A Stronger Britain fund to ensure young people in schools are educated about and understand the impact of the Holocaust.

Furthermore, we continue to work with our partners to combat anti-Semitism in all its forms through existing initiatives and partnership arrangements, including the Birmingham Community Safety Partnership.

This also sits within the city’s wider Community Cohesion Strategy – approved by full council in December 2018 – which sets out a collaborative approach in which communities, faith organisations, public sector agencies, business and individuals can work together to help build a fair and inclusive city for all who live, work or visit Birmingham.

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'Community cohesion is about how we can all live, work, learn, and socialise together'

THE city council recently consulted with all communities and faiths on its plan to improve social cohesion. A draft proposal highlighted the issues faced by different ethnic and religious groups, but also looked at economic inequality, poverty, the ageing population and education.

“Community cohesion is about how we can all live, work, learn, and socialise together," the council said. “It is about how all people of different social backgrounds, ethnicities, faiths, and generations can interact with, and relate to, each other in a positive way.

“It is what is needed to foster trust and good relationships between, and within, diverse communities.

“We want to build a fair and inclusive city for everyone who lives in, works in, and visits Birmingham and to create an open and ongoing dialogue across the city in which we all continuously consider how our decisions, our resources, and our relationships across communities can be used to promote community cohesion.”