From Auschwitz to Iftar: Danish Muslim-Jewish biker club revs up interfaith dialogue

Uniting over a common love of motorcycles, members of MuJu & Co. hit the road to fight bigotry, including guarding a Jewish cemetery and visiting Auschwitz.

Three years ago, Danish neo-Nazi groups vandalised more than 80 graves in a Jewish cemetery in Randers on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Since then, an unlikely group comes to patrol the main Jewish cemetery in Copenhagen every year on Kristallnacht: a motorcycle club wearing leather vests adorned with their signature hamsa patch — a palm-shaped good luck symbol among both Jews and Muslims.

“We do this to make sure it won’t happen again, and we will do the same if someone [vandalised] the Muslim cemetery … or even a Buddhist or Christian cemetery,” said Sohail Asghar, the co-founder and vice president of MuJu & Co. MC Danmark, an interfaith motorcycle club in Copenhagen for Muslims, Jews and their allies.

Biker groups clad in leather are often perceived as being tough guys who drive fast, don’t mess around and walk a bit on the wild side. But the members of MuJu & Co. turn up in places where biker gangs are not expected to congregate — such as the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial, a mosque in downtown Copenhagen, or a Jewish cemetery on the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

MuJu & Co. is Denmark’s first and only motorcycle club with a focus on Muslim-Jewish relations. It was founded in 2019 to unite motorcycle fanatics who are also interested in spreading a message of tolerance.

“It came up as a kind of joke, because we realized that we were several people riding bikes with Muslim and Jewish backgrounds,” said Dan Meyrowitsch, a Jewish epidemiologist and global health expert who knows Dr Asghar through their work in international public health.

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From Auschwitz to Iftar: Danish Muslim-Jewish biker club revs up interfaith dialogue (Times of Israel)

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Photo: Members of MuJu & Co. visit Auschwitz (MuJu & Co. MC Danmark)