Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. So I took the opportunity to write a “Thunderer” column (£) for the Times, entitled: “I am shamed by Muslim attitudes to the Holocaust”.
If you can’t get behind the paywall, here are the crucial paras:
We British Muslims prefer to wallow in vicarious victimhood. Only “our” tragedies matter: Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya roll off our tongues. But none of these surpasses the Holocaust’s barbarism. The Nazi genocide cannot be relativised or generalised. It was an unprecedented act of industrial slaughter; a uniquely horrific crime against humanity.
Yet between 2001 and 2007 the Muslim Council of Britain took the morally abhorrent (and strategically stupid) decision to boycott the day, crassly insisting that it be renamed “Genocide Memorial Day”. In 2008, the boycott was dropped only to be resumed in 2009 after Israel’s assault on Gaza. I yield to no one in my support for the Palestinian cause. But denying or ignoring the Holocaust does nothing to advance that cause. Palestinian suffering is not reduced by belittling the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.
As I point out later in the piece, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) have dropped their boycott over the past three years and I’m happy to report that the MCB not only attended one of the main HMD ceremonies in London yesterday evening, but deputy general secretary Dr Shuja Shafi was asked to light one of the candles.
However, as I point out in the piece:
…the whole British Muslim community must do much more to remember the Holocaust — whether through hosting events at our mosques or sending our children to visit Auschwitz.
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