Holocaust-denial in Muslim lands is spoon-fed to children, the murder of six million depicted from school age as a mere contrivance to justify Israel’s existence. The best-known denier is Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told a Teheran audience in 2009 (one of many occasions), “It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim.” In Egypt the former head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, referred to “the myth of the Holocaust” (BBC, 23 Dec. 2005). Palestinian school curricula, according to David Bedein of the Center for Near East Policy Research, are built around the doctorate that president and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas defended in 1982 at the USSR’s Institute of Oriental Studies on the alleged “links” between Nazism and Zionism. It claims that Hitler’s Jewish victims numbered “possibly” six million or “below one million” and that no gas chambers were used. Similar pseudo-scholarship is documented in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab lands.
The word “Shoah” cannot be found on the Al Jazeera-English website and “Holocaust” links to Norman Finkelstein on “exploiting” the tragedy. Mehdi Hasan, senior editor at The New Statesman, wrote: “British Muslim attitudes are defined not just by denial but by indifference” (“I am shamed by Muslim attitudes to the Holocaust,” The Times, Jan. 27). The British Muslim Council boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day from 2001-07 and 2009-10. “Palestinian suffering,” Hasan said, “is not reduced by belittling the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.”
There are glimmers of light. Though Al Jazeera ignored it, a Moroccan student, Elmehdi Boudra, organized a Holocaust conference, the first ever in a Muslim country, on Sept. 21 at Al-Akhawayn University. It “attracted virtually no media attention of any kind” (New York Times, 23 Sept. 2011). Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, in 2009 called for “an exhaustive and faithful reading of the history.” His grandfather, Mohammed V, notably refused to transfer Jews to the death camps. Boudra, who had heard of the Moroccan Jews (most of whom now live in Israel or France) from his grandmother, studied with Simon Levy at the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca.
In Turkey this year the state broadcaster, TRT, showed some of French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour documentary, “Shoah,” first produced in 1985 – “the first time the film has been aired on public television in a majority-Muslim country” (AP, Jan. 27, Gulf Times, Jan. 28, 2012). “Over the past 60 years, the Muslim world [has] been excluded from history learning,” says director Abraham Radkin of the Aladdin Project, based in Paris, which subtitled the film in Turkish, Arabic, and Farsi. “Shoah” was also broadcast in Iran in 2011 by a Farsi satellite channel based in Los Angeles. Prof. Cengiz Aktar of Bahcesehir University said: “There [are] a lot of misjudgments about Judaism, [a] lack of knowledge about European Jews, what happened to them. ... The Turks are engaged in a pioneering work and I am sure it will be followed by other Muslim countries.”
Turks had already seen a film, “The Turkish Passport,” about diplomats who rescued Jews during the war. In a similar vein a photographic exhibition, “Besa: A Code of Honor: Muslim Albanians who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust,” by Norman H. Gershman, sponsored by the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem, opened in Calgary this winter. The seventeen Albanian Muslims profiled are among sixty-three of the Righteous Among the Nations. Also among the latter, Eva Weisel believes, should be her little-known rescuer in wartime Tunisia, an Arab man named Khaled Abdul-Wahab (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 28, 2012).
At Auschwitz on 1 Feb. 2012 Bosnia’s Grand Mufti, Mustafa Cerić, said: “We must teach our young people in mosques, churches and synagogues about what happened here. This awful place should stand as a reminder to all people that intolerance and lack of understanding between people can result in … such places as Auschwitz” (Reuters). The news, then, from Turkey, Morocco, Bosnia, even Iran is encouraging. As Mehdi Hasan urged fellow Muslims: “let us stand side by side with our Jewish brethren and together mourn the deaths of six million innocent souls.” — CPC
“The Holocaust & Muslim Opinion”
from "Notes & Topics"
The Dorchester Review Vol. 2, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2012)
Holocaust-denial in Muslim lands is spoon-fed to children, the murder of six million depicted from school age as a mere contrivance to justify Israel’s existence. The best-known denier is Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told a Teheran audience in 2009 (one of many occasions), “It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim.” In Egypt the former head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, referred to “the myth of the Holocaust” (BBC, 23 Dec. 2005). Palestinian school curricula, according to David Bedein of the Center for Near East Policy Research, are built around the doctorate that president and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas defended in 1982 at the USSR’s Institute of Oriental Studies on the alleged “links” between Nazism and Zionism. It claims that Hitler’s Jewish victims numbered “possibly” six million or “below one million” and that no gas chambers were used. Similar pseudo-scholarship is documented in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab lands.
The word “Shoah” cannot be found on the Al Jazeera-English website and “Holocaust” links to Norman Finkelstein on “exploiting” the tragedy. Mehdi Hasan, senior editor at The New Statesman, wrote: “British Muslim attitudes are defined not just by denial but by indifference” (“I am shamed by Muslim attitudes to the Holocaust,” The Times, Jan. 27). The British Muslim Council boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day from 2001-07 and 2009-10. “Palestinian suffering,” Hasan said, “is not reduced by belittling the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.”
There are glimmers of light. Though Al Jazeera ignored it, a Moroccan student, Elmehdi Boudra, organized a Holocaust conference, the first ever in a Muslim country, on Sept. 21 at Al-Akhawayn University. It “attracted virtually no media attention of any kind” (New York Times, 23 Sept. 2011). Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, in 2009 called for “an exhaustive and faithful reading of the history.” His grandfather, Mohammed V, notably refused to transfer Jews to the death camps. Boudra, who had heard of the Moroccan Jews (most of whom now live in Israel or France) from his grandmother, studied with Simon Levy at the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca.
In Turkey this year the state broadcaster, TRT, showed some of French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour documentary, “Shoah,” first produced in 1985 – “the first time the film has been aired on public television in a majority-Muslim country” (AP, Jan. 27, Gulf Times, Jan. 28, 2012). “Over the past 60 years, the Muslim world [has] been excluded from history learning,” says director Abraham Radkin of the Aladdin Project, based in Paris, which subtitled the film in Turkish, Arabic, and Farsi. “Shoah” was also broadcast in Iran in 2011 by a Farsi satellite channel based in Los Angeles. Prof. Cengiz Aktar of Bahcesehir University said: “There [are] a lot of misjudgments about Judaism, [a] lack of knowledge about European Jews, what happened to them. ... The Turks are engaged in a pioneering work and I am sure it will be followed by other Muslim countries.”
Turks had already seen a film, “The Turkish Passport,” about diplomats who rescued Jews during the war. In a similar vein a photographic exhibition, “Besa: A Code of Honor: Muslim Albanians who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust,” by Norman H. Gershman, sponsored by the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem, opened in Calgary this winter. The seventeen Albanian Muslims profiled are among sixty-three of the Righteous Among the Nations. Also among the latter, Eva Weisel believes, should be her little-known rescuer in wartime Tunisia, an Arab man named Khaled Abdul-Wahab (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 28, 2012).
At Auschwitz on 1 Feb. 2012 Bosnia’s Grand Mufti, Mustafa Cerić, said: “We must teach our young people in mosques, churches and synagogues about what happened here. This awful place should stand as a reminder to all people that intolerance and lack of understanding between people can result in … such places as Auschwitz” (Reuters). The news, then, from Turkey, Morocco, Bosnia, even Iran is encouraging. As Mehdi Hasan urged fellow Muslims: “let us stand side by side with our Jewish brethren and together mourn the deaths of six million innocent souls.” — CPC
Holocaust-denial in Muslim lands is spoon-fed to children, the murder of six million depicted from school age as a mere contrivance to justify Israel’s existence. The best-known denier is Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who told a Teheran audience in 2009 (one of many occasions), “It is a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim.” In Egypt the former head of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, referred to “the myth of the Holocaust” (BBC, 23 Dec. 2005). Palestinian school curricula, according to David Bedein of the Center for Near East Policy Research, are built around the doctorate that president and PLO chairman Mahmoud Abbas defended in 1982 at the USSR’s Institute of Oriental Studies on the alleged “links” between Nazism and Zionism. It claims that Hitler’s Jewish victims numbered “possibly” six million or “below one million” and that no gas chambers were used. Similar pseudo-scholarship is documented in Syria, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab lands.
The word “Shoah” cannot be found on the Al Jazeera-English website and “Holocaust” links to Norman Finkelstein on “exploiting” the tragedy. Mehdi Hasan, senior editor at The New Statesman, wrote: “British Muslim attitudes are defined not just by denial but by indifference” (“I am shamed by Muslim attitudes to the Holocaust,” The Times, Jan. 27). The British Muslim Council boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day from 2001-07 and 2009-10. “Palestinian suffering,” Hasan said, “is not reduced by belittling the mass murder of Europe’s Jews.”
There are glimmers of light. Though Al Jazeera ignored it, a Moroccan student, Elmehdi Boudra, organized a Holocaust conference, the first ever in a Muslim country, on Sept. 21 at Al-Akhawayn University. It “attracted virtually no media attention of any kind” (New York Times, 23 Sept. 2011). Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, in 2009 called for “an exhaustive and faithful reading of the history.” His grandfather, Mohammed V, notably refused to transfer Jews to the death camps. Boudra, who had heard of the Moroccan Jews (most of whom now live in Israel or France) from his grandmother, studied with Simon Levy at the Museum of Moroccan Judaism in Casablanca.
In Turkey this year the state broadcaster, TRT, showed some of French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann’s nine-hour documentary, “Shoah,” first produced in 1985 – “the first time the film has been aired on public television in a majority-Muslim country” (AP, Jan. 27, Gulf Times, Jan. 28, 2012). “Over the past 60 years, the Muslim world [has] been excluded from history learning,” says director Abraham Radkin of the Aladdin Project, based in Paris, which subtitled the film in Turkish, Arabic, and Farsi. “Shoah” was also broadcast in Iran in 2011 by a Farsi satellite channel based in Los Angeles. Prof. Cengiz Aktar of Bahcesehir University said: “There [are] a lot of misjudgments about Judaism, [a] lack of knowledge about European Jews, what happened to them. ... The Turks are engaged in a pioneering work and I am sure it will be followed by other Muslim countries.”
Turks had already seen a film, “The Turkish Passport,” about diplomats who rescued Jews during the war. In a similar vein a photographic exhibition, “Besa: A Code of Honor: Muslim Albanians who Rescued Jews During the Holocaust,” by Norman H. Gershman, sponsored by the Canadian Society for Yad Vashem, opened in Calgary this winter. The seventeen Albanian Muslims profiled are among sixty-three of the Righteous Among the Nations. Also among the latter, Eva Weisel believes, should be her little-known rescuer in wartime Tunisia, an Arab man named Khaled Abdul-Wahab (Jerusalem Post, Jan. 28, 2012).
At Auschwitz on 1 Feb. 2012 Bosnia’s Grand Mufti, Mustafa Cerić, said: “We must teach our young people in mosques, churches and synagogues about what happened here. This awful place should stand as a reminder to all people that intolerance and lack of understanding between people can result in … such places as Auschwitz” (Reuters). The news, then, from Turkey, Morocco, Bosnia, even Iran is encouraging. As Mehdi Hasan urged fellow Muslims: “let us stand side by side with our Jewish brethren and together mourn the deaths of six million innocent souls.” — CPC