International: True Muslims must never deny the European Holocaust
Source:
Muslim American Society via Jewish Peace News Jewish objections to Iran's shameful conference have been given prominence in the media. Unfortunately, Muslim voices of outrage have not. This serves to reinforce negative stereotypes of Muslims as Jew-haters and fanatics which is not the case.
Iran apparently refused a visa to Khaled Mahameed, an Arab citizen of Israel and an attorney who set up a Holocaust museum in his Nazareth office due to his Israeli citizenship. But he had been planning to go with the message to "Stop denying the Holocaust and start studying it, because it's this refusal to understand the Holocaust that caused such a catastrophe for the Palestinians."
Here is a Muslim American leader, and Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation. He finds no trouble putting together absolute opposition to Israel's occupation and to other Israeli policies, and equally strong opposition, from a purely Muslim point of view, to Holocaust denial.
By Ibrahim Ramey
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful
History will recall the tragedy of the genocide that slaughtered some six million European Jews between the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1933 and the culmination of the Second World War in Europe in May, 1945.
The evidence of this crime, and the horrible magnitude of this killing, is irrefutable. From sources as varied as Nazi war records, film documentation, and most importantly, the testimony of survivors and witnesses, we know that the mass murder of European Jews was, indeed, the single greatest crime of genocide in the twentieth century.
Yet the world now witnesses yet another wave of historical revisionism and Holocaust denial, this time emerging not from European Anti-Semites, but from none other than the President of Iran. Indeed, this head of state has taken the unprecedented act of hosting an international conference of anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and even white racists like former Klan leader David Duke, to gather in Tehran to deny the magnitude, if not the very existence, of this barbaric act.
As a Muslim of African decent in the United States, whose ancestors were victimized by the enormous crime of slavery, I object. And I believe that all Muslims, like other human beings who value compassion and truth, must vigorously object to this gathering as well.
Like many in the global Muslim community, I regard the occupation of Palestinian land and the policies of the State of Israel as issues of extreme importance. I am certainly among those who believe that the occupation of Palestinian territory and the denial of full human rights to Palestinians, and even to Arab people regarded as Israeli citizens, is deplorable.
But I find it to be morally unconscionable to attempt to build political arguments and political movements on a platform of racial hatred and the denial of the suffering of the human beings who were victimized by the viciousness of Hitler's genocidal rampage through Europe.
President Ahmedinejad should recognize that the issue of the Palestinian people must not, and cannot, be transmogrified into the ugly and spiritually bankrupt context of racial hatred. The cause of freedom must never drink from the well of hatred and racism.
And indeed, as the Holy Qur'an compels Muslims to demand justice for the oppressed, we are also called to witness against ourselves when we are in error.
And in this case, the President of Iran most certainly is.
The writer is the Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.
http://www.masnet.org/articlesandpapers.asp?id=3939
Friday, December 15, 2006
By Ibrahim Ramey
In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, Most Merciful
History will recall the tragedy of the genocide that slaughtered some six million European Jews between the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party in 1933 and the culmination of the Second World War in Europe in May, 1945.
The evidence of this crime, and the horrible magnitude of this killing, is irrefutable. From sources as varied as Nazi war records, film documentation, and most importantly, the testimony of survivors and witnesses, we know that the mass murder of European Jews was, indeed, the single greatest crime of genocide in the twentieth century.
Yet the world now witnesses yet another wave of historical revisionism and Holocaust denial, this time emerging not from European Anti-Semites, but from none other than the President of Iran. Indeed, this head of state has taken the unprecedented act of hosting an international conference of anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, and even white racists like former Klan leader David Duke, to gather in Tehran to deny the magnitude, if not the very existence, of this barbaric act.
As a Muslim of African decent in the United States, whose ancestors were victimized by the enormous crime of slavery, I object. And I believe that all Muslims, like other human beings who value compassion and truth, must vigorously object to this gathering as well.
Like many in the global Muslim community, I regard the occupation of Palestinian land and the policies of the State of Israel as issues of extreme importance. I am certainly among those who believe that the occupation of Palestinian territory and the denial of full human rights to Palestinians, and even to Arab people regarded as Israeli citizens, is deplorable.
But I find it to be morally unconscionable to attempt to build political arguments and political movements on a platform of racial hatred and the denial of the suffering of the human beings who were victimized by the viciousness of Hitler's genocidal rampage through Europe.
President Ahmedinejad should recognize that the issue of the Palestinian people must not, and cannot, be transmogrified into the ugly and spiritually bankrupt context of racial hatred. The cause of freedom must never drink from the well of hatred and racism.
And indeed, as the Holy Qur'an compels Muslims to demand justice for the oppressed, we are also called to witness against ourselves when we are in error.
And in this case, the President of Iran most certainly is.
The writer is the Director of the Human and Civil Rights Division of the Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation.
http://www.masnet.org/articlesandpapers.asp?id=3939
Friday, December 15, 2006
