|
Washington Post – December 21, 2006
Muslims mark solidarity with Jews
Event held days after Iranian meeting that denied genocide
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Local Muslim leaders lit candles yesterday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to commemorate Jewish suffering under the Nazis, in a ceremony held just days after Iran had a conference denying the genocide.
American Muslims "believe we have to learn the lessons of history and commit ourselves: Never again," said Imam Mohamed Magid of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, standing before the eternal flame flickering from a black marble base that holds dirt from Nazi concentration camps.
Around the hexagonal room, candles glimmered under the engraved names of the death camps: Chelmno. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Majdanek.
"We stand here with three survivors of the Holocaust and my great Muslim friends to condemn this outrage in Iran," said Sara J. Bloomfield, the museum's director, addressing a bank of TV cameras in the room, known as the Hall of Remembrance.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad organized last week's conference after Western countries protested his comment last year that the slaughter of 6 million Jews was a myth. The two-day meeting drew historical revisionists and such people as David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
Major American Muslim and Arab-American organizations have condemned the Iran conference. The Muslim speakers at yesterday's ceremony did not mention that event but called for recognition of the suffering Jews experienced in the Holocaust and condemned religious hatred. Asked afterward why they did not single out Iran, the Muslim leaders said the problem was broader than the recent conference.
"The issue here is: There might be somebody from X and Y country, a Muslim, saying the same thing," Magid said. If anyone wants to make Holocaust denial an Islamic cause, he said, "we want to say to them: You cannot use our name."
Museum officials said a Muslim delegation had never before made such a public statement at the memorial building……
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/20/AR2006122001718.html
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – December 18, 2006
St. Louis: Muslim leaders here denounce
conference of holocaust deniers
Aisha Sultan
Local Muslim leaders denounced on Sunday the recent international conference in Iran attended by many who deny the existence of the Holocaust.
Spokeswoman Ghazala Hayat read a statement at the annual general body meeting at Daar ul Islam mosque in West County.
"We, the community of the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis, denounce questioning the authenticity of the number of Jewish deaths in the Holocaust. … Unimaginable crimes were committed by the Nazis during World War II. Denying the pain endured by millions of human beings only intensifies it," she said.
About 100 participants listened while she read the statement.
Erbab Majeed, principal of the Sunday school at the mosque, said the statement was necessary to distinguish between the views of Muslims here from those in other parts of the world.
"They made their statement, and we're making ours," he said.
Gulten Ilhan, vice president of the St. Louis chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations, said she had heard reports of Iran's president trying to justify the conference as a matter of freedom of speech - just as many said the Danish cartoons about the Prophet Muhammad were.
"I was very saddened by the cartoons, and I am also very saddened by the act of (President) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad," she said. "Two wrongs do not make a right."
Karen Aroesty, spokeswoman for the Anti-Defamation League in St. Louis, said she welcomed the message from local Muslims.
"I think it will be a very heartening message for many in the Jewish community," she said.
Ilhan said her faith directed her to speak out against injustice, even if meant acting against one's own kin. She said she appreciated that the statement made reference to Islamic teachings when it said, "We condemn any attempt by any group to belittle atrocities against Jewish or any other ethnicity, realizing that even one single life lost should pain the whole of humanity."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/EB53A29025EE320B86257248000967EE?OpenDocument
Tampa Tribune – December 15, 2006
Florida: Holocaust deniers don't speak for Islam
Ahmed Bedier
On behalf of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, I condemn the shameful conference in Iran that sought to deny one of the lowest moments in human history: the Holocaust.
No legitimate cause can ever be advanced by denying the enormous human suffering caused by the massacre of millions of Jews and other minority groups by the Nazis. Attempts to use Holocaust denial as a political tool in the Middle East conflict will only serve to deepen the level of mistrust and hostility already present in the region.
Muslims are commanded in the Koran to "enjoin in the good and forbid the evil," and clearly the genocide of European Jews was nothing but evil.
It is a shame that the current government of Iran, which claims to be an Islamic state, would ignore Islamic ethical values and belittle evil. Responsible governments must encourage the study of the Holocaust and other human atrocities to ensure that they are not repeated.
Americans in general and the Jewish and Muslim communities in particular should know that those who spew anti-Semitic bigotry do not speak for Islam; Muslims denounce their views and their hatred.
Islam acknowledges Judaism (and Christianity) as a true revealed religion from God; furthermore, Muslims view Jews (and Christians) as fellow "People of the Book" who believe in the same Abrahamic monotheism.
While the cynical conference was held in Iran, it included many non-Muslim participants, including former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and French "scholar" George Tail, who called the Holocaust a myth. The diverse participation is a reminder that bigotry is not exclusive to any one group.
As "People of the Book," we must stand united and challenge those who would fan the flames of all forms of hate, including anti- Semitism.
Ahmed Bedier is executive director of the Tampa Chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
International Herald Tribune - December 20, 2006
British author who denied Holocaust freed from jail
By Mark Landler
FRANKFURT - Thirteen months after being jailed in Austria for statements denying the Holocaust, the British historian David Irving was freed Wednesday by a court in Vienna, which ruled that he could serve the remainder of his prison sentence at home on probation.
Noting that he made the statements "a long time ago, 17 years," the appeals court said it did not expect Irving, 68, to repeat the offense, and was confident he would leave Austria immediately. His lawyer, Herbert Schaller, said Irving hoped to fly to Britain on Thursday.
Denying the existence of the Holocaust is a crime in Austria, which was part of the Third Reich from 1938 to 1945. But the appeals court turned down a request by prosecutors to extend Irving's three-year sentence, instead reducing it to two years and, in effect, setting him free.
Irving, a prolific author of books about World War II and Nazi Germany who cultivated a second career as a globe-trotting naysayer about the extent of Nazi atrocities, was arrested in southern Austria in November 2005 while on his way to speak to a right- wing student group.
The charges against him dated back to 1989, when Irving gave a series of speeches in Austria in which he was reported to have denied there were gas chambers at the Auschwitz death camp.
Though Irving disavowed some of his most inflammatory assertions during his trial and acknowledged that the Nazis had murdered millions of Jews, a lower court sentenced him to three years in prison without probation — a sentence that was viewed as quite severe.
"Throwing someone in jail for three years for something he said 17 years ago is intolerable," Schaller said in an interview. "As an Englishman, he couldn't believe he would be imprisoned for that."
Irving's books were on conspicuous display last week at a conference of Holocaust deniers in Tehran, organized by the Iranian government. Among the speakers was Robert Faurisson, a French academic and Holocaust denier, who prodded Irving during the 1980s to be more open about his doubts about the mass killing of Jews.
The timing of the decision was not linked to the conference, experts said. Both sides appealed the initial sentence, and the higher court had been expected to rule around the end of the year.
Nearly 20 other countries, including Germany, have laws that prohibit denying the Holocaust…..
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/20/news/austria.php
|
