Muslims and the Holocaust

Here is an article that examines some of the themes I've been ranting about as of late. -Hat tip: Zorkie at Discarded Lies

By Cathy Young September 19, 2005
RECENTLY IN England, four Muslim-staffed committees appointed to advise Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet on issues related to Islam have come up with a recommendation: Get rid of an official event viewed as offensive to Muslims. What event would that be? A celebration of the Crusades, perhaps? No, Holocaust Memorial Day.

In the words of one committee member, ''The very name Holocaust Memorial Day sounds too exclusive to many young Muslims. It sends out the wrong signals: that the lives of one people are to be remembered more than others."

That ''one people," of course, are the Jews.

Read the rest.

Addendum

At the end of the article Young wrote something that bothered me a bit:

This is not to tar all or most Muslims with the same brush, or to deny that anti-Muslim bias and paranoia exists, too. (In the United States, some right-wing bloggers have been shrieking that the proposed memorial to the victims of 9/11's Flight 93 is shaped like -- horrors! -- a crescent.)

Well, it is. And it is very inappropriate because the crescent is the symbol of Islam. Just as a war memorial about D-Day shaped like a swastika and called the "Swastika of Embrace" would be inappropriate, so too is a crescent-shaped "Crescent of Embrace" memorial dedicated to victims of Islamic fundamentalism.

Nor is it to say that Islam is inherently intolerant: All religions and ethnic groups have their bigots and haters. For a variety of reasons, the bigotry and hate in Islam are perilously close to the mainstream.