Says Sir Iqbal Sacranie, writing the Guardian today:
“There is no shortage of Jews – including Leslie Bunder, editor of SomethingJewish.co.uk and Rabbi Schochet – who recognise that the memorial day in its present format is morally problematic. Still, the MCB recognises that this is enormously sensitive territory and if widening the scope of the day – while ethically right – is not politically feasible currently, then we should consider establishing a separate and truly inclusive genocide memorial day.”
As we pointed out before, the Muslim Council of Britian’s original gripe about Holocaust Memorial Day complaint – indeed one of its key reasons for boycotting the event in 2001 – was that it was too inclusive:
“It includes the controversial question of alleged Armenian genocide as well as the so-called gay genocide.”
Neither of these statements were true. The Armenian genocide was not commemorated as part of Holocaust Memorial Day 2001. The deliberate targeted murder of gays during the Holocaust was not described as a “gay genocide”.
Some of our readers might want to write to the Guardian to point out Sacranie’s suprising memory lapse about his organisation’s initial stance.
Update: also see Cathy Young in the Boston Globe (via Normblog)
Normblog today also observes.
David Hirsh has a very good article on the Engage website:
Perhaps it might be that there should be a public campaign of anti-racist education? Perhaps racist images of Muslims in the media should be challenged by this campaign? Perhaps the racist propaganda of the British Nationalist Party should come under scrutiny on the basis that it constitutes incitement to violence? Perhaps the issues of poverty and social exclusion in the UK should be looked at with renewed vigour because many of the excluded are Muslims? Perhaps the ways that our schools let down Muslim children could be looked at? Perhaps the ways that airport searches and police ‘stop and search’ incidents are targeted could be looked again? Perhaps the institutional connections between the Church of England and the British state should be challenged? Maybe Christmas and Easter could be replaced by secular and inclusive new holidays?
But no.The first suggestion of a way to address Islamic extremism and the grievances upon which it feeds is that the Jewish monopoly on the public memory of genocide in this country should be broken.