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December 18, 2005

UK: Anti-Semitic Muslim Council May Accept Holocaust Day

For quite a while, the luminaries of the Muslim Council for Britain (MCB) have been encouraging anti-Israeli and anti-semitic positions. The secretary general, "Sir" Iqbal Sacanie, who has done pitiably little for Britain to have received his knighthood, has been directly opposed to any celebration of the Holocaust, which killed 6 million Jews.

In January, the Times reported that Sir Iqbal Sacranie wrote to the Home Secretary, saying that the MCB would not attend the 2005 Holocaust Memorial Day celebrations at Westminster unless they also included the "holocaust" of the Palestinian intifada.

Sacranie still found time this year to attend a memorial service in Regents Park Mosque for Sheikh Yassin, the "spiritual leader" of Hamas, the Palestinian terror organisation, which uses rocket attacks, kidnappings and murdering of hostages as part of its "strategy".

On a BBC Panorama documentary from August, entitled "A Question of Leadership", Sacranie defended his position on attending the sheikh's memorial: "Those who fight oppression, those who fight occupation, cannot be termed as terrorist. They are freedom fighters, in the same way as Nelson Mandela fought against apartheid, in the same way as Gandhi and many others fought British rule in India."

Salman Rushdie stated in an August article for the Washington Post that if Sir Iqbal Sacranie was the best example of a Muslim that Blair could find: "We have a problem".

Holocaust Memorial Day is on January 27. This is the anniversary of the liberation of the death-camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. It will take place next month on 26th January, because the 27th falls on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The Queen is patron of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

The UK government Home Office set up a Muslim-based task force in the wake of the London Transport bombings of 7/7 and a fortnight later, comprising the virulently anti-semitic and rather effeminate publicity manager of the MCB, Inayat Bunglawala Bunglawala has complained that the BBC is "pro-Israel", and has dismissed media directors as being "of the tribe of Judah" or "highly-placed friends of Israel".

It is hardly surprising that the findings of Home Office taskforce announced in September that "Holocaust Day" did not meet the needs of Muslims and should be scrapped, replaced with an all-inclusive "Genocide Day". Sacranie said: "Muslims feel hurt and excluded that their lives are not equally valuable to those lives lost in the Holocaust time".

On September 20, in the Guardian, Sacranie wrote:

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.

Today, the Khaleej Times quotes the Observer in noting that finally, the Muslim Council for Britain is considering removing its boycott.

The 2006 Holocaust Memorial Day is going to be held on January 26 in Wales, at the Millennium Centre at Cardiff. Sir Iqbal has indicated that he is actively considering attending the event, saying:

"This is being discussed at the moment within the MCB,' he said. 'A meeting is taking place in the next 10 days and then we'll able to tell you our decision on this. We want to make sure how inclusive it can be. Once the inclusivity is there, we have no problem with it."

So basically, he is not really softening his opinion, as suggested, nor is the MCB giving blanket approval. He is emotionally blackmailing, still attempting to weaken and divert the spirit of what remembering the Holocaust is about. Attempting to "negotiate" with issues of a historical event of such proportions is to trivialise it.

Maybe Sacranie is saying this to show that his group is not as insanely anti-semitic as Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, whose current comments denying and trivialising the Holocaust have brought international condemnation.

Sacranie says: "We do not see any reason why, if it cannot be changed into Genocide Memorial Day, we should not also have one that commemorates all other genocides as well. The message of "never again" will only come into reality if we recognise all human life. There has been more than one genocide in history."

Well yes, Iqbal, there certainly have, perhaps we could include the 1916 massacre of 1,000,000 Armenians by the Muslim armies of the Turkish Ottoman Caliphate, currently getting Turkey's Islamist leader, Erdogan, into political hot water? Or the massacres committed during and after the Prophet Mohammed's lifetime by his followers?

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 18, 2005 5:59 AM

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