Muslims back Holocaust memorial

[Behind the Aegis]

Britain's Muslim leaders are considering ending their controversial boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day when the national commemoration is held next month.

The Muslim Council of Britain has long argued that HMD is 'exclusive' to Jews and that an EU genocide memorial day would better represent all victims of crimes against humanity. This year the council's leadership snubbed the HMD ceremony in Westminster marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

But Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the council, signalled the organisation's position has now softened and he is actively considering attending the next national event at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff on 26 January, where guests are likely to include Tony Blair.

'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.'

continues...

[PsychoDad]

1. I don't see why both can't be done.

or haven't been done.

A Holocaust memorial day, in remembrance of the victims of the Holocaust and a general EU genocide remembrance day. :shrug:

I can understand that to remember one event to the exclusion of others is tantamount to saying that some lives are more worthy of remembrance than others.

Meanwhile the Holocaust is unique in the numbers and scale involved. Nazi germany was not an isolated 3rd world country but a civilized industrialized western power, and as a matter of national policy used that industrialization against the Jews (and let us remember it wasn't just the germans who earned blood profit in this inhuman enterprise). If a crime of this magnitude could happen there then it could happen anywhere, that must also be remembered.

It's a shame that there there seems too much cruelty and inhumanity for just one day. I think it may be to our benefit if there were more than one occasion a year where we held our collective heads in shame and remembered our past.

Peace.

[Behind the Aegis]

2. I completely agree with you!

I think what you said is a great idea, and I said the same thing when this issue first raised its head.

"I think it may be to our benefit if there were more than one occasion a year where we held our collective heads in shame and remembered our past." Sadly, I also agree with you on this, too!

Peace.

[Maat]

18. You are so right - again - PsychoDad!

Remembering our past so that we will not be doomed to repeat it!

My friend, Oscar, still has the tatoo the Nazis put on him; he has shown it to me. He is kind to all. He is one of the few (out of his entire family) that survived the Camps.

He goes to various worship services; he tells me he abhors what has been done in God's name. He is a true peacenik.

Peace,

[elshiva]

3. Were any Muslims killed in the Holocaust?

Just asking...
Peace.

[Behind the Aegis]

4. Interesting question.

I haven't found anything that says there were (perhaps someone else has info on this). I do know that in the former Yugoslavia, their were Muslims in a special regiment of the SS. Although they didn't mind rounding up Jews, Serbs were their 'real' enemy.

On edit: I still haven't found anything about being victims in the Holocaust, but I did find this...

Sixty years after the Jewish community in the Greek town of Janina was rounded up and sent to Nazi death camps, an exhibit commemorating the event is opening at Kehila Kedosha Janina, the synagogue built by Greek-speaking Jews who emigrated from the town at the turn of the 20th century and settled on the Lower East Side.

Members of the congregation, Greek consular officials and Lower East neighbors will gather at 1 p.m. on Sun. April 4 at the newly restored synagogue at 280 Broome St. for the opening of “Out of the Ashes,” honoring the lost community, its survivors and descendants and the Righteous Among Nations — Christians and Muslims — who sheltered survivors from the Holocaust. (emphasis added)

Descendents of Greek Jews honor Holocaust victims

[PsychoDad]

6. While it's not suprising...

That the nazi's would seek to recruit dissident factions from among the Soviets and Yugoslavians, it is bizzare that Himler went so far as to create an SS unit from croatian Muslims.

Found this to be interesting at http://stosstruppen39-45.tripod.com/id10.html

Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler was known as Islam most willing promoter and collaborator among the Nazi leadership. Himmler's hatred the 'soft' Christianity was equal for his liking for Islam, which he saw as a masculine, martial religion based on the SS qualities of blind obedience and readiness for self-sacrifice, untainted by compassion for one's enemies. His admiration for Islam made him ready to throw-out his racial 'Aryan pure' fantasies to receive more Muslim volunteers for his sinister legion.

Policy based upon personal fantasy... where have we seen that before. :)

Anyway, your observation about the units being more interested in combating their traditional enimies than adhering to any nazi/SS ideology seems correct. It seems there were several incidents of cultural clashes and outright rebellion between them and their masters.

The Soviet Muslims performance in the front lines itself different in one front to others. On Western Front, many of them disappointed theirs German master: like many of theirs Eastern colleague, Soviet Muslim volunteers didn't show any eagerness to fight the Western Allied. In contrast, in Eastern Front they show the tenacious fighting qualities. As an example, three Turkic battalions had fought to the last man at Stalingrad.

Peace.

[PsychoDad]

5. No Muslims killed in the Holocaust that I know of ....

At that time there wern't many Muslims in Europe...

But an ironic twist... The nazis attempted to court Muslims in the Middle east, Russia and Yugoslavia.

Himmler even went so far as to create a Muslim SS unit in Croatia to combat Tito and enlisted the aid of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. I guess the Nazi's were only anti-some semitic.

From the Nizkor Project:
The creation of a Bosnian Muslim S.S. division is a favorite theme of Serbian propaganda, however. Indeed, there was such a unit. The Nazis asked the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, el Husseini, to lend his support to the project. He accepted, visited Bosnia, and convinced some important Muslim leaders that a Muslim S.S. division would be in the interest of Islam. In spite of these and other propaganda efforts, only half of the expected 20,000 to 25,000 Muslims volunteered. The S.S. unit was nonetheless formed, named the "Handzar" (scimitar) division, and was brutal in the "cleansing" of Serbian regions in eastern Bosnia. But it never achieved the reputation of a good fighting unit, and failed to sell the idea of a Muslim Bosnia under a Nazi protectorate.

http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/husseini-amin-el/handzar-ss.html

More Info:
http://stosstruppen39-45.tripod.com/id10.html

It seems the units didn't work out very well, even resulting in some cases of mutiny and rebellion.

Peace.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. Inayat Khan

had settled his family in a suburb of Paris where he established the headquarters of his Sufi Order. His elder daughter, Noorunisa, who played harp and wrote children's books, decided that she must work against the Nazis.

You can read about her here: http://members.rediff.com/noorkhan/begum.htm

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

7. Yes

Noorunisa Khan, daughter of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan, was a member of the French Resistance. She was betrayed to the Nazis and taken to Dachau, where she was tortured, shot, and burned alive. She was given the Croix de Guer (not sure of spelling, but it is a very high honor) posthumously by the French government after the war. Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan founded what is now known as the Sufi Order International, an order of which I am an initiate.

You can read more about her at this website I just found: http://members.rediff.com/noorkhan/begum.htm

[PsychoDad]

9. May Allah be pleased with her.

May her martyrdom be accepted and may she enjoy the sweetness of Paradise.

Thank you for sharing this. It's good to see while some of our brothers were being used by the nazi's for their ends that a sister stood for the light. May Allah be pleased with her, and may the One give confort to all who were victims of the darkness.

Peace be upon them.

[elshiva]

10. I thought that the Nazis would hate Muslims since they

were not aryans, but it is strange that they tried to organize Muslims to their
side. Was Khan only killed because she resisted, not for being Muslim?

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

13. She was killed for her role in the Resistance

but I am sure if the Nazis looked at the philosophy of Pir o Murshid Inayat Khan, her father, they would have gone after all of the Sufi Movement.

[Agnomen]

16. Noor-a-nisa Inayat Khan

and her heroism is mentioned at length in the book "A Man Called Intrepid" by William Stephenson.
Her brother, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, the late head of the Sufi Order International in the Chisti silsila often talked about her. A talented writer of children's books, a pacifist, she joined the French resistance to fight the evil that was Nazism and was the last radio operator in France contacting the allies when she was betrayed, captured and sent to Dachau where she died a martyr's death.
Understandably, her martyrdom left a deep wound in Pir Vilayat's soul. A few years before his death he was invited to conduct an orchestra at a memorial concert at Dachau where he met a woman who was tortured along with Noor-a-nisa. She was blinded and crippled, but survived and lived to attend the commemoration some 50 years later. Pir Vilayat said that he has never met a more joyous soul than this woman who lived through so much pain and transcended it. I believe meeting her alleviated some of the grief he felt all those years.

[plasticwidow]

11. What can I say...

No words can describe what Noorunisa, and others did, in the war, to stop or least divert the atrocities, crimes and war efforts of the German regime. My mother, born in Czechoslovakia, raised in England, and married in Russia, fought against the Germans her own way when she lived in Germany. She worked for the underground, helping others out of the country, and aiding in the fight against the Nazis. It was a German Doctor, who unfortunately shall remain nameless, who saved my mother when she was picked up by the Germans, and this doctor (who worked against the Nazi's also) died at the hands of the resistance, not knowing this doctor was on their side, not the Nazis. It is very sad. There are hundreds. thousands, whose names will never be known to any of us, who fought during this war in their own way, doing little things, and sometimes very big things, to help crush the nightmare that had spanned across Germany and occupied territory. May Allah be pleased with Noorunisa and everyone else who fought against this, and I pray they are in paradise. We have a new war, not much different from the old one. And it is being fought not only abroad, but also at home. I pray we have as many brave people who will work against the atrocities and crimes being committed now, and will manage to, Insha Allah, overturn what is becoming a dictatorship in the U.S. and abroad, and open up the world's eyes as to what is happening all around us.

Sometimes I feel ashamed that I am an "American".. but as of three and a half years ago, I can now say, "I am Muslim, and this is wrong what is happening. This is not Islam." I am sorry for what has happened to hundreds, thousands at the hands of our own government and our leaders. May Allah have mercy upon all of us for what has happened, because we did nothing to stop it, when we could have.

Peace to everyone.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

12. Thank you for your story

you are right-many many work for Truth, and only al Haqq knows them.

Welcome to DU, sister!

[plasticwidow]

14. Thank you, ayeshahaqqiqa

For welcoming me. I'm not a frequent poster, but when I do post, unfortunately sometimes it gets lengthy and wordy. Islam is very close to my heart and means everything to me. I do not know as much of Islam and I would like to know and am still learning much. I think, that if my mother know about Islam and had the time and ability to learn about Islam, she would have become Muslim. I am thankful she taught me to be openminded and objective, to ask questions and learn, and be tolerant of other religions.

Peace to you! :)

[Behind the Aegis]

15. Thank you.

I appreciate the information! I looked all over the web and her name never came up. I am glad that you offered information that we all can use.

[Agnomen]

17. Here's a link to more info about her

http://www.sufiorder.org/noor.html

[Maat]

19. What a brave woman!

Thanks for the post!

[Dunvegan]

20. Noor: what a noble soul.

Thank you for information on her exemplary life.