ADVISERS
appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to
scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as
offensive to Muslims.
They want to replace it with a Genocide Day
that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya
and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths.
The draft proposals have been prepared by committees appointed by Blair
to tackle extremism. He has promised to respond to the plans, but the
threat to the Holocaust Day has provoked a fierce backlash from the
Jewish community.
Holocaust Day was established by Blair in
2001 after a sustained campaign by Jewish leaders to create a lasting
memorial to the 6m victims of Hitler. It is marked each year on January
27.
The Queen is patron of the charity that
organises the event and the Home Office pays £500,000 a year to
fund it. The committees argue that the special status of Holocaust
Memorial Day fuels extremists’ sense of alienation because it
“excludes” Muslims.
A member of one of the committees, made up
of Muslims, said it gave the impression that “western lives have more
value than non-western lives”. That perception needed to be changed.
“One way of doing that is if the government were to sponsor a national
Genocide Memorial Day.
“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.
It’s a grievance that extremists are able to exploit.”
The recommendation, drawn up by four
committees including those dealing with imams and mosques, and
Islamaphobia and policing, has the backing of Sir Iqbal Sacranie,
secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain.
He said: “The message of the Holocaust was
‘never again’, and for that message to have practical effect on the
world community it has to be inclusive. We can never have double
standards in terms of human life. Muslims feel hurt and excluded that
their lives are not equally valuable to those lives lost in the
Holocaust time.”
Ibrahim Hewitt, chairman of the charity
Interpal, said: “There are 500 Palestinian towns and villages that have
been wiped out over the years. That’s pretty genocidal to me.”
The committees are also set to clash with
Blair on his proposal to ban Hizb ut-Tahrir, the radical Islamic group.
Government sources say they will argue that a ban is unjustified
because the group, which is proscribed in much of the Middle East,
neither advocates nor perpetrates violence in the UK.
A Home Office spokesman said it would
consider the proposals for a separate Genocide Day for all faiths but
emphasised that it regarded the Holocaust as a “defining tragedy in
European history”.
White Nationalist
comment: They just cannot do right for doing wrong can they?
Apease the Jewish
population with a Holocaust day and upset the Muslims. Appease the
Muslims and upset the Jews? Oh dear - what a puzzler!