Wednesday, September 14, 2005

"We want to join in the Holocaust too"

A council on Muslim advisors to Tony Blair advised him to rename the Holocaust Memorial Day as the Genocide Memorial Day, since having a Holocaust Memorial Day makes Muslims feel all excluded on account that it does not mention Palestine, Bosnia and Chechnya. This idea is of course backed by the Muslim Council of Britain. Anyway, Blair did not agree so the Holocaust Memorial Day remains.

Putting aside all the very rude jokes that immediately come to my mind as to why they would like to be included in the Holocaust, and on whose side, the choice of places is rather interesting. I am not even asking how come they did not mention the massacre of Armenians by Turks. I would like to know how come they didn't mention the massacre in Bangladesh in 1971. It was indeed an event of Holocaust proportions, and while Hindus were especially targeted hundreds of thousands Muslims were murdered. Hmm, could that forgetfulness be because the perpetrators were Pakistanis and the Muslim Council of Britain does not want to piss off its constituents, or am I just being cynical again?

In fact having an additional Genocide Memorial Day might not be such a bad idea, except that it would have to have a list of massacres ranked by the numbers of victims, which would cause no end to bickering. Somehow, however, it seems to me that Blair's advisors might not appreciate the idea just yet.

In the meanwhile, they can remember the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and later SS Gruppenführer Amin Al-Husayni, and feel included, in a way.

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