Between European hypocrisy & Iranian folly

Several years ago, during a visit to Germany, I saw an exhibition at Frankfurt’s Postal Museum of anti-Semitic cartoons, ads, and posters from the decades before Nazi rule. With the onset of the Danish cartoon controversy, I have thought a lot about that exhibition and its message for today. Witnessing that chilling collection of everyday anti-Semitism, one could only conclude that the Nazis and their Holocaust were the natural outcome of a powerful current of hatred toward Jews that had permeated German and European civilization for decades, if not longer.

Currently, a leading Iranian newspaper is trying to highlight European hypocrisy about the Danish cartoon controversy by holding a “Holocaust cartoon contest”. This follows Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling the Holocaust a “myth.” Soon, Iran will also inexplicably convene an international conference of Holocaust revisionists, a curious crew of mostly extreme right-wing, middle-aged Anglo-Americans. While Europeans may indeed be hypocritical in framing the cartoon controversy as an issue of Western freedom versus Eastern repression, what the Iranians are really showcasing in their treatment of the Holocaust is sheer folly.

The rhetoric about the Holocaust coming out of Iran these days begs a few questions: Why deride an event whose very idea is anathema to any of the world’s great religious traditions or ethical systems — especially that of Islam? Why deny an event Muslims didn’t even perpetrate, and from whose denial Muslims clearly don’t benefit? Why poison already-tenuous Muslim-Western relations?

A few things are certain. The Islamic scriptures firmly warn believers to refrain from mocking and ridiculing that which others — Jews, Christians, or anyone else — hold sacred. In deriding and denying the Holocaust, Iran causes incalculable harm to itself and to Muslims everywhere. Moreover, Iran’s Holocaust derision and denial also dishonors the hundreds of Muslims who rescued Jews during the Holocaust, and the thousands who fought Fascism.

The stories of Muslim rescuers of Jews are largely unknown and unpublished. Only in the past fifteen years have Holocaust researchers brought a few to the public’s attention. Yad Vashem and other Holocaust memorial groups have honored several Muslims (whose courageous stories we have been able to confirm) as Righteous Gentiles. The Muslim rescuers include:

the Bosnians Dervis & Servet Korkut, who sheltered a young Jewish woman resistance fighter named Mira Bakovic and saved the Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the most valuable Hebrew manuscripts in the world
the Turk Selahattin Ulkumen, whose rescue of several dozen Jews from certain extermination at Auschwitz led to the death of his wife Mihrinissa when the Nazis retaliated against him
the Albanian Refik Vesili who — as a 16-year-old — saved eight Jews by hiding them in his family’s mountain home.

More recently, we have learned that the central Mosque of Paris served as a shelter for hundreds of French Jewish children being rescued from deportation to death camps.

In addition to slighting the countless Muslims who rescued Jews, Iran’s Holocaust denial dishonors the hundreds of thousands of Muslim soldiers who helped liberate Europe during World War II. The majority of Allied troops that landed on the beaches of Provence in August, 1944 were “Free French” Muslims from North and West Africa. Thousands of Moroccan and Indian Muslim troops voluntarily served in the liberation of Italy. They risked and gave their lives along with Polish freedom fighters and American GIs at Monte Cassino. Tens of thousands more Soviet Muslim troops bravely served at hellish Stalingrad and Leningrad. All of us should honor and be thankful for their sacrifice in helping end the scourge of Nazism.

By protecting the odious Danish cartoons as free speech, Europe for its part reneges on the moral and legal imperative of the Nuremberg tribunals that followed Nazism’s demise. Nuremberg — where the Allied Powers meted out justice in the wake of the Holocaust and World War II — taught us that we need to be ultra-vigilant about hateful incitement. Has Europe already forgotten? Has she developed a moral amnesia about the perils of dehumanizing her religious and ethnic minorities?

On October 16, 1946, the victorious World War II Allies (led by America, France, and Britain) hanged Julius Streicher, the editor of the German newspaper Der Stürmer. Justice Robert Jackson of the US Supreme Court, who served as lead prosecutor in Streicher’s case at Nuremberg, convicted Streicher for “Crimes against Humanity.” Yet, Streicher had neither personally killed nor ordered the killing of anyone nor had he held a significant position in the Nazi regime.

Streicher’s crime: He had published hateful, anti-Semitic editorials and cartoons in his newspaper in the late 1920s and early 1930s, well before the Nazis had embarked on their Final Solution. Because Streicher’s newspaper had dehumanized Jews, the Nuremberg tribunal reasoned that Streicher was complicit in the Holocaust and required a sentence of death at the gallows. Justice Jackson noted that the Allied powers were morally and legally bound forever to observe the same standards for which they hanged Julius Streicher. Jackson declared that if ever the Allies violated this “permanent benchmark for justice”, they would have committed “pure murder” at Nuremberg for condemning to death a German editor whose offense was publishing anti-Semitic editorials and cartoons.

Both Europeans and Iranians should affirm the lessons of the Holocaust, and honor the legacy of the fight against Fascism. Europe should be reminded of her grave post-Nuremberg responsibility to protect her religious and ethnic minorities. Iranians should reflect on the great ethical, humane imperative of the Prophet Muhammad, and should seriously ask themselves: “What would Muhammad do?” And then they should do what Muhammad would have done: act with wisdom and not vengeance; show compassion and not malice.

Ma’sood Cajee is a board member of the Muslim Peace Fellowship and a former board member of FOR. Cajee, a former California Endowment Scholar in Health Policy at Harvard University, is researching Muslim rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust. His essay “Mom raised me as a Zionist” appeared in Michael Wolfe’s award-winning anthology “Taking Back Islam” (Rodale Press, 2003).