HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY

That neo-Nazi thugs did not attend the Holocaust Memorial Day march is not surprising. Nor was it unexpected that the Muslim Council of Britain, representative of 500-Muslim organisations in Britain, decided on their behalf to boycott the march, reasoning that the HMD is not representative of other non-Jewish victims of genocide. Their spokesman, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, declared that the day should be relevant to all communities which have suffered "discrimination, xenophobia and bigotry". (Like the discrimination and bigotry between the Sunnis and the Shiites I suppose.)

Em...he has also spoken out personally against homosexuality saying that the practice is "not acceptable" and that same sex marriage is "harmful". And that's him being spiritually informed (my guess). The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust chairman, Stephen Smith, said that the day had always been "inclusive". Let's get a handle on this.

A POTTED HISTORY OF RECENT ALICE IN WONDERLAND THINKING

Let's sit down nicely, as we are all children of Jah, Ra and Bobtail. In the red corner we have the MCB, a "thinking" organisation that has made its magnanimous policies out of the sheer love of mankind. "Islam is peace", they declare. We need only mention three of their policies:

• We promote mutual understanding and good relationships between people of different religious faiths in Scotland
• We offer a neutral forum where representatives of faith communities can meet on a basis of equality and engage in dialogue about matters of religious and civic importance.

And admirable these are, too, although a little hard to understand in the context of refusing to joint the HMD march. But the third policy statement scuppers logic and is the antithesis of their reasons for boycotting the march.

• We seek to advance the public knowledge and understanding of the teachings, traditions and practices of the different faith communities in Scotland.

Between 2001 and 2007 the MCB has boycotted the event and only in 2008 was it decided that the boycott should be ended. Although this had been passed in a vote, Anas al-Tikriti amongst others complained that the HMD had "become a political event" which "glorifies the state of Israel" and ignores the suffering of the Palestinians caused by Israelis on a daily basis. Well, in 2009, keeping quiet about it, they decided to reimpose the boycott because of the recent conflict in Gaza. Um...wasn't there something about a march becoming "a political event"? Is there some problem with joined-up thinking here? On the one hand we have the wholesale slaughter six-million Jews, the extermination of gays and the brutal murder of gypsies and disabled people in Europe: and on the other, there is the conflict in Gaza. Unless there is a concordance of thinking with the Nazi act of exterminating gays, I fail to see the connection between a war instigated by Hamas' indiscriminate launching of missiles against civilians (6,000 over a short period of time) and the commemoration of genocidal acts in the second world war.

Consequently, there is the obvious inference that the MCB is in with the thugs and really are upset about the fact that Hitler failed in the final solution-a kind of sour grapes, you might say.

And in the blue corner is the HMD. What do they stand for?

Their website, http://www.hmd.org.uk/, defines genocide as follows:
The term “genocide” was first used in 1943 by the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin. The word was coined from the Greek word “Genos” meaning family, tribe or race and the Latin “cide” meaning killing. Lemkin campaigned for recognition of the “extermination of human groups” as a crime based originally on the murder of almost 2 million Armenians by Turks during the First World War.

There is also detailed mention of Cambodia, Bosnia, Darfur and Rwanda. So, the commemoration ceremony is not simply for the Jews who perished in the second world war but for any ethnic group who has suffered at the hands of an oppressor.

Chris Shaw, the chief executive of the HMD Trust, emphasised that the ceremony was for all people who were being discriminated against: the gay community; Sinti and Roma communities; and the disabled. (MCB had its usual objections about the gay community's representation.) You may think what you like about the conflict in Gaza, but there should not be any merging of the considered wrongs against the Palestinians with the memorial to those murdered by the Nazis and the more recent genocides in Rwanda as well as the atrocities carried out against Muslims in Bosnia and civilians in Chechnya. Every sympathy must go out to the Palestinian civilians who are being used in this conflict as political pawns in the deadly game of terrorism perpetuated by Hamas.

The HMD must remain secular and all-inclusive in its purpose to try to understand and commemorate the past atrocities and use this understanding to build a better and more secure world for our children. The HMD march is too significant and all-encompassing an event to be used as a weapon against the Jews. British Muslims should know better.

I think I'll stick with the blue corner in this bout.