Angry in the Great White North

From Britain:

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.

Right, because the Holocaust is like all the others. In fact, let's just list these alphabetically, so as not to offend people by putting the Holocaust right at the top.

Have lots of people died in the Occupied Territories? Of course, many of them throwing stones, firing rifles, and launching missiles -- the ones that weren't strapping on bomb belts, that is. Chechnya? Yes, at the hands of a Russian military not particularly concerned with collateral damage.

Only Bosnia to me seems to approach the Holocaust in the specific identification of non-threatening civilians by virtue of their religion and either evicting them or killing them. But even then, the incidents seemed to be isolated and disorganized. Certainly no cattle-cars stuffed with victims shipping them from all points in Bosnia to camps designed for to efficiently and systematically kill humans and dispose of the remains on a massive and bureaucratic scale.

Sorry, folks, but they just are the same. It's not enough to say that a lot of people died. It's not enough to say that a lot of people of a particular faith died. The Holocaust showed us what happens when the power of government are turned to the goal of murder.

Not a nation fighting a enemies. Not a nation with a clumsy or uncaring military. Not a nation employing rogue paramilitary units and not caring to control them.

The power of the State as an instrument of death.

Back to what is bothering these people:

“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 lives of "one people". Let's be honest here.

The problem is that Jews are being remembered. That's what bothers these people. That's the grievance that will be exploited. It's not that Muslims victims are not being recognized, but that Jews are.

So who, exactly, is offended by this?

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.

Of course Sacranie is behind this. Sacranie makes it his business to be offended by any perceived slight against Muslims, and to get in the news about it. From back in January:

BRITISH Muslims are to boycott this week’s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz because they claim it is not racially inclusive and does not commemorate the victims of the Palestinian conflict.

Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, has written to Charles Clarke, the home secretary, saying the body will not attend the event unless it includes the “holocaust” of the Palestinian intifada.

From a Salman Rushdie column from August:

Sacranie is a strong advocate of Mr Blair’s much-criticised new religious hatred Bill that will make it harder to criticise religion, and actually expects the new law to outlaw references to Islamic terrorism. He said as recently as January 13: “There is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist."

With regards to Salman Rushdie's right to write and seek publication of "The Satanic Verses", which offended many Muslims:

John Ware: Today you still believe that if 'Satanic Verses' was published again, you would expect the government of the day to put pressure on the publishers to withdraw it?

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: There is no law at the moment, sadly, that would enable me to pursue with a legal course of.. of seeking its withdrawal.

John Ware: If by 'sadly' - I take it you wish there was a law which would allow you to withdraw a book of this kind should it be published again. Is that right?

Sir Iqbal Sacranie: If the law that we would like to sort of see appear, a law does not prevent totally, it's a very powerful message that goes out in type of what sort of society we have. We respect the freedom of expression but we expect freedom of expression to be exercised with responsibility.

When Sacranie's organization was criticized, he was -- as you know doubt can guess -- deeply offended:

[A]n investigation by Panorama reporter John Ware found groups affiliated to the MCB [the Muslim Council of Britain; Sacranie is the secretary general] promoting anti-Semitic views, the belief that Islam is a superior ideology to secular British values and the view that Christians and Jews are conspiring to undermine Islam.

In an interview with Mr Ware, Sir Iqbal refused to disown a group known as Al-e-Hadith, which says the ways of Christians and Jews "are based on sick or deviant views" and that "imitating the Kuffar [non-Muslims] leads to a permanent abode in hellfire".

The MCB has branded the programme "deeply unfair" and a "witch-hunt".

Secretary general Sir Iqbal Sacranie said Panorama had used "deliberately garbled quotes in an attempt to malign the Muslim Council of Britain".

I hope Prime Minister Tony Blair holds the line against the likes of Sacranie and other of the "offended" class. If the British government intends to recognize a pivotal event of European history, it should go ahead. Sacranie is taking advantage of Western guilt to promote their own anti-Semitic Muslim-apologist agenda.

I wonder if the British government should start to use Sacranie's views as a litmus test: "Hey, if Sacranie doesn't like it, maybe we're on to a good idea here."