Following my previous post, two readers have alerted me to the fact that the Muslim Council of Britain have issued a clarification of their stance. This is not a boycott, they say, merely 'an unwillingness to attend'. The unwillingness is motivated by wanting the event to be 'more effective':
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that the day, commemorating the slaughter of six million Jews in Nazi death camps, should also commemorate the victims of the Palestinian conflict and other violent events around the world.Sacranie's words are amplified by a statement on the MCB's site (no permalinks - scroll down).
The Nazi Holocaust was a truly evil and abhorrent crime and we stand together with our fellow British Jews in their sense of pain and anguish. None of us must ever forget how the Holocaust began.The statement goes on to draw out some general points about hatred and dehumanization, on the basis of which it then continues:
The MCB believes, that we have therefore to do more than just remember and reflect on the past - we must be able to see when the same abuses occur in our own time.The MCB's 'principled' position is that 'the memorial day [should] be inclusive of the sufferings of all people'.
Now, this clarification improves somewhat on the position as reported in the Sunday Times, by inclusion of the sentiment of 'stand[ing] together with our fellow British Jews in their sense of pain and anguish'. However, the points about generality here do not, it seems to me, change the central issue as I set it out before. The MCB position would appear to be that we can't commemorate the victims of one terrible crime - in this case, it seems safe to say, one of the more terrible crimes in human history - without the same commemoration being officially dedicated to every episode of serious human suffering.
That is - to put it gently - a strange assertion. A memorial event for those who fell in the First World War? Or for the victims of the recent South Asian tsunami? Forget it. Too narrow. And may no one try to mark the deaths of Palestinian children without simultaneously marking the sufferings of, say, the people of Zimbabwe?
The MCB 'stands together' with the anguish of fellow British Jews, just so long as they don't have actually to stand together with them at a commemorative event focusing on millions of Jewish dead - and on an attempt within living memory to wipe the Jewish people from the face of the planet. (Thanks to KG and MFD.)
Update at 6.50 PM: See also this MCB press release from January 2003, and particularly its title. (Thanks: DA.)