"Perhaps in acknowledging that immense past of Jewish suffering … Muslims can help the Jewish community to understand the current Muslim pain in Palestine, Iraq and other places. In finding out about others, we encourage others to find out about us."
(Nashville, Tennessee)—Vanderbilt University's Holocaust Series is being held this month and will highlight lectures by survivors, historians and social scientists. The series is still relevant in today's world because Holocaust denial continues to impact entire people groups. As noted in The Tennessean, deniers of the Holocaust ignore thousands of detailed studies, eyewitness accounts and court testimony that attest to the genocidal killings by the Nazis during World War II. (Photo:www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/holocaust.html)
On the evidence, says reporter Ray Waddle, "The Holocaust denial game can't be won. It insults reality."
One of the speakers will be Muslim scholar Hamza Yusuf who says Holocaust denial is a case of tragic gullibility. Writing in The Best American Spiritual Writing 2008, Yusuf is quoted as saying historical facts become accepted as reliable because they are based on multiple sources of evidence, not conspiracy theories.
"We are all entitled to our own opinions," he writes, "but not to our own facts," adding that the motivation behind denial is simple: "In order to validate our own pain, we deny the pain of others."
Yusuf suggests that mutual acknowledgment of collective suffering is key to reconciliation and peace: "Perhaps in acknowledging that immense past of Jewish suffering … Muslims can help the Jewish community to understand the current Muslim pain in Palestine, Iraq and other places. In finding out about others, we encourage others to find out about us."
Source: Ray Waddle - The Tennessean
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