In a speech on Friday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah raged against cartoons that had offended the “prophet to over a billion people.”
Then in a seemingly unrelated comment, he said in a matter “less sensitive” than offending Muslims, France had prosecuted “philosopher Roger Garaudy, who wrote a book questioning the myths of the so-called Holocaust.”
In his speech, Nasrallah denied the Holocaust and supported Holocaust denial, claiming that denying it was less offensive than cartoons mocking religion.
His tirade against the Holocaust began by referring to a controversy with France, in which Turkey and other countries led by leaders who identify with political Islam have claimed France is insulting Muslims.
The controversy is largely invented because it stems from cartoons published years ago in a French magazine. It has been revived primarily by Turkey to encourage attacks on France.
Why did Nasrallah seek to deny the Holocaust to get back at France for cartoons? The cartoon controversy has led to a series of hypocritical statements by leaders claiming to be offended. Mahathir Mohamad, the former Malaysian leader, claimed that “Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people.”
Mohamad has been a far-right, openly antisemitic leader for decades, yet he has been invited to the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge and Colombia University to push his antisemitism in recent years. Last year at Colombia, he said he was “exercising my right to free speech” by denying the Holocaust.
He says, however, there should not be the same free speech for cartoons offensive to some Muslims. Like other Islamic leaders, he uses Holocaust denial as a refrain whenever discussing free speech, demanding the right to deny the Shoah.
Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei also denied the Holocaust during a series of tweets complaining about France. He began by asking France why its president supports “insulting God’s messenger in the name of freedom of expression.”
Then he asked: “Why is it a crime to raise doubts about the Holocaust?” Once again, the immediate refrain was to deny the Holocaust, which happened in Europe, as a way to get back at France and Europe for offensive cartoons.
It was unclear why the Jewish minority, murdered and victims of genocide by Europeans, should pay the price for cartoons mocking Islam.
Iran in the past held a cartoon contest mocking and denying the Holocaust as a “response” to cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2006. It has had at least three “Holocaust denial” cartoon contests.
Turkey also exploited the Holocaust as part of its confrontation with France. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said modern-day treatment of Muslims in Europe was similar to “the crimes against humanity committed against Jews 80 years ago.”
The constant reference to the Holocaust and attempts to make Holocaust denial legitimate and normalized – in Lebanon, Iran and Malaysia – is not a coincidence.
Every time there is a dispute with Europe about freedom of expression, Muslim leaders who are connected to political Islamic leanings – either the Muslim Brotherhood or Iran’s regime – will push Holocaust denial and “question the numbers” killed in it.
There is very little explanation or condemnation of the denials. In fact, the invites and red carpets for the Malaysian leader show that antisemitism is not a problem for most Western universities. Twitter removed Mahathir’s call to kill French people, but it does not remove Holocaust denial.
THE OVERALL perception among these far-right Islamist leaders, such as Nasrallah, is that Holocaust denial is to be rewarded and held up as a virtue and that somehow denying the Holocaust gets back at Europe for cartoons mocking Muslims. It is not clear how that punishes Europe, since Jews were traditionally victims of European antisemitism.
Denying Europe’s history of antisemitism would not seem to harm it as much as it harms victims of Europe’s racism. Oddly, the same regimes also tend to compare Europe to Nazis, but only in reference to treatment of Muslims, leaving one to wonder how people can at the same time condemn the Nazis but also deny the crimes of the Nazis.
Denial of the Holocaust is almost state policy across swaths of the Islamic world. There is no clear reason why denying the genocide is so important to these regimes, since they had nothing to do with the Holocaust.
However, there are almost no annual events marking Holocaust Remembrance Day from North Africa to Malaysia. Nasrallah and others see recognition of the Holocaust as somehow helping Israel and Zionism. Hamas and other groups have the same worldview, using traditional antisemitic tropes to slam Jews and Israel.
Yet, at the same time, some of these groups compare Israel’s policies to the Nazis, which again leaves a lack of clarity over why they acknowledge that Nazism is wrong but don’t acknowledge the crimes of the Nazis. Ostensibly, the critique of France is that it is hypocritical in having freedom of expression to offend religion but not for denying genocide.
But the leaders who push this indicate they tend to support denying the Holocaust. They don’t say the Holocaust happened, and offensive cartoons should be banned; they claim the Holocaust didn’t happen, and cartoons should still be banned.