I also call on Western govts who have outlawed any negative comment on the holocaust to use the same standards to penalise those deliberately spreading their message of hate against Muslims by abusing our Prophet PBUH.
— Imran Khan (@ImranKhanPTI) April 17, 2021
The recent controversy began when the far-right Pakistan Islamist supremacist political party Tehreek-e-Labbaik began protests in Pakistan against France, which has told its citizens to flee the South Asian Islamic Republic.
The attacks on France are entirely invented and are commonly used in Muslim countries that have far-right governments to encourage extremism. For instance, Turkey also attacked France last year, claiming it had “insulted the Prophet,” which led to several terrorist attacks in France.Last October, a student in a French school lied to her classmates, claiming a teacher had “insulted” Islam. The teacher was beheaded.In response to the beheading, rather than condemn the attack, Turkey mobilized its extremists to attack France. Anti-French riots and protests occurred around the Muslim world under the entirely false claim that the “Prophet had been insulted.”To get back at France, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed the Holocaust last year. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah also used Holocaust denial last year to get back at France for not being “sensitive” to religious feelings. France had prosecuted “philosopher Roger Garaudy, who wrote a book questioning the myths of the so-called Holocaust,” he said.“Muslims have a right to be angry and to kill millions of French people,” said Malaysia’s Mahathir, a former guest at Oxford, Cambridge and Columbia University, where his denials and antisemitic comments have been indulged.Iran’s regime has also pushed Holocaust denial to get back at Europe for insults to Muslims. In 2006, it hosted a Holocaust-denial cartoon contest in revenge for cartoons against Islam in Denmark.Now the cycle has begun again. Every time far-right Islamists are angry at Europe for insults, it is the Holocaust that has to be brought up. Most far-right Islamist groups, rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood, openly deny the Holocaust.Imran Khan, a former cricket champion who was once married to a woman who was part Jewish, didn’t actually acknowledge Holocaust denial in his tweet. He wrote: “I also call on Western govts who have outlawed any negative comment on the holocaust to use the same standards to penalise those deliberately spreading their message of hate against Muslims by abusing our Prophet PBUH [peace be upon him].”The tone of his tweet, like comments by other far-right Islamist leaders, is to try to minimize the Holocaust – as he says, “negative comments about the Holocaust” – to get back at European governments. European countries and their collaborators carried out the Holocaust; the same countries today are the ones where there are sometimes cartoons offensive to Muslims.It is unclear why the Islamist far Right, which denies the Holocaust at home, always seeks to bring it up whenever they are offended by the same Western countries where the Holocaust took place.These countries, such as Pakistan, outlaw blasphemy at home but do not outlaw or ban Holocaust denial. They claim it is hypocritical of some European countries that ban Holocaust denial to not ban offensive comments about Muslims.However, they don’t argue that they should also ban Holocaust denial in Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia. Rather, they claim Holocaust denial is “free speech” at home.Malaysia’s former leader, for instance, was invited to many leading Western universities to push Holocaust denial. “Why is it I can’t say something against the Jews?” he asked at Columbia University. He wanted his “free speech” to attack Jews and the Holocaust, but then he complains about “free speech” in places like France that enables cartoons insulting the Prophet.None of the leaders, including Khan, Mahathir, Erdogan and Ahmadinejad, argued that Holocaust denial should be banned in their countries as well as blasphemy. Instead, their argument is that blasphemy should be banned in Europe and that they should have a right to free speech denying the Holocaust.In general, the cycle of these groups is to encourage Holocaust denial the more they see offensive comments against Islam in Europe. This doesn’t hurt the feelings of most people in Europe. Rather, it targets Jews. This is because these groups are systemically anti-Jewish, and their interest is not to hurt the feelings of Europeans in revenge for hurt feelings regarding their faith, but rather to justify hating Jews as a response.Pakistan’s Khan claimed that extremists in Europe had indulged in Islamophobia and racist slurs “to hurt and cause pain to 1.3 billion Muslims.” The response: Attack the Holocaust, which extremists in Europe did to six million Jews.How reducing respect for the Holocaust gets back at France or Europeans, where Holocaust denial originated, is unclear.None of the far-right Muslim leaders have ever acknowledged the Holocaust and given respect to Jews, Jewish suffering or the genocide of Jews. They use hatred of Jews to respond to European insults against Islam.Pakistan claims that insults to Islam are tantamount to Holocaust denial, but it doesn’t ban Holocaust denial. The only time Khan has mentioned the Holocaust is to get back at France and inflame his base at home, not to acknowledge it.