Understanding Genocide as It Happens: Holocaust Education in the Muslim World
Winner of the 2024 Skopp Creative Competition on the Theme of the Holocaust
(Note: This essay is the winner of the 2024 Douglas R. Skopp Creative Competition on the Holocaust. Excerpts were read at SUNY Plattsburgh’s 2024 Holocaust Remembrance Day Ceremony. It has also been selected for preservation in the SUNY Open Access Repository.)
- Coming to America
An aluminum box of airplane food had been sitting unopened on my meal tray for the last three hours. A randomly selected novel lay on my lap. The bookmark was still tucked in between the first couple pages.
August 29th of 2018 was my first day in the United States, and I could hardly focus on anything else. How could I? This was America, baby. This was where things happened. This was the cultural capital of the world: the birthplace of Nickelodeon, the iPhone, and rock-and-roll. As the airplane wheels made rocky contact with the SeaTac runway, the land of the free and home of the brave greeted an underweight, short, frizzy-haired brown boy with glasses that were literally held together with Scotch tape. My headphones were abuzz with a carefully curated playlist to soundtrack my arrival: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” (I wasn’t), Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to New York” (I was nowhere near it), and Don McLean’s “American Pie” (what was I thinking?).
That evening, I met my host parents in Seattle — an incredibly kind, welcoming family that walked me through the halls of the high school I would be attending. You see, I was part of KL-YES, a US State Department-sponsored student exchange program. Established in the wake of 9/11, the bipartisan program’s mission was to bring students from Muslim-majority countries to the US for a year of high school, facilitating intercultural dialogue and hopefully showing American kids that not all of us were out to destroy Western civilization (which, having invented modern peanut butter, had placed me forever in its debt). Equipped with a charming introduction — “Hi, I’m Adeeb from Bangladesh!” — and a firm handshake, I was ready to take on Seattle.
Given that interfaith exchange was a key aspect of the program, my fellow exchange students and I had received months of training on how to talk about topics like religion. 9 out of 10 Bangladeshis are Muslim. I had been raised as one as well, though it would take until halfway through college for me to earnestly and wholly embrace my faith in Islam. Our program coordinators didn’t have to remind us of the socio-political climate that we would be navigating in the States in late 2018: this was amid the burgeoning resurgence of white nationalism, with tensions still simmering from Trump’s so-called Muslim ban the previous year and a spike in religious hate crimes across the country. During one of the early training sessions, the coordinator had highlighted the importance of being respectful and non-combative when conversing about religion with Christians, atheists, Jews, and other groups.
A girl beside me had raised her hand. “What’s a Jew?”
It had been an honest question. The exact word that had been used was ihudi, which was Bengali for “Jew”, although it was often employed as a general slur. This girl had been neither ignorant nor a provocateur nor attempting a joke. She just had not heard of Jews, and it was difficult to blame her. I had never met a Jewish person at that point. Bangladesh didn’t have any.
The program coordinator had been simple and patient in his response, briefly explaining that Jews were people who practiced the faith of Judaism. Their primary holy books were the Torah and the Talmud. Although they had unique religious customs, the Jewish faith was in many ways similar to Christianity and even Islam. The training session moved on: that was all we really needed to be told. For obvious reasons, the coordinator refrained from mentioning the way Jews were usually talked about in Bangladesh and similar cultures. And that was understandable: this was essentially diversity training for teenagers, not a reflection on deep-seated Bengali antisemitism predicated on generations of religious and geopolitical tensions. The fact that most of us were either misinformed about or completely ignorant of a major religious group in the United States, where we would be living in for a year, was hardly at the forefront of anyone’s mind. Let alone mine.
Two short months into my stay in Seattle, however, that changed.
On the morning of October 27th, 2018, a man armed with an assault rifle and three pistols entered the Tree of Life — Or L’Simcha Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh during Shabbat services. Over the next hour and a half, he carried out the deadliest attack on any Jewish community in American history, killing eleven and wounding six, including multiple Holocaust survivors. During the slaughter, he reportedly screamed that “all Jews must die” and expressed similar beliefs to the authorities after being apprehended.
He was also not alone. His murderous beliefs had been festering in alarmingly well-populated pockets of the Internet — unmoderated forums, message boards, and other cesspools of “alternative” ideologues that found company in each other’s violent, ethno-nationalistic, white supremacist views, egging each other on in the synergy of their hatreds. Although social isolation tended to be a common trait among inhabitants of such corners of the Web, recent currents in the fabric of American (and, more broadly, Western) society — backlash against immigration from the Global South, a heightened sense of defensiveness around the white identity, conspiratorial fears of a “global elite”, the expanding role of the Internet in uniting and amplifying extremist voices — had allowed the adherents of such views to feel empowered in forming a genuine socio-political force. As I had mentioned before, the last few years had seen a formidable uptick in hate crimes against the perceived enemies of such movements: immigrants, people of color, Muslims. And of course, I was realizing that a deeply rooted cultural ignorance in my background had kept me unaware of another target on that list: Jews.
In the wake of the Tree of Life attack, I watched the unfolding of a painful, grieving aftermath that was uncomfortably alien to me but all too familiar to the Jewish community that surrounded me. The high school I attended had a sizable Jewish population, and I could count many among my closest friends. I sat in helpless silence as my best friend sobbed at our table in the library before class. Another suffered anxiety attacks and skipped classes. A swastika was anonymously spray-painted in our auditorium. A teacher was mailed antisemitic threats. Students were given the choice to not attend school for a few days, and many of my Jewish friends were absent from the lunch table. My then-girlfriend spoke to me about the hurt and trepidation she was feeling and about her family’s history with the Holocaust. Her father only knew of the existence of some of his family members because their names had been etched into the walls of a ghetto. The silence that befell several of my social circles could only be described as tired. They were no stranger to this.
I realized I had been missing something. Whenever the narrative of the Jewish people had been presented to me — during its brief, sporadic mentions — there was only a small handful of takeaways I was left with. One was that the relatively small size of the Jewish population, and their distance from Bangladeshi culture and history, rendered them largely irrelevant to us. Another, very paradoxically, was the mostly online conspiratorial perception of Jewish elites pulling the strings of the global financial, media, and political landscape, with vague and honestly perplexing references to the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and George Soros. The third, which is the narrative I know most people from my background most immediately and instinctively associate with the Jewish people, was their proximity to Israel. This last takeaway had almost completely dominated any discussion of the role of Jews in the world, given the overwhelming and highly emotional support for the Palestinian cause among the Islamic and non-Western world at large.
My family was never antisemitic. I had never heard my parents express the blatant disdain for Jews that was so pervasive in Bangladesh or the astonishingly common genocidal comments calling for the “cleansing” of the ihudis. This was likely due to my family’s less traditionally religious and more liberal bent, which became all the more apparent to me as I grew older and became more cognizant of how the people around me talked about these topics. The rare instances when global Jewry came up in conversation, the language used was steeped in a mixture of paranoia and anger. Given the ubiquitousness of such racist sentiment and lack of any pushback against it, I don’t blame myself for taking so long to truly register what I was hearing as what it was: violent, vitriolic antisemitism. The need for some form of genocide or erasure of an entire people was presented matter-of-factly, leaving no room for a pause to actually think about what was being said. It is only through retrospection that I realize how genuinely disturbing this widespread culture of casual hate was.
By coming to Seattle, I had pulled back the curtains on myself and the environment I had left in Bangladesh. Here were the consequences of the rhetoric and ignorance I had become so desensitized to back home. Here were my friends feeling genuine fear for their lives and their communities. Here were human beings slaughtered by an attacker whose beliefs rested on the same pervasive antisemitism that I, for too long, had failed to really question or challenge in any meaningful way. Some of the same scapegoating of and conspiratorial thinking about Jews that defined these neo-Nazi, racial supremacist manifestos — which, of course, also spat upon the humanity of people who looked like me and shared my Islamic faith — could be heard being casually gossiped in schools, restaurants, and government offices in Bangladesh and throughout much of the Islamic world.
As I realized from my conversations with members of my Seattle community, crucial to understanding the nature of antisemitism today is grasping the Holocaust and its enduring legacy on Jewish communities worldwide. As the deadliest genocide in human history and among its most abhorrent and depraved chapters, the Shoah epitomizes and embodies the hellish danger faced by the world’s Jews. It is also a formative moment of the modern era, having spurred and shaped much of the world’s current approach to human rights, war crimes, administration of justice, and international governance. For clear reasons, the perpetration of the Holocaust has become shorthand for evil incarnate itself. Tragically and infuriatingly, however, it has also become misunderstood, distorted, and hijacked in many parts of the world, including my homeland. Instead of serving as an excruciating reminder of the worst of humanity and the importance of combating bigotry, the history of the Holocaust has either been buried or abused to inflame those same religious and ethnic hatreds.
2. Engineered Ignorance
In some ways, I was fortunate to have attended an American missionary school in Bangladesh. William Carey Academy — named after the Baptist minister who translated the Bible to Bengali and helped bring Christianity to my part of the world — provided a more Western education that had insulated me from the Islamic conservative orthodoxy that dominated most schools in my country. For this reason, I had been able to learn at least something about the Holocaust and the mass killing of Jews during the Second World War. Although my education still lacked any discussion of the enduring nature of antisemitism, at least I had a baseline grasp of the basic history. This, however, was not the case for many of my peers throughout Bangladesh. A near-complete absence of Holocaust education was the norm.
To understand the extent of this issue, I decided to briefly interview a number of students at SUNY Plattsburgh who had been raised in cultures similar to mine. This included South Asian nations, including Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, as well as Arab and African countries with large Muslim populations, such as Morocco and Ethiopia. A number of the responses I received revealed a consistent pattern:
● Two students reported that they had not covered the Holocaust in school at all.
● One student said her school had only briefly covered the topic.
● One student said he had only seen the Holocaust portrayed in media such as Schindler’s List but not taught in school.
● One student said her school had discussed the Holocaust in English class while reading Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl, but that it was very common for people in her community to express antisemitic views and engage in Holocaust denial.
These anecdotes help paint a broader picture of Holocaust ignorance in the educational systems of various nations, corroborated by official reporting and data. According to CNN, “the teaching of the Holocaust has been largely absent from governments’ school curricula in Arab countries”: a pattern that was abruptly broken in early 2023 by the UAE becoming the first Arab nation to include Holocaust education in its official curriculum, a move that was met with criticism and scrutiny. The Washington Institute observed that the “the paucity of information about the Holocaust in many Arab countries is a primary reason for widespread denial” of the tragedy. Indeed, numerous instances have seen attempts at Holocaust education being actively blocked. For instance, the National Library of Tunisia announced in 2018 it would host an exhibit for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, only for Holocaust deniers to shut down the museum in protest of “spreading propaganda.”
Such strains of Holocaust denial have often been perpetuated and directed from the state level. One of the most controversial examples include a 2002 editorial by the Egyptian state-run newspaper Al-Akhbar, which simultaneously derides the Shoah as a fraud and laments its failure in “completing” its mission of ethnic cleansing:
“With regard to the fraud of the Holocaust. … Many French studies have proven that this is no more than a fabrication, a lie, and a fraud…The entire matter, as many French and British scientists and researchers have proven, is nothing more than a huge Israeli plot aimed at extorting the German government in particular and the European countries in general. But I, personally and in light of this imaginary tale, complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my heart, ‘If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sigh in relief [without] their evil and sin.’ “
The state of Iran has been at the forefront of advocating for Holocaust denial and distortion. In 2016, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei released — on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, no less — a video questioning the “false narrative” of the Shoah and also decrying Western laws “limiting free speech” by penalizing Holocaust denial. One may also remember former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s international campaign to delegitimize the tragedy and even hosting a conference for “scholars” in this field, consisting largely of Holocaust deniers from the fringes of Western academia as well as Ku Klux Klan leaders. A similarly motivated symposium was organized by the Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-up, an official think tank of the Arab League — counting among its members Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and others — that aimed to discredit the “historical and political fallacies” propagated by Israel, a focal point of which was the undermining of Holocaust history. This was especially surprising and disappointing given that the Zayed Center had previously hosted talks on global peace by legitimate speakers including Jimmy Carter and Al Gore. In addition, specific examples of governments in the Arab, Islamic, and Asian world actively distorting the history of the Holocaust — if not flat-out rejecting or concealing it — are too innumerable to even summarize.
All of this goes to show that Holocaust denial and antisemitism, which go hand-in-hand, has been a systematic and state-led effort in many cases. This has directly and clearly shaped public sentiment. A 2010 opinion poll conducted by the Saban Center for Middle East Policy revealed that 56% of citizens in the surveyed states (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates) said they do not sympathize with the Holocaust; only 3% said they do. Emma Green writes in “The World Is Full of Holocaust Deniers” for The Atlantic: “…the Middle East and North Africa had the largest percentage of doubters, with only 8 percent of respondents reporting that they had heard of the genocide and believed descriptions of it were accurate. But only 12 percent of respondents in sub-Saharan Africa said the same, and only 23 percent in Asia. People in these groups were likely to say they believed the number of deaths has been exaggerated — just over half of Middle Easterners and a third of Asians and Africans think the body count has been distorted over time.” Globally, about half of the respondents had heard of the Holocaust, and about a third believed the official record was inaccurate.
I bring up these datasets and concrete examples just to add a sense of quantifiability to this pattern, and I hope it makes the issue more substantial especially to those living outside these regions of the world. But I did not need peer-reviewed facts and figures to get a sense of the extent of this troubling reality. I have lived it — witnessing the rhetoric surrounding the role of Jews in the world as well as the hiding and hijacking of Holocaust history to serve those agendas. This has rendered people like me unable to understand and empathize with the suffering I have seen among my Jewish friends, not fully grasping the roots of the fears they speak of. It has only been through honest discussion and a genuine effort to learn that I hopefully have bridged a little bit of this gap. But to accomplish that at a larger scale, it is imperative to understand the barriers to legitimate Holocaust education in Islamic cultures.
3. Walls, and How to Climb Them
The most significant such barrier is certainly Israeli-Palestinian relations and the perception that the Holocaust “enabled” the establishment of Israel, leading to the Nakba and the generations of illegal annexation, occupation, and blockade of Palestinian lands. The plight of the Palestinian people is an intensely emotional issue at the forefront of hundreds of millions of Muslim hearts and minds. It is among the very first geopolitical issues I was introduced to in my childhood, and I know this is the case for many people from my background. Tragically, this widespread push for justice has also been accompanied by a culture of antisemitism spurred by the antagonization of the Israeli state. Part of this has been an attitude of ignorance towards the Holocaust or the belief that it has been used unfairly as a justification for Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
Published in volume 5 of the historical research anthology “Muslims in Global Societies”, Esther Weber’s book Perceptions of the Holocaust in Europe and Muslim Communities traces the impact of the establishment of Israel on the collective understanding of the Shoah in Islamic society: “The proximity of events — the [Holocaust] and the establishment of the State of Israel led to the belief that if it was not for the Holocaust, Israel would not have come to exist. Consequently, the Arabs could not separate the attitude toward the Holocaust from their attitude and animosity toward Zionism. The resistance to the establishment of Israel…overshadowed their ability and willingness to acknowledge and sympathize with the Jewish tragedy. It was an instinctive reaction which was gradually buttressed by ideological, political and even cultural claims, further crystallized by the intensification of the Arab-Israeli conflict” (pg. 2).
Weber provides examples of how Arab news and literature immediately after the Shoah expressed genuine sympathy for the victims of genocide, but over time began focusing on the political ramifications of the establishment of Israel. In 1945, the Arab League issued a statement appreciating the humanitarian need to assist the Jewish refugees of genocide but also criticizing the potential dispossession of Palestinian lands. This position hardened and took on a more aggressive tone in August 1947 when the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) recommended a partitioning of the disputed territories into two states. The response from many Arab nations leveled “the accusation [against] Zionism of inflating the scope of the persecution of the Jews in Europe to justify the claim over Palestine and extort universal conscience” (pg. 4). Thus began the pattern of undermining the brutality of the Holocaust. The previously expressed sympathy for Jewish victims began to dissipate from Arab and Islamic writings: “The Holocaust was no longer viewed as a [tragedy] but as a catalyst to a political course of events and a major justification for the enemy” (pg. 5).
Over time, the denial of the seriousness of the Holocaust became a major element in many countries’ campaigning against Israel. The planned 2001 Beirut Conference on Revisionism and Zionism emerged as a flashpoint for the hardline proponents of such rhetoric to coalesce, although international backlash forced its eventual cancellation (a similar conference proceeded in Jordan). The Guardian described this meeting as an “opportunity for western [Holocaust] revisionists to meet their counterparts in the Islamist movement” (para 6). Central to such discourse was the refusal to ascribe any sense of victimhood to the Jewish people. This would collapse the whole argument that the Holocaust had been exaggerated and weaponized by Israel to assert leverage over the rest of the world. Mikael Tossavainen writes in Jewish Political Studies Review: “[According to Holocaust deniers in the Arab world]…political support is amassed by Israel and its supporters abroad by invoking the fabricated memory of the Holocaust as a carte blanche for the Jewish state to do whatever it sees fit to guarantee that another Holocaust will never happen again” (pg. 9).
Even worse, some of this Holocaust ignorance is deliberately crafted and encouraged for political gain. Speaking on NPR’s forum The Politics of Holocaust Denial, Sarah Lawrence College Professor of Middle Eastern Studies Fawaz Gerges observed the political appeal of Shoah denial: “What [many Arab leaders] are trying to do is to use and abuse the tragic memory of the Holocaust to garner a political support… by portraying [themselves] as a tough opponent of Israel and also as a tough opponent of the West, particularly the United States. [They are] using and abusing the issue of the Holocaust as a mechanism, a way to appeal to the wider Muslim masses” (11:36). As shameful as it is, the prospect of weaponizing Holocaust history to take shots at Israel and its Western backers presents a clear opportunity for political popularity, taking advantage of the Muslim world’s emotional linkage to the Palestinian cause.
This falls much in line with the kind of rhetoric I had grown accustomed to. Although an overwhelming majority of pro-Palestinian advocacy I have seen and participated in genuinely prioritizes the civil rights and basic security of the people of Gaza and the West Bank above all else, it is not difficult to see the impact of this kind of Holocaust denial on the way people approach the history of this issue. The Holocaust and the enduring nature of antisemitism are sidelined, if mentioned at all. The conversation veers away from legitimate criticism of Israel and instead paints the global Jewry as a secretive cabal of financiers, politicians, and media moguls exploiting an exaggerated history for political and economic gain.
Given my genuine emotional commitment to this conflict, I have no qualms in being honest and open about my beliefs. I have organized fundraising efforts, attended and led educational events, and published multiple essays all advocating for the Palestinian people. I believe Israel has consistently flaunted international law and been allowed to act with impunity (largely due to the shield of US protection), whether it be through indiscriminate killings in Gaza or the expansion of illegal settlements in the West Bank. In fact, three days from today, I will be hosting a tabling event in the lobby of the Angell College Center to raise awareness about the impending famine in Gaza. I strongly believe a significant factor in this crisis has been Israel’s obstinate and unreasonable regulations of “dual-use” aid (no one has yet explained to me how Hamas could weaponize diapers, menstrual pads, and protein bars). I can readily acknowledge that Palestinian leadership has been ineffective for decades and has failed to support and empower its constituents. Hamas is a violent terror organization that should be held accountable for the atrocious October 7th attacks, and all Israeli hostages should be returned safely and immediately. Israel and especially the Netanyahu administration should also be held accountable for their barbarism, disregard for civilian life, and infernal conditions they have thrust upon a population during its war that has killed more children in six months than the last four years of global conflict combined. These thoughts are not incompatible in any way. I adhere to all of them strongly and would never conceal my thoughts on a matter that is so important to me. Whoever may be reading this may disagree with some of these points, and that is okay. I hope, however, that we can agree that innocent civilian lives should never be written off as collateral damage, and that their safety and access to basic resources is paramount.
It is painful to see a mission that is so close to my heart being steeped in the antisemitism that I have seen. Not only is it a grave disservice to the victims of the Holocaust and modern antisemitism, the ignorance of the history of the Jewish people also does nothing to support or empower Palestine. It only further drives a wedge between the communities involved in this issue, derailing the prospect of meaningful conversation and undermining any hope for a workable resolution. It fosters a culture of mutual antagonization and distrust. It disrespects and alienates Jewish communities that actively work for peace, making them feel that the movement they are so dedicated to simply does not care for them and their people. The New York Times and other publications have reported on young, progressive Jews who had campaigned in solidarity with Palestine in the past, feeling shunned and dismayed by the vocal antisemitism that has pervaded many “left-wing” spaces in recent months. And, of course, this strain of Holocaust distortion is simply factually, objectively incorrect.
In order to truly achieve a resolution to one of the globe’s most intractable and impassioned conflicts — if that is truly what Muslim leaders and communities aspire to — the eradication of Holocaust ignorance is not just helpful, but necessary. Denying and misrepresenting one of the most pivotal chapters in modern human history, one that has shaped some of the same legal mechanisms and principles that activists like myself call upon to advocate for Palestine, is a shameful act of propaganda and burying one’s head in the sand. Only proper Holocaust education will equip Muslims around the world to understand the struggles faced by our brothers and sisters, bridge these historic gaps in human communication, and appreciate the efforts of people of various religious identities in helping achieve justice.
On that note, the second major factor hindering Holocaust awareness in the Muslim world is the simple lack of appropriate educational materials. Speaking at the Washington Institute’s forum “Teaching the Holocaust in the Arab World”, Palestinian scholar Dr. Zeina Barakat lamented the dearth of proper textbooks and curricula that could educate students in the Muslim world about the Holocaust. She discusses how the most common materials regarding the Shoah are antisemitic, conspiratorial propaganda such as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, described by the Holocaust Encyclopedia as “the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times.” Though this book was unequivocally determined to be fraudulent, its narrative of an elite circle of Jews deceiving and manipulating the globe has entrenched itself in the minds of people worldwide. According to Dr. Barakat, this and other Holocaust-denying propaganda can still be found in bookstores across the Arab world.
Speaking at the previously mentioned NPR forum, Dr. Robert Satloff — author of the book “Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands” — also called out the lack of educational materials surrounding this issue: “…there is virtually no discussion of this issue at all, that I could find, in any textbook… It’s just an episode that has been airbrushed from contemporary history as learned and studied in this part of the world” (12:55). I’ve also discussed previously that UAE became the first Arab country in early 2023 to include materials on the Holocaust in its government curriculum, which invited some criticism, demonstrating how uncommon such discussions are in many parts of the world.
Dr. Barakat shared her experiences of taking Palestinian students to the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps to truly expose them to the bleak depravity of the Shoah. It is one thing to read about human suffering in a book. It is entirely another to place your feet where theirs once stood. She described the change she saw within her students, how they truly felt on a human level the horrors of history’s worst genocide.
A key point I wanted to touch on is the importance of making such education relevant and relatable to students in the Muslim world. Recall the story I shared of the Bangladeshi girl at my exchange program training who had never heard of Jews. Think about how so many young people from backgrounds like mine have no interest in learning about the Holocaust or antisemitism, given that Jews are largely absent from our lives. It’s easy to see how many would question why we would need to be learning about this at all. Some are already predisposed to approach topics about Judaism with suspicion and hostility. In such an environment, it is necessary to explain how and why the Holocaust’s legacy shapes our lives today and how the lessons imparted from it should matter to us. A simple translation of popular books on the Holocaust, without any regard for cultural and social differences, simply would not make sense.
As to this point, I read an intriguing essay by Dr. Mehnaz Afridi, the Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Manhattan College and the Director of its Holocaust, Genocide and Interfaith Education Center. She is also the author of Shoah Through Muslim Eyes. Writing in Cafe Dissensus Magazine, she describes how Holocaust education helped her better understand and navigate the anti-Indian and anti-Hindu sentiment that pervaded her childhood in Pakistan. “Partition is central to modern identity in the Indian subcontinent, as the Holocaust is to identity among Jews, branded painfully onto the regional consciousness by memories of almost unimaginable violence,” she writes, referring to the partition of the British Raj in 1947 that created the states of Pakistan and India and led to a massive refugee crisis that tore countless families apart. Dr. Afridi discusses the religious violence and subhuman conditions suffered by her forefathers, and she relates the dangerous legacy of anti-Hindu nationalism to the antisemitism that led to and followed the Holocaust. The parallels and shared themes of the two historical chapters allowed her to develop a deeper, more personal understanding of both.
Similarly, I believe being able to relate the lessons of the Holocaust to one’s own background and story is essential. As a Bangladeshi, I see the attempted erasure of the Jewish people and their culture at the hands of the Nazis, motivated by an ideology of superiority. I see the Jewish resilience and rebuilding that spat in the face of such evil efforts. The echoes of this history can be heard in my own country’s story: for generations, the Bengali people suffered as their culture, language, and identity was trampled upon by Pakistani oppressors. The internationally recognized genocide of my people in 1971, in which the Pakistani military hunted down and gleefully slaughtered millions of innocent Bengalis, will forever be etched into Bangladesh’s collective consciousness. The Bengali people’s strength and refusal to surrender is what made our eventual liberation possible. Studying the parallels between such historical chapters does not diminish or trivialize either one. It allows me to empathize and truly understand on a more profound level the suffering of another people group and promise to never allow such hate to fester again.
The third roadblock to Holocaust education is religious. This is actually quite frustrating to even describe. I am a Muslim, and I believe Islam is a source of wisdom, peace, and discipline. It has allowed me to live my life in a more meaningful and loving way. Yet there are those who seek to hijack Islam to propagate hatred and violence. Geopolitical tensions have warped interpretations of the Qur’an to encourage conflict in a fundamental contradiction of Islam’s basic values. Tragically, fundamentalist theocracies like Iran and the spread of radical schools of Islamic thought such as Wahhabism have spurred on such hateful thinking. This has led to the perception of Jews as the enemy, resulting in not just a deliberate ignorance of Jewish history but also a celebration of atrocities against them.
The Qur’an, in reality, consistently stresses the importance of extending empathy and love to Christians and Jews, who are known as the “People of the Book.” Islam highlights the fact that People of the Book who are morally upstanding, faithful human beings shall receive Allah’s reward and protection. The exact same standard applies to Muslims. History has seen centuries of peaceful, glorious co-existence of Muslims, Jews, and Christians as ordained under Islamic law, such as in North Africa, Persia, Jerusalem, and Spain. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) has been recorded to have pursued peace pacts with pagans and Jews living in Medina. Above all, the Qur’an ceaselessly extolls justice, fairness, and peace as the bedrock of a healthy Islamic society. This duty to preserve justice did not simply apply to Muslims. It protected a variety of religious groups who could count on Islamic governance to respect their dignity and liberties.
4. A Choice
Writing this in March of 2024, it is impossible to discuss Holocaust education in the Muslim world without being cognizant of the ongoing violence in Israel and Gaza. It is so, so easy to fall prey to the tensions that threaten to reduce us to our most base instincts: hate and fear. But it will be neither hate nor fear that will pave the way for a future in which we can practice our faiths, celebrate our cultures, and share our histories.
I am writing this because I have experienced the consequences of ignorance, as have many of us. Ignorance breeds violence. Ignorance drives a man to open fire on peaceful worshippers in a synagogue. Ignorance leaves swastikas spray painted on auditorium doors. Ignorance cultivates famine and bloodshed. Ignorance builds walls and concentration camps. Ignorance whispers in your ear, coaxing you into hating someone you’ve never met and could’ve loved. It is more imperative than ever to break down the wholly man-made barriers that divide us.
In this essay, I have explored the factors that have kept me and others from my background from truly understanding one of the most important chapters in human history. The Holocaust is undoubtedly central to the modern Jewish experience, having epitomized the brutal antisemitism that I have seen reduce my closest friends to anxious tears. Though it may have occurred eighty years ago, the spirit of the Shoah did not die with the liberation of Auschwitz. It lingers on, hiding amongst the paranoia, hatred, and conspiracies that pervade cultures worldwide. We cannot stamp out this specter without understanding where it came from, how it lives on, how it feeds off of our primal fears and tribal tensions. In the light of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, if we truly are to commit to “Never Again”, it is crucial to call out ignorance where we see it and fight it tooth and nail. There is no human alternative.
In a world where it is so easy to choose hate and fear, choose learning. Choose hope.
