CLASS Vikings
Department of History
ANNUAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE EVENT On January 28, 2020, Cleveland State’s Cultural Crossings and Department of History co-sponsored the fifth annual Holocaust Remembrance Event. This event was established and organized by Dr. Mark B. Cole, Department of History, to coincide each spring semester with his course, The Holocaust: Origins, History, and Memory. The Holocaust Remembrance featured a public lecture—“Muslims and the Holocaust: Hope, Rescue, and Reconciliation”—by Dr. Mehnaz Afridi, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Manhattan College and the Director of its Holocaust, Genocide & Interfaith Education Center. Dr. Afridi is a Pakistani-born observant Muslim, raised in Dubai, educated in South Africa, and now teaching Islam and the Holocaust at a Catholic liberal arts college. Afridi's fascinating lecture stemmed from personal experiences as well as her academic research. For her, the Holocaust, or Shoah ("destruction" in Hebrew) as she prefers to call it, was a singular event that must be studied and commemorated, not merely to record history as it happened, but because empathy for the "Other" breeds tolerance and understanding. Apathy and ignorance, on the contrary, are the paving stones of hatred. Her lecture focused on the complicated relationship her co-religionists have with the Shoah. The first part of her talk focused on the relatively unknown history of Muslims who found themselves under fascist occupation during WWII in North Africa, whether it was by Mussolini's Italy, Nazi Germany, or Vichy France. Many in the room expressed surprise upon hearing about the concentration camps that existed in Algeria, Morocco, Libya, and Tunisia. In that situation, it was all too easy for Muslims to become bystanders or enablers when North African Jews were targeted. But she also noted that although few in number, Muslims died
8
v
The Innerlink
v
Spring 2020
in the gas chambers at Auschwitz and elsewhere too. Other Muslims, from the King of Morocco, to ordinary folks across North Africa and the Balkans, acted selflessly to save several thousand Jewish lives during the Holocaust. Albania, a Muslimmajority country, for example, saved nearly all 2000 members of its Jewish community. The second part of Afridi’s lecture castigated extant Holocaust denial and antisemitism that is deeply entrenched in certain corners of the global Muslim community. Such views, often politically motivated by the Israel-Palestine conflict, are essentially un-Islamic by her reckoning, and do harm by dehumanizing the victims of the past in an attempt to de-legitimize Zionism in the present. At a moment when Jewish-Muslim relations are strained at best, building a bridge to reconciliation, according to Afridi, must be undergirded by interfaith dialogue, mutual respect, and historical literacy from those on all sides. Anyone who missed this event, or wants to delve deeper into the topic, can easily do so through Dr. Afridi’s most recent book, Shoah Through Muslim Eyes.
