London
Advisors to Prime Minister Tony Blair have recommended abolishing Holocaust Day because it is offensive to Muslims. Since 2001, Britain has observed an annual day commemorating the slaughter of 6 million Jews by the Nazis during World War II. But members of a Blair-appointed task force on Islamic extremism argued this week that the day should be replaced with a generic Genocide Day that honors victims of all massacres. “Muslims feel hurt and excluded that their lives are not equally valuable to those lives lost in the Holocaust time,” Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain, told the London Daily Telegraph. A Home Office spokesman said the government would consider the proposal, but stressed that Britain regards the Holocaust as a “defining tragedy in European history.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Book reviews: ‘Red Scare: Blacklists, McCarthyism, and the Making of Modern America’ and ‘How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, 1978–1998’Feature A political ‘witch hunt’ and Helen Garner’s journal entries
-
The backlash against ChatGPT's Studio Ghibli filterThe Explainer The studio's charming style has become part of a nebulous social media trend
-
Why are student loan borrowers falling behind on payments?Today's Big Question Delinquencies surge as the Trump administration upends the program
