Holocaust denial in the Muslim world

...every culture, every religion honors the memory of the dead and one aspect of honoring that memory is respecting the specific circumstances of their deaths. It should be obvious that it is deeply offensive to rewrite these circumstances for the sake of political convenience or, worse, for amusement.

Yet, there are many understandable reasons why Holocaust denial is to be found in the Muslim world. The assertion that the Nazis exterminated millions of Jews in an assembly-line fashion does seem hard to believe. I remember a very decent Palestinian in a refugee camp whispering to me not in malice but in wonderment, Did it really happen? In fact many Jewish leaders in the West did not believe it themselves when witnesses from the death camps managed to escape and inform them.

Moreover, because Israel has consistently lied about the history of the Israel-Arab conflict, alleging that Palestine was empty before the Jews came and that the Arabs are responsible for all the wars Israel has fought, it is unsurprising that many Arabs would also conclude that Israel is lying about what happened to Jews during World War II.

Norman Finkelstein "Some reflections on Holocaust denial in the Muslim world." The rest of the article is available here.