A forum free from censure or simple anti-semitism
Matthew:
December 21st, 2006
The government of Iran is hosting a conference entitled ‘Review of the Holocaust: Global vision’. It is being attended by a selection of Islamic Facsists, Neo-Nazis and other generally unsavoury types of anti-semites. The Iranian state claims it is giving freedom of speech to those who have their views censored in Europe, which on consideration, is a difficult justification to object to. It is illegal, and an imprisonable offence, to deny the Holocaust in much of Europe.
Therefore, when European editors defend their right to publish cartoons that Muslims may find offensive, a form of hypocrisy is exposed. We can question the religious beliefs of Islam, but we aren’t allowed to question whether a historical event actually occurred or not. They are of course, different types of questions, in that one can be verified or falsified using empiricism, the other is a metaphysical and a spiritual question that defies empirical analysis.
If this conference is a serious academic endeavour rather than a clumsy, provocative political manouevre, it will assess the available evidence and come to the facile conclusion that the holocaust did indeed occurr and was a shameful episode of European history. Of course, given the political context, this is hardly likely. But if Europeans didn’t imprison anyone who asked the question, the Iranians couldn’t hide behind the veil of freedom of speech, and the conference would be exposed as the ugly racism it surely is.