The oldest Islamic organization in Germany, the Islam-Archiv-Deutschland Central Institute, criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently for denying the existence of the Holocaust, and invited him to visit Germany.
A spokesman for the Islam-Archiv-Deutschland organization said that Ahmadinejad's comments were a "disgrace to all Muslims," implying that questioning one of the most well-documented events in history was a discredit to the Arab and Muslim people.
Six millions Jews and five million non-Jewish men, women and children, including Rom Gypsies, handicapped citizens, Arabs, Christians, and political enemies of the Nazi regime were killed during the Holocaust.
Islam-Archiv-Deutschland, founded in 1927 to preserve Germany's Muslim archives and foster relations between Muslims and other religions, invited Ahmadinejad him to visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in which over 1 million people were killed by poison gas and then burnt.
"In this place of horror he can again deny the Holocaust, if he has the courage," a spokesman for the Islamic organization said, according to EJP.
Explicit records kept by Nazi forces of names of victims and detailed means of their extermination and torture, extensive film footage of the concentration camps by both German and Allied forces, records of eleven million European citizens of all religious backgrounds who were alive prior to the war and not killed in combat, and testimony from tens of thousands of survivors who either witnessed the tragedy or lost family members, attest to the Nazi project.
Ahmadinejad in recent weeks has dismissed what he referred to as the myth of the Holocaust, saying that the story had been fabricated by Jews to justify the creation of the State of Israel, which should be "wiped off the map." Much of Israel's Jewish immigrants from Europe arrived in Palestine after the Holocaust is said to have occurred.
The spokesman for Islam-Archiv-Deutschland added that denying a tragic but factual chapter of history such as the Holocaust, the leader of the Islamic state was hurting the image of Islam and significantly weakening the Arab and Muslim cause worldwide.
© 2006 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
