Let's make Remembrances more Vanilla, shall we?

Somehow stuff like this still surprises me. According to the London Times, British Muslims (or at least one of the governing representative bodies) will be boycotting events to commemorate the liberation of Auschwitz, saying:

"it is not racially inclusive and does not commemorate the victims of the Palestinian conflict."

Really? How outrageous that they would not commemmorate something that is totally unrelated from a different time period! The nerve!

The Times goes on to say that "similar events held in other European countries w[ere] "inclusive day[s]" that commemorated deaths in Palestine, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, as well as the former Nazi death camps."

Now, one thought I have is that those "inclusive day" celebrations are idiotic for even equating Palestinian violence with organized, systematic genocide/ethnic cleansing in the other regions mentioned. But I'll likely write a longer post about the Palestinian conflict later, so I'll save that line of argumentation.

What I will say is that by trying to "group" horrible events in human history, we diminish their significance. Do we really feel that such events aren't weighty enough to stand on their own for contemplation?

Moreoever, the "logic" (using the term very loosely) of the Council of British Muslims is garbage. Taking their reasoning to its logical conclusion, any observance of Sept. 11th terror attacks in the United States, for example, would somehow be invalid unless we also always mentioned every crime that's been inflicted to every group in the world. I guess we should have a Boar War/Trail of Tears/Ukrainian Starvation/Sept. 11th terror attack/Pinochet Remembrance Day, eh?

Actually, my example is probably more valid than the British Muslims thinking, if only because at least Pinochet and WTC attacks shared something in common in their dates of occurrence...

Don't expect me to be donating any funds to the Muslim Council of Britain any time soon...

[Nod to Andrew Stuttaford at NRO]