From Rafik Beekun:
The following hadith is narrated by Abdur Rahman bin Abi Laila in Sahih Bukhari, volume 2, hadith 399:
Sahl bin Hunaif and Qais bin Sad were sitting in the city of Al-Qadisiya. A funeral procession passed in front of them and they stood up. They were told that funeral procession was of one of the inhabitants of the land i.e. of a non-believer, under the protection of Muslims. They said, “A funeral procession passed in front of the Prophet and he stood up. When he was told that it was the coffin of a Jew, he said, “Is it not a living being (soul)?”
With this hadith in mind, we need to respect the dead of people of other faiths too–especially in light of the unspeakable genocide endured during the Holocaust. Islam is a religion of tolerance and of compassion, and “debunking” the holocaust massacres (that have been proved beyond any doubt) does not do Muslims credit either at work or anywhere else.
Please now read this recent article about how Muslims in America are making sure that the victims of the Holocaust are given due respect and honor.
Washington – Muslim-American leaders on December 20 visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, met with Holocaust survivors in its memorial room and lit candles to honor the memory of death-camp victims. […]
The visit was the idea of Imam Mohamed Magid, executive director of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society, Washington’s largest Muslim center and mosque, which serves 5,000 Muslim families.
Sara Bloomfield, director of the museum, said that such a public statement by Muslim leaders was “a first” and that their idea to come was as important as the event itself. […]
At the event, Johanna Neumann, a Holocaust survivor, described how Albanian Muslims saved her and her family from the Nazis. She said Albania at the time was 85 percent Muslim and that she and her family were protected by Muslims in their town. “Everybody knew who we were, and nobody would have thought of denouncing us,” Neumann said.
Akbar Ahmed, an Islamic scholar from American University, called the Holocaust “one of the low points in history.” Ahmed urged all people to condemn anti-Semitism and to equally condemn “widespread Islam-phobia,” which he said is evident when people call Muslims “terrorists.” He said anti-Semitism and Islam-phobia are linked: “To check one, we have to check the other.”
Please click here to read the remainder of this article.
A recent PBS TV interview (December 26, 2006) is entitled “Author Uncovers Stories of Arabs Helping Jews During Holocaust.” More stories about how Arabs and Muslims saved Jews from the Holocaust are talked about in this video about the new book “Among the Righteous” by Robert Satloff. Please click here to watch this interview.
Robert Satloff’s extraordinary book entitled “Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust’s Long Reach into Arab Lands” can be bought directly from Amazon.com by clicking here.
The Islamic Workplace 
December 13th, 2007 → 9:50 am
[…] in Islam in a previous article on this blog. Please click here to read this article entitled “Tolerance towards others (Part 1)“. Peace. Happy […]