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| Concern over Muslim leader's support for Irving
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Asghar Bukhari, a founder member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), last month admitted sending the letters to Irving during the year 2000.
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LONDON (EJP)---The British Jewish community has expressed its concern after it was revealed that a leader of a controversial Muslim group sent funds and letters of support to convicted Holocaust denier David Irving.
Asghar Bukhari, a founder member of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), last month admitted sending the letters to Irving during the year 2000.
Irving, who has been imprisoned in Austria since September 2006 for for having denied the existence of gas chambers in National Socialist concentration camps in several lectures held in Austria in 1989.
The writer came to the public eye in 1998 after he launched a libel suit against American professor Deborah Lipstadt for comments in a book called Denying The Holocaust where Lipstadt branded Irving a Holocaust denier and an anti-Semite. Irving lost the case and was soon declared bankrupt having been forced to pay the costs of the case.
Joining the fight
In an article published in The Observer newspaper in November, letters sent by Bukhari to Irving illustrated his support for Irving.
Bukhari told Irving: “You may feel like you are on your own but rest assured many people are with you in your fight for the Truth.”
And referring to Paul Findley, a former US Senator, who has attacked his country’s close relationship with Israel, Bukhari added that he believed Findley “has suffered like you in trying to expose certain falsehoods perpetrated by the Jews.”
The article showed how Bukhari sent a cheque for 60 pounds to Irving and said he had “also asked many Muslim websites to create links to your own and ask for donations.”
When asked by The Observer about these letters, Bukhari claimed that he didn’t realise the extent of Irving’s Holocaust denial, even though that was precisely the reason he had become famous.
“At the time I was of the belief he [Irving] was anti-Zionist, being smeared for nothing more then being anti-Zionist,” Bukhari said, adding: “I had a lot of sympathy for anyone who opposed Israel. I wrote letters to anyone who was tough against the Israelis - David Irving, Paul Findley, the PLO."I don’t feel I have done anything wrong, to be honest.”
On the MPAC website Bukhari explained: “To this day I believe that any pro-Muslim or pro-Palestinian person charged with anti-Semitism is almost definitely innocent. If ever I heard that they were calling someone anti-Semitic, I no longer believed it, and I still don’t.
“I may have got it wrong with Irving, but I’m not taking any blame for that, the way I see it is you can’t blame a man for not believing a compulsive liar because one time he was telling the truth. The Zionists were always lying and smearing people. For once they told the truth and complained when people didn’t believe them.”
MPAC condemned
MPAC claims on its website to be “the UK’s Leading Muslim civil liberties group, empowering Muslims to focus on non-violent Jihad and political activism.”
However it was banned from university campuses in 2004 after being branded ’anti-semitic’ by the National Union of Students.
Lord Janner, Chairman of the Holocaust Educational Trust, condemned Bukhari for his views and actions.
He told the Jewish News: “I work together with Muslims, and leaders of other faiths, to prevent a repetition of the hideous Holocaust. To all of us, the support of a Holocaust denier is a grave error.”
And the Zionist Federation caled on media outlets to ignore MPAC.
A spokesman said: “Mainstream British media outlets have routinely sought comment and analysis from Asghar Bukhari and his MPAC organisation on Israel-related issues. Given that Bukhari has now been exposed as an unapologetic supporter of an anti-Semite and Holocaust denier, we trust that these media organisations will no longer do so.”
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