#MuslimsAreNotTerrorists: I Am Your Protector Remembers

Muslims are terrorists, right? I mean, we all know that; the ones who are here already are just plotting and waiting to kill us so we need to get Them out of the country and keep the Others from coming in; it’s the only way we’ll be safe.

And Muslims hate Jews, right? It says so in the Qur’an where Muslims are instructed to attack Jews who refuse to convert to Islam, and yet the Qur’an also teaches Muslims to treat Jews as brothers.

It’s all very confusing; Muslims are terrorists; Muslims hate Jews. And then there’s this …

a new campaign, organized by I Am Your Protector [IAYP] seeks to honor Muslims who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust, like Islamic diplomat, Abdol Hossein Sardari, also known as the “Iranian Schindler”, who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazi regime by confusing the fascist group with their own propaganda.

When the Nazis began implementing anti-Jewish laws in occupied France, Sardari, head of the Iranian Consulate in Paris, used the Nazis’ own racial purity laws to convince them that Iranian Jews were actually Aryan and not subject to the Reich’s racial laws. And he then issued Iranian passports to over 2,000 Jews, without the consent of his superiors which enabled them to leave Europe and flee to safety.

IAYP describe themselves as “a community of people who speak up and stand up for each other across religion, race, gender and beliefs” and are spreading the stories, oftentimes forgotten, of Muslims who helped Jews escape the genocide.

As with the story of British Muslim war heroine — yes, a Muslim woman — Noor Inayat Khan, who served as a wireless operator during World War II and was recruited to spy for the Allied forces in Nazi-occupied France until her arrest. 

Noor Inayat Khan was executed at the Dachau Concentration Camp for her “crimes”.

And we are learning of Selahattin Ulkumen who was a Turkish diplomat in Greece; Ulkumen organized a series of boats to carry Jews to safety in Turkey.

Ulkumen is credited with saving at least fifty lives.

Kaddour Benghabrit was the founder of the Muslim Institute at the Great Mosque of Paris but he was more than that.

Benghabrit was also a very good forger, and would forge travel documents and passports for Jews to certify them as Muslims and save them from deportation during the war.

Si Ali Sakkat was both a former mayor in Tunisia and a descendant of Prophet Mohammed.

He protected 60 Jewish escapees from a labor camp by hiding them on his estate.

And Khaled Abdul Wahab is remembered for saving two Jewish families by sheltering them in stables on his farm in Tunisia.

These are just a few stories, and there are many others, that were commemorated last week on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Memorial. Remembrance. Remember. 

Muslims are not terrorists.

Independent