In the Same Boat?

I remember when France cracked down on the wearing of the hijab by Moslems--how it was noted that in the public schools the wearing of the kippah was also forbidden. It struck me how Moslems and Jews seemed to be in the same boat.

It seemed like an isolated incident.

Today, I read the following on the online version of the Toronto Star under the headline: 'No Sharia law in Ontario'

Ontario will not become the first Western jurisdiction to allow the use of a set of centuries’ old religious rules called Sharia law to settle Muslim family disputes, and will ban all religious arbitrations in the province, Premier Dalton McGuinty told The Canadian Press on Sunday.

And in case the full implications of "will ban all religious arbitrations in the province," are not clear, just read on to the next paragraph:

In a telephone interview with the national news agency, McGuinty announced his government would move quickly to outlaw existing religious tribunals used for years by Christians and Jews under Ontario’s Arbitration Act.

No more Beis Din.

Would a move by Moslems to demand the option to use Sharia law in the US lead to a similar result? I imagine that the ACLU on the one hand and CAIR on the other would make such an outcome unlikely.

Meanwhile, in England the Sunday Times Reports that Ditch Holocaust day, advisers urge Blair

ADVISERS appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

They want to replace it with a Genocide Day that would recognise the mass murder of Muslims in Palestine, Chechnya and Bosnia as well as people of other faiths.

It's one thing to find ourselves put in the same boat with Moslems and losing rights as a result. But when the Moslems themselves want to put themselves in the same category in order to standardize their propaganda while minimizing...

Well, actually, if Moslems want recognition in a general Genocide Day, perhaps we should oblige:

As Rabbi David G. Dalin, author of The Myth of Hitler’s Pope, points out in his article Hitler's Mufti, Not Hitler's Pope:

Precisely at the moment when Pope Pius XII and the Catholic Church in Rome (and throughout Europe) was saving thousands of Jewish lives, Hitler had a cleric broadcasting from Berlin who called for the extermination of the Jews.

He was Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the viciously anti-Semitic Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who resided in Berlin as a welcome guest and ally of the Nazis throughout the years of the Holocaust.

UPDATE:

I just noticed that the Volokh Conspiracy makes the same point.

David Bernstein writes:

Even worse is the idea that a new "Genocide Day" would include "Muslim deaths in the West Bank and Gaza," thus giving credence to the absurd contention that Israeli policies in those areas amount to "genocide," and thus replacing a memorial to victims of the Holocaust with the fantastical political propaganda of those whose political ancestors (e.g., the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Muhammed Amin al-Husseini) allied with the Nazis.

The article he links to about the Grand Mufti at Palestine Facts goes into detail and at the end has a number of links for further reading.

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