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Britain’s Muslims end Holocaust Day boycott

By · December 4, 2007

The Muslim Council of Britain ended its six-year boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day.

The group, representing more than 500 organizations, said after a vote last weekend that it would attend events held each January in Liverpool for “the sake of the common good.”

The boycott stemmed from an objection that the Jan. 27 events commemorated only Jewish victims of the Holocaust and not victims of other genocides such as the Bosnian war.

Chris Shaw, chief executive of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, has said the Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations were intended to be for non-Jewish victims, too.

Inayat Bunglawala, assistant general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, told the BBC that council members decided the boycott “was causing hurt to some in the Jewish community and there was a growing realization the decision was doing more harm than good.”

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