Source:  Kevin Barrett, Coordinator of MUJCA-NET (Muslim-Jewish-Christian Alliance for 9/11 Truth)

[This Friday on Truth Jihad Radio, 6-8 p.m. CT, http://republicbroadcasting.org, I will be discussing "bigotry, accusations of bigotry, and their role in interfaith dialogue and the 9/11 truth movement" with my guests Carol Brouillet and James Powell]

Last year, during a guest appearance on a Madison, Wisconsin talk radio show, the host compared 9/11 skeptics to "people who think the Holocaust is a myth." "Of course it's a myth," I responded, explaining that the word myth, in the academic sense, means: "Sacred narrative that is believed to be true, and that often inaugurates and legitimizes a social order or a way of understanding the world." Scholars are far more interested in the social and political effects of myths than whether or not they are true, I continued. Calling the Holocaust a myth, and exploring the destructive effects of that myth, as Norman Finkelstein does, says nothing about whether the story is true or false.

After a commercial break, the host came back with: "We're talking to Dr. Kevin Barrett, who says the Holocaust is a myth." That host was either an idiot or a liar, for he was confusing, whether deliberately or through sheer stupidity, the academic and popular senses of the word myth, only a few minutes after I had clearly explained the distinction.

Last week, a blog entry by Mark (gravy) Roberts from the blogs section at 911blogger.com, citing an out-of-context fragment of a private email, repeated the "Barrett calls Holocaust myth" libel. Of course it's a myth, Mark! That doesn't mean it isn't true. I have no doubt that among the 60 million people killed in World War II, a great many were Jews who were killed because they were Jews, Gypsies killed because they were Gypsies, homosexuals killed because they were homosexuals, communists killed because they were communists, Slavs killed because they were Slavs--and, perhaps worst of all, decent people killed because they were decent people who insisted on telling the truth in the face of a lying, war-criminal regime.

This does not mean that the Holocaust narrative is not a myth! In a scientific culture, one would expect the dominant myths to be empirically true--meaning backed by empirical evidence, not true in an absolute sense. Evolution, the big bang theory, the Holocaust, Pearl Harbor, the story of Muhammad's reception of the Qur'an, Genesis, the Gospels of Jesus, etc. are all examples of myths that are used by contemporary communities. Whether they are empirically true or not is irrelevant to their status as myths. I regularly use these examples in the classes I teach, and whenever the subject of mythography (the academic study of myths) comes up. Occasionally Muslims look askance at my characterization of their (our) sacred narrative as a myth, while others react badly to my characterization of the Holocaust as a myth -- even though I NEVER do so without explaining the term first! The moral: An educator's job is never done.

That said, I do think that Americans are going to have to get used to the fact that most of the world's Arabs and Muslims who have an opinion think the Jewish Holocaust body count has been exaggerated by Western historians, due to the natural tendency of the victor to rewrite history at the expense of the vanquished. The Arab world's leading statesman and political commentator, Mohammed Heikal, does not deny the Holocaust, but he claims that after conducting extensive research he believes that the true number of Jewish victims was less than one million. I suspect that very few of the world's 200 million Arabs or 1.5 billion Muslims would disagree with him. Personally, I have no idea who is right, the Western consensus or Heikal and other non-Western intellectuals and their Western supporters. I simply have not had the time or interest to do the research necessary to have an informed opinion on this question. If refusing to accept someone else's sacred story on faith makes me a heretic, I plead guilty. Given the ludicrous lies about 9/11 and other matters that have been perpetrated by Western academia, media, and governments, I think anyone who accepts anything these Western institutions say about anything, without personally verifying it through careful research, is a gullible person indeed.

The point of this fence-straddling is dialogue. As a person who has lived on various sides of various cultural fences, I see my interfaith-dialogue role as one of helping each side understand the other. This is not always easy. Arabs and Muslims generally regard pro-Zionists in almost exactly the same way that Jews and most Americans regard pro-Nazis or "Holocaust deniers"—as defenders of the indefensible who must be morally corrupt if not downright evil. I have spent countless hours talking to Arabs and Muslims trying to explain why Americans and especially American Jews think the way they do, and pointing out that pro-Zionists are not necessarily evil. Likewise I am sometimes compelled to explain to Americans why the Arab-Muslim world is essentially unanimous in questioning both the numbers and the meaning of the standard Western version of the Nazi Holocaust narrative, and trying to point out that 1.5 billion people may be wrong without being evil. This is often a thankless task. Extremists on one side call me a Holocaust denier while those on the other side call me a Jew-loving race traitor. (DB Smith actually called for me to be arrested as a Mossad agent because I am so friendly with Jews!) Interestingly, those extremists are virtually never Muslim—they're all white power types. Anti-Zionist Muslims are almost always polite and open to dialogue. It's just that nobody on this side of the fence wants to hear them–maybe because their argument about Palestine, and the irrelevance of the Holocaust story to it, is so compelling?

[Questions? Comments? Rotten tomatoes? Call in this Friday, 2/10/07, on Truth Jihad Radio, 6-8 p.m. CT, http://republicbroadcasting.org: (800) 313-9443]