Training Muslim Eyeson the HolocaustProfessor Mehnaz Afridi draws on her Islamic faith to teachhistory's worst genocide I By Debra Nussbaum Cohen

IT IS A GORGEOUS AUTUMN DAY IN

New York City. On a rocky hill inthe Riverdale section of the Bronx,

students at Manhattan College bustlebetween classes on a campus dottedwith trees cloaked in fiery shades oforange, red and yellow. The beautyoutside stands in stark contrast towhat's being taught in one classroomat this Catholic school.

Professor Mehnaz Afridi, anobservant Pakistani Muslim whoprays daily and fasts for Ramadan, isteaching some 20 students about howthe Nazis persuaded Arab leadersin North Africa to turn against theJews who lived among them. "FascistItaly broadcast radio programs tryingto turn the Arabs against the Jews.Nazis hired Germans who spokeArabic to broadcast shortwave radiomessages to 1.5 million people wholistened to the propaganda," Afridisays during her "Religion and Holo-caust" class.

Building on already simmer-ing resentment against Jews, theNazi and Fascist effort was largelysuccessful. Though there were morethan 800,000 Jews in Arab landsat the time-many for countlessgenerations-"in the minds of Arabs,all Jews were European colonizers,"Afridi tells her students, who aremostly secular Catholics from work-ing-class and immigrant families.

The impact of those efforts contin-ues to echo today-in the Holocaustdenial pervasive in the Arab world

and in the Boycott, Divestment andSanctions movement. The damaging"success" of the anti-Jewish messageis clear, Afridi says, "in the conspira-torial perception of Jews all overthe Arab world."

Afridi, 46, is believed to be theonly Muslim teacher of the Holo- .caust in the United States-andlikely the world, say experts in thefield. In the introduction to her 2017book, Shoah Through Muslim Eyes(Academic Studies Press), she creditsIslam as the foundational modelthrough which she relates to andteaches genocide. "Contrary to itspublic perception in the contem-porary world," Afridi writes, "themessage of Islam has always been auniversal one to me-encouragingtolerance, egalitarianism and accep-tance of other faiths and cultures."

HER WORK TO DISPEL ANTI-

Semitic stereotypes has wonher admirers even among

those who initially opposed her 2011appointment as director of Manhat-tan College's Holocaust, Genocide &Interfaith Education Center, knownas HGI (hgimanhattan.com). Amongthe most vocal critics was New YorkState Assemblyman Dov Hikind, whorepresents a largely ultra-Orthodoxdistrict in Brooklyn. At the time, he saidthat a Muslim being hired to run thecenter "diminishes the magnitude of theHolocaust as a defining Jewish event."

Since then, Hikind has become

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more familiar with her writing andlectures, and his perspective haschanged. "I've been very touchedby what she has said," he explains."I think she's contributing in a verygood way toward the conversation.When it comes from someone who'sMuslim, it can be a lot more power-ful. Considering all the hate anddivisiveness between our people, andthe hatred coming from the Muslimworld to the Jewish world, there's noquestion that having someone likeDr. Afridi going out and spreadingmore information is good."

She also has deeply influenced herstudents. James Noeker, a ManhattanCollege graduate who grew up in apolitically conservative Irish-Italiantown on Long Island, is one example.Noeker, a Catholic who took arequired freshman survey class onreligion with Afridi, turned to her forcounsel when, just a month into hisfirst semester, a classmate i·nanothercourse called him "filthy Jew."

"I was stunned and walkedaway," recalls Noeker, 23. Afridisuggested he participate in theHGI fellowship program that pairsManhattan College students with

those at the Modern Orthodoxrabbinical school Yeshivat ChoveveiTorah, also in Riverdale, to interviewHolocaust survivors. Noeker took heradvice and, together with a partner,attended a Passover seder-Noeker'sfirst-and a Kristallnacht commem-oration. Noeker's interview witha survivor was his first experiencemeeting someone who had livedthrough the Holocaust.

In 2016, Noeker became Afridi'sstudent assistant at HGI and took partin her annual January intercessioncourse in Venice, devoted to the studyof "Venice and the Jewish Ghetto."

By studying the history of theghetto, which was established in1516 and confined Jewish settle-ment to a tiny island whose twobridges were locked at night, Afrididemonstrates that the lessons of pastsegregation and prejudice are all toorelevant today. In Venice, her studentslearn about the recent resettlement ofMuslim immigrants to the area andthe corresponding rise in Islamopho-bia among Italians.

"I want students to understandthat these are very stereotypical issuesthat have been going on for a long

time," she says when we sit downfor coffee after class in a campuscafe. Today, no mosques are allowedto serve the large number of Muslimimmigrants in the northeast of Italy."There is a view of Muslims inVenice of being terrorists and incom-patible with democracy," Afridisays, noting that it is much the sameattitude Jews faced in the ghetto.

A FEELING OF DISCRIMINATION

is familiar to Afridi. Born inPakistan, her father's work as

an international banker meant thefamily moved frequently, includingto Dubai, where all discussion of theHolocaust and Israel was omittedfrom the curriculum at her elemen-tary school. She recalls securitycensors coming in to her class-room with scissors and thick blackmarkers to eradicate any mention

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Teaching Tolerance Mehnaz Afridi in herManhattan College classroom (left) and in theVenice Ghetto (middle, back row), standingnext to student James Noeker

of either from the school's Europeantextbooks. After stays in WesternEurope, her family eventually movedto Scarsdale, N.Y., when she was 13.

It was in the tony New York Citysuburb that Afridi first experienceddiscrimination. "My parents got phonecalls saying 'Arabs get out,''' she says,though Pakistanis aren't Arab.

Afridi earned a B.A. in Englishand religion at Syracuse Universityand stayed there to pursue a master'sdegree in religious studies. (She latergot her Ph.D. in religious studies fromthe University of South Africa.) It waswhile working with a Jewish studiesprofessor at Syracuse-to whom shewas randomly assigned as a teachingassistant-that she was first seriouslyexposed to the Holocaust.

"What shocked me the most,"Afridi says, "were the bystanderswho didn't do anything. I was taughtnot to witness injustice to anybody.It's an Islamic principle that if you seean injustice to anybody you have tospeak out."

She became increasingly interestedin understanding why and how theHolocaust happened. "I started tounderstand why there was the needfor the State of Israel," she says.

Then, in 1995, Afridi won aHebrew University grant to studybiblical archaeology in Jerusalem.

••I was young and naive andthought I could solve all the prob-lems, like who the land belongs to,"she says with a laugh. She wenton archaeological digs over herfive-week stay, "looking at differentlayers of history." Using her Paki-stani passport, she traveled freelythrough both Israel and the Pales-tinian territories. Before that, shehad felt "an unspoken tension aboutIsrael," she says. "I came homefeeling, 'God, both these peoplejust want peace.' "

Other moments in her careerhave also served as personal turningpoints. In the summer of 2007,after giving a talk at an academicconference in Munich, Afridi visitedthe Dachau concentration camp. "Iwanted to pay respects to the Jewswho had perished," she says. "It'svery bare there, there are a lot ofwhite rocks. It's very empty and hardto be there." Standing at a crema-torium used to dispose of some of

ACCEPTING ISRAELPUBLICLY AS A VIABLESTATE HAS BEEN DIFFICULTBECAUSE OF THE POLITICALSITUATION. BUT MY WORKIS ABOUT BEING CRITICALABOUT ANTI-SEMITISMAND RELATIVIZING THEHOLOCAUST.

-MEHNAZ AFRIDI

ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICAEstablished in 1891 as "AN

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the tens of thousands of people whodied at Dachau, Afridi spontaneouslybegan to recite a Muslim prayer thatis said when someone dies. In Arabic,she chanted, "Whoever belongs toGod goes back to God."

"It was a powerful moment," sherecalls. "I couldn't believe what hadhappened there."

PROMOTING ANY KIND OF

empathy or understanding ofthe Holocaust can be risky

for Muslims. In 2014, Palestin-ian Professor Mohammed DajaniDaoudi, then a senior lecturer atEast jerusalem's Al-Quds University,found that out after he took studentsto Auschwitz as part of their study ofthe Holoca ust and genocide. His lifewas threatened and his car set on fire,forcing him to flee the region for afew years.

It may be easier for a non-ArabMuslim to teach the Holocaust,Afridi acknowledges. "I haven'tgotten any flak from the Muslimcommunity," she says, but adds:"I know some people are wary ofwhat I do."

Tensions around the Israeli-Pal-estinian conflict further complicatehow her work is received. "AcceptingIsrael publicly as a viable state hasbeen difficult because of the politicalsituation," Afridi concedes. "Butmy work is about being critical aboutanti-Semitism and relativizingthe Holoca ust."

She refuses to be silenced on thatmission. "The Shoah is the most inex-plicable genocide that I teach, and Iwant to bring awareness and educa-tion to Muslim communities," shesays. "Recently, I was pleased thatThe Arab Weekly"-an English-lan-guage Arab media outlet based inLondon-"published a great reviewof my book, and I feel that Muslims

have begun to respond more andmore to my work."

Another priority for her, she says,is publicizing that there were Muslimrescuers of Jews during the Holo-caust, mainly in Arab lands. "Whydo we not know these stories?" sheasks her students. "It became toxic inmany Arab countries to be known assomeone who rescued Jews. Muslimsdon't want to take ownership of itbecause they would have to admit theextent of the Holocaust."

Afridi gives as many as 50 lecturesa year in synagogues, Muslim andinterfaith settings and at other Cath-olic colleges. There is more interestin her lecturing about the Holocaustamong Jews than Muslims, she says,but she is hopeful that is changing. In

2015, she participated in Hadassah'slandmark Defining Zionism speakersprogram (hadassah.org/defining-zionism), in which she described herefforts to increase understandingamong different faiths. "I made it myjourney," explains Afridi in one clipfrom the program, to show "how wecan form reconciliation by lookingat other people's sufferings, and alsohow it's important to know whathappened to the Jews as well as whathappened to the Muslims."

Today, former student JamesNoeker is finishing up an M.B.A.,though he has moved away fromhis original plan to go into business.Instead, he plans to pursue a Ph.D. ineducation and business and, inspiredby Afridi, to teach.

Growing up, all he heard aboutwas "winners and losers," he says,adding that that'S how business andpolitical discourse are framed inAmerican culture. Through his workwith Afridi and HGI, he says, "I sawthat it's not win-lose. That there areethics and there is doubt and nuance.

"I never would have stoppedthinking in terms of 'winners' and'losers' if I hadn't learned Dr. Afridi'slessons," says Noeker. As an educa-tor, "that's what I'll try to impart tofuture generations." mDebra Nussbaum Cohen is an award-winningjournalist and New York-based correspondent foritouet: She is also the author of Celebrating YourNew Jewish Daughter: Creating Jewish Ways toWelcome Baby Girls Into the Covenant.

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