KARACHI, Feb 21: The West is hoodwinking the whole world, particularly Muslim countries through hollow slogans of freedom of expression, said the General Secretary of Jamaat-i-Islami Sindh, Rashid Naseem, on Tuesday.

He said sending British historian David Irving to jail for three years for denial of the Holocaust and terming the Auschwitz gas chambers a fairytale was the recent proof of Western hypocrisy and double standards.

He said sending a scholar and historian to jail for his crime of ‘freedom of expression’ was a slap on the face of the West regarding its hollow slogans of tolerance, enlightenment, freedom of expression and human rights.

He said today’s was said to be an era of logic and rationality, but still in this era, a scholar was being jailed for his dare to express his thoughts regarding a matter related to history.

He said that in ‘enlightened’ countries like Germany and Austria, even today, a man could be sent to jail for up to 10 years if he dared to deny the Holocaust.

He said that in the West, issues like Holocaust were being treated more sacred than religious beliefs.

He said on one hand, the West was delivering sermons to the Muslim world for adopting rationality and tolerance, while on the other hand, it was sending people to jail under ‘law of the jungle’ for expressing their thoughts.

He said that jailing of David Irving was a live proof of these double standards.

Mr Naseem said, in fact, the West was using all catchy slogans like tolerance, human rights and freedom of expression to hoodwink the world.

He said some of our naive intellectuals and writers were still beating drums of these hollow slogans, and the jailing of David Irving should open their eyes.

He asked that denial of the Holocaust was a crime in enlightened and tolerant Western countries on one hand, but on the other hand, the West was not ready to consider offending the religious feelings of people and publication of sacrilegious material against their beliefs any crime.—PPI