A European Islamist group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood is mourning the death of French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy, who died earlier this month. The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report points out that the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE) expressed "great sorrow" over the death of Garaudy, a Muslim convert.
According to the NEFA Foundation, FIOE "is an umbrella group that comprises the global Muslim Brotherhood in Europe." The group has strong ties to Hamas and Hamas fund-raising organizations and some FIOE organizations show evidence of links with Al-Qaida." In February, FIOE President Chakib Makhlouf visited Hamas-ruled Gaza where he met with regime officials, praised Palestinian "martyrs" and demanded the "right of return" to ancestral homes in what is now Israel.
After Garaudy's death, FIOE issued a statement hailing him as a "great thinker" who "lives on through his works, philosophical legacy and humane example."
As the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has noted, in 1998 Garaudy was charged with inciting racial hatred and violating a French law making it illegal to deny "crimes against humanity." The charges stemmed from his 1995 book The Founding Myths of Modern Israel, in which he claimed that "there was no Nazi program of genocide during World War II, and that Jews essentially fabricated the Holocaust for their financial and political gain." A Paris court found Garaudy guilty and fined him $40,000.
The prosecution triggered an outpouring of support for Garaudy in the Islamic world in the late 1990s. According to the ADL, the wife of Sheikh Zayed ibn Sultan al-Nahayan, leader of the United Arab Emirates, gave Garaudy $50,000.The Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram published an article defending Garaudy which argued that 6 million Jews could not have been killed in the Holocaust and that there is "no trace of the gas chambers" that were supposed to have existed in Germany.
Former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani concluded that "Hitler had only killed 20,000 Jews and not six million." He added that "Garaudy's crime derives from the doubt he cast on Zionist propaganda."