Islamist demonstrators displaying a Holocaust denial sign (illustrative). Photo: Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

A leading Jewish advocacy group in Canada has strongly condemned a mosque in the Toronto area for publishing an article by a notorious Holocaust denier in its monthly magazine.

In an article featured in the October 2019 edition of Crescent Magazine, which bills itself as the “newsmagazine of the Islamic Movement,” Kevin Barrett — a US Holocaust denier — claimed that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which has been adopted by numerous countries and international agencies, was a “racist, genocidal lie.”

“Kevin Barrett’s antisemitic rhetoric echoes that of neo-Nazis and white supremacists,” said Michael Mostyn, chief executive officer of B’nai Brith Canada. “Why is this utter dreck being published in Canada and distributed around the world, and why would a Canadian house of worship want to be associated with it?”

The editor of Crescent Magazine is Zafar Bangash, imam of the Islamic Society of York Region (ISYR). The magazine also shares an address with ISYR, from where it is distributed across North America, the UK, South Africa and Malaysia. In April, Bangash used Crescent Magazine to falsely allege a “Zionist connection” to the devastating terrorist attack against two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, B’nai B’rith Canada noted.

Among the lies promoted by Barrett is the assertion that the figure of six million Jewish Holocaust victims is “exaggerated,” that Japanese-Americans were imprisoned during WWII “at the instigation of mostly Jewish gangsters,” and that “the United States and its allies deliberately murdered 10 million Germans during the postwar occupation.”