A small point -- it’s curious to note that at Auschwitz, among camp inmates and workers, there was a category lower on the totem pole than
Jew. One would think that if, as the orthodox story has it, the place was designed for the extermination of the Jews, a macabre reference by inmates to the living dead would have a Jewish connotation, not an Islamic one. Probably, in a era before our politicians discovered the joys of egalitarianism, diversity, multiculturalism and cheap labor, westerners still had the sense to understand that the Islamic culture was quite different from their own and quite different from what they would want to live under, not to mention that in the not so distant past Islamic armies made mighty attempts to impose Islam on the whole of Europe. So to be a Muslim was to be something undesirable. After reading the first posts in this thread, I ran a web-search to refresh my memory of what the term “muselmann” had meant in the camps. I hit on an Islamic website in which a PhD of some sort (Dr. S Parvez Manzoor) expounds upon the matter.
http://www.islam21.net/pages/keyissues/key5-20.htm Part of his essay includes the following:
“For its part, the authoritative Encyclopaedia Judaica has this explanation under the entry Muselmann: 'Used mainly at Auschwitz, the term appears to derive from the typical attitude of certain deportees, that is, staying crouched on the ground, legs bent in the Oriental fashion, faces rigid as masks.' (S.V.) Not to be outdone, another observer associates 'the typical movements of the Muselmnner, the swaying motions of the upper part of the body, with Islamic rituals.' (Sofsky, Wolfgang: The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp. (Translated by William Templer), Princeton University Press, 1997. p. 329, n.5.) Even more revealing are the synonyms which are, as if often the case with jargon, brutally forthright and non-euphemistic. Thus according to the same author: 'The expression (Muselmnner) was in common use, especially in Auschwitz, from where it spread to other camps as well. …. In Majdanek, the word was unknown. The living dead there were termed 'donkeys'; in Dachau they were 'cretins', in Stutthof 'cripples', in Mauthausen 'swimmers', in Neuengamme 'camels', in Buchenwald 'tired sheiks', and in the women's camp known as Ravensbrück, Muselweiber (female Muslims) or 'trinkets'.”
Nowadays, we know that Islam is a peaceful religion except for those relatively few Muslims that here and there blow themselves and others up to make a point.
