An excellent op-ed piece by Ayaan Ali Hirsi in the International Herald Tribune this morning.
I commend Ayaan Ali Hirsi for standing up to the anti-semitic bigotry and hatred that is spewed forth from so much of the Muslim world. I wish more Muslim leaders would do the same.
Excerpt:
Western leaders today who say they are shocked by the conference of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran denying the Holocaust need to wake up to that reality. For the majority of Muslims in the world the Holocaust is not a major historical event they deny; they simply do not know because they were never informed. Worse, most of us are groomed to wish for a Holocaust of Jews. [...]
Could the answer be as simple as it is horrifying: For generations the leaders of these so-called Muslim countries have been spoon-feeding their populations a constant diet of propaganda similar to the one that generations of Germans (and other Europeans) were fed that Jews are vermin and should be dealt with as such. In Europe, the logical conclusion was the Holocaust. If Ahmadinejad has his way, he will not wait for compliant Muslims ready to act on his wish.
The world needs conferences of love, a promotion of understanding of cultures and antiracist campaigns, but more urgently the world needs to be informed again and again of the Holocaust. Not only in the interest of the Jews who survived the Holocaust and their offspring, but in the interest of humanity in general.