Saturday, December 16, 2006

Why Middle Eastern Muslims deny the Holocaust

Los Angeles Times op-ed by the illustrious former Dutch Member of Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

I wish I could say that what Ms. Ali says in her op-ed essay is a surprise, but I find that it isn't. I didn't specifically know that knowledge of the Holocaust is suppressed in the Islamic world, but now that I have the knowledge, I find that I fail to be shocked.

So Islamic theocracies don't teach their citizens about the Holocaust, call it a lie, which causes both the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Mein Kampf to be bestsellers in many Arab countries, and teach the former as fact in their schools. I knew about the popularity of Kampf and the Protocols already, which is a large part of why this revelation wasn't particularly surprising.

And that's scary. It's frightening that so many in the Arab and Muslim worlds are avid readers of Hitler and of anti-Semitic fabrications (that have been known to be such since the 1920s), but knowing that they could read these, particularly Mein Kampf, which details Hitler's plans, and then not accept that Hitler would, in fact, kill millions of Jews, shows a frightening form of doublethink. Arab culture and failing Arab governments wishing to distract their citizens from their failures blame the Jews for their ills, saying that a group of people that Muslims worldwide outnumber by 75 times is wholly bent on the destruction of Islam and is on the brink of bringing it about, without setbacks. This is creating such an awesome hatred of Jews and Judaism that the citizens of those Arab states simply will not believe the historical fact of the Holocaust, even when it is presented to them in all it's unholy horror.

And that, dear readers, is what's most frightening of all. An entire culture is convinced that it must destroy an entire other culture in order to survive. That is a recipe for war eternal.

3 comments:

Renegade Paladin said...

It frightened me to write that. Until I sat down and started working on that post, I had no idea that I'd have to come off as possibly implicating the entire Arab world as anti-Semitic. Please understand, I have no racist intent; I'm writing about the facts as I see them from multiple news and information sources, and dearly wish to be corrected and be able to retract what I said. But somehow, I doubt that will be able happen.

Anonymous said...

The entire Arab/Muslim world is anti-semitic, not need to be frightened in coming to a true conclusion based on the evidence. This does not mean that they are Jew haters by nature, or that some individuals cannot be convinced of the truth, no; it simply is an accurate characterization of that part of the world.

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Renegade Paladin said...

It's the conclusion itself that frightens me more than that I was able to come to it, if you follow me.