Meira af afneitun

Ég bloggaði í gær um ráðstefnu þá sem haldin var í Íran og snerist að stóru leyti um afneitun Helfararinnar.

Ég rakst síðan á í dag, fína grein eftir Ayaan Hirsi Ali á vef Interational Herald Tribune.  Það er óhætt að hvetja alla sem áhuga hafa fyrir efninu til að lesa greinina, enda persónulegar reynslusögur gott innlegg í umræðuna.  Ali hefur verið óhrædd við að gagnrýna trúbræður sína og systur, og hefur verið hundelt fyrir.

En grípum niður í greinina:

"I told my half-sister all this and showed her the pictures in my history book. What she said shocked me more than the awful information in my book.

With great conviction my half-sister cried: "It's a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed nor massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed."

My 21-year-old sister did not say anything new. My shock was partly at her reaction in the light of so much evidence and partly because of the genocides of our own time.

Growing up as a child in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews were evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims who's only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.

Later in Kenya, as a teenager, when Saudi and other Gulf philanthropy reached us in Africa, I remember that the building of mosques and donations to hospitals and the poor went hand in hand with the cursing of Jews. Jews were said to be responsible for the deaths of babies, epidemics like AIDS, for the cause of wars. They were greedy and would do absolutely anything to kill us Muslims. And if we ever wanted to know peace and stability we would have to destroy them before they would wipe us out. For those of us who were not in a position to take arms against the Jews it was enough for us to cup our hands, raise our eyes heavenward and pray to Allah to destroy them.

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."

"I cannot help but wonder: Why is there no counter-conference in Riyadh, Cairo, Lahore, Khartoum or Jakarta condemning Ahmadinejad? Why is the Organization of the Islamic Conference silent on this?

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."

Greinina í heild má finna hér.