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A Nation Dominated By Some Very Bad Ideas

(Times of Israel) Hussein Aboubakr - I was born and raised in Egypt, and I have experience with the rapid radicalization of Egyptian society. Advocates of reform in the Muslim world are as marginalized and persecuted as any other non-Muslim minority. Many such Muslims, like me, do not actually reside in their home countries but in the Western world since many parts of the Muslim world are extremely intolerant towards reform and criticism. In my childhood I was told that every day that passes on the Islamic nation without a caliphate is a sin. That the failures and miseries of the Muslim world started the moment we gave up conquests and wars against the infidels. That our prosperity depends on conquering new lands, converting new believers, looting new resources and enslaving more women. I was taught that a Jew is essentially a demon in flesh and that it is our destiny as good Muslims to kill them all. It was not just me, a small child in Cairo, who was raised with these great apocalyptic prophecies, it was also so many people from all around the globe. It is quite possible, at one point of history, to have an entire nation dominated by some very bad ideas. We have seen it before and we are seeing it today. For the West now to deny this fact and pretend that the majority of people are always naturally sane, rational, peace-loving hippies is hypocritical, misleading and dishonest. It is quite possible for a significant portion or even the majority of the world's Muslim population (estimated to be over 1.5 billion) to be anti-Semitic, homophobic and in sympathy with violence and even Islamic totalitarianism. The writer, persecuted by state police for his research at the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo, now lives in the U.S.
2015-11-27 00:00:00
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