There's a song about prejudice in the ancient musical, "South Pacific" which contained the line, "You've got to be carefully taught," meaning that prejudice doesn't just happen without influence. That was a point that Ayaan Hirsi Ali made in a recent article titled, Can Ilhan Omar Overcome Her Prejudice?.
Ali told about how her Somali upbringing was filled with antisemitism, and that attitude permeated Somali culture and education. But there was this:
As for me, I eventually unlearned my hatred of Jews, Zionists and Israel. As an asylum seeker turned student turned politician in Holland, I was exposed to a complex set of circumstances that led me to question my own prejudices. Perhaps I didn’t stay in the Islamist fold long enough for the indoctrination to stick. Perhaps my falling out with my parents and extended family after I left home led me to a wider reappraisal of my youthful beliefs. Perhaps it was my loss of religious faith.
In any event, I am living proof that one can be born a Somali, raised as an anti-Semite, indoctrinated as an anti-Zionist—and still overcome all this to appreciate the unique culture of Judaism and the extraordinary achievement of the state of Israel. If I can make that leap, so perhaps can Ms. Omar.
But she readily acknowledges that Ilhan Omar is a very small part of the problem:
Yet that is not really the issue at stake. For she and I are only two individuals. The real question is what, if anything, can be done to check the advance of the mass movement that is Muslim anti-Semitism. Absent a world-wide Muslim reformation, followed by an Islamic enlightenment, I am not sure I know.
You've got to be carefully taught. But you've got to unlearn it on your own. As Ali says, "I was born in Somalia and grew up amid pervasive Muslim anti-Semitism. Hate is hard to unlearn without coming to terms with how you learned it."
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2:39 PM 7/15/2019
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