Education cannot eradicate ignorance in the Muslim world, but instead serves to enroot it within the mind – since education systems only serve to reinforce the inherent values of specific societies – said writer and thinker, Ibrahim Al-Buleihi on Day One of the 2017 World Government Summit.

Education cannot eradicate ignorance in the Muslim world, but instead serves to enroot it within the mind – since education systems only serve to reinforce the inherent values of specific societies – said writer and thinker, Ibrahim Al-Buleihi on Day One of the 2017 World Government Summit.

Arguing that human beings are born with empty minds that are then pre-conditioned to receive information with a prejudice filter, built by the environment in which they were raised, Al-Buleihi said the key to eradicating ignorance in the Muslim world, is to liberate the human mind through critical thinking.

“It is a mistake for people to think that education will help eradicate ignorance, on the contrary it will enroot it, since without education there would be no Al Qaeda, Boko Haram or ISIS, since their ideologies have been taught to people,” said Al-Buleihi. “All people have a prejudice towards anything they see, hear or encounter, which is why there is so much miscommunication in the world, because people fail to realise that we need to try to understand each other’s minds.”

To achieve a mental understanding of the other, Al-Buleihi added that people’s minds must be liberated by first de-programming existing preconditioning and then consciously manage them.

“Our minds are a space where everything we encounter passes through it, but it is up to us as individuals to manage what we want to keep and what we do not,” he said.