So what if a few kids die? We'll make more...

Marginal Revolutions has this article about a polio outbreak in Nigeria that's killing kids. The local Muslim religious leaders have refused polio vacines, claiming that they spread AIDS and HIV and are a western plot to steralize the Muslims.

Now that children are dying, they are accepting vacines from Indonesia because it's a Muslim country. The article includes this quote:

the ‘wise’ men of those regions of Nigeria had decided to see sense a long time ago, polio would most probably not exist in Nigeria today. Why didn’t they ask for batches from muslim countries a year ago? Why did they wait so long?

Forget asking why they didn't ask for batches from Muslim countries, why would they rather have children -their children, Muslim children that they claim to care about so much - die rather than accept U.S/Western vaccines? How can you claim to be a religious leader and put propaganda above saving the lives of your own people?

Similar stories have happened before with Muslim religious leaders, with vaccines and other circumstances. After the huge earthquake in Iran, the local Mullahs refused any money or search and rescue teams that were offered from Israel.

My theory on why these leaders won't allow Western help is that any good behavior on the part of Americans/the west/Jews weakens the "us against them" mentality that their propaganda thrives on. It's hard to preach that all the Jews are out to get you when they are digging you out of collapsed buildings, it's hard to preach against American imperialism when American drugs are keeping your kids from dying. So in order to keep their propaganda alive, and thus their power, they let their own people die. That sickens me.