All Fall Down: The Plague of Islam?

Maybe in the West today children don't sing the same school-yard songs I did as a boy. Today, "London bridge is falling down" might be seen as too horrifying for the sensitive child who needs nurturing rather than a song to delight and accustom to the world of realities, painful as they might be.

"Ring around the rosie, pocket full of posie." No, it's all a lie. Mickey Rat, the Palestinian rodent on television? Killed by the Zionists, a shaheed. A Young Pioneer, a Red Guard, A Hitler Youth: childhood with so much time and so few choices. And then one grows up to be Avi Lewis.

SAIMA KHAN wants to die a martyr. Life is transient, she told her father in a telephone call last week, and the real glory is to sacrifice it for Allah. Her statement would be alarming at any age, but Saima is only 10.

[....]

There are fears among western leaders that Pakistan could implode into a bitter battle between secular and the hard-line religious groups, becoming another failed state where Al-Qaeda can thrive.

[....]

For one family at least there was a happy ending of sorts. As a gun battle raged late on Friday, with snipers on the roof of the mosque forcing the army back to its lines 100 yards away, Khan, the father who had been pleading with his two daughters to leave, called them on their mobile phone and told them their mother was outside. She had been taken ill and lay unconscious on the pavement, he said.

It was a lie but it worked. The two girls quickly left the compound and found their waiting father in the crowd. "I'm taking them back to our village," said Khan. "They were ready for martyrdom and they're very angry with me. I'm just happy I've got my daughters back, and sorry for those whose daughters are still in there."

Saima, in a bitter, fanatical voice that belied her 10 years, told The Sunday Times her father had cheated her of martyrdom. "The teachers taught us about martyrdom and that it is a great achievement," she said.

"I could see the fighting was in front of me and I could understand that we would die. I felt real anger about what my father did. He tricked me."

Dean Nelson, "Brainwashed children plead to die as martyrs in Red Mosque siege," The Sunday Times; Islamabad, 8 July 2007.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article2042156.ece

Ayan Hirsi Ali, child of privilege, meets Avi Lewis on the C.B.C., Canada's state-owned television channel.

Avi Lewis grew up in a Schtetl where his family were murdered before his eyes in a pogrom. He fled on foot across the land till eventually he made his way across the Mediterranean Sea to safety, and found himself of age to be conscripted into the Israeli Defense Forces. Witnessing yet again the horrors of war, this time perpetrated by Zionism, he fled to Canada where he landed a job as a janitor at the local television station, and then-- discovered! He now works as an interviewer, sharing his experiences with the world, penetrating the lies of the privileged, the fools who say from above what Avi knows from the blood-stained ground. Avi: he's lived his oppression.

Thanks to Avi we can find the truth about the privileged American wanna-bees:

Posted by: Ibrahim Osman | June 21, 2007 @ 10:27 pm

"What amazes me the most these days is when ever Ayaan Hersi is criticized and her lies are exposed by some one instantly racist islamaphobics rush for her defence..In no time cordon of sanitaire is formed around her. Frankly speaking, this bogus refugee woman is an opportunistic velture who is taking advatage of worsening relations of the West and the Muslim world. She is political arsonist who reduced to ashes of Political serinty of Holland. However, The question is not if but when she will set fire on American harmony.."

And there is the true Canadian intellectual who knows from all sides, the well-rounded one who is above the cliches of the age:

Posted by: Riba | June 14, 2007 @ 1:54 am

"@Deqa Farah. I agree that Hirsi Ali is overly eager to praise the U.S., especially considering the history of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, and the current horrific Bush administration. Her working for the AEI is disturbing and counterproductive to her causes of free speech, equality of women and freedom of and from religion. She has seemingly jumped from Islamic theocratic oppression to end up working for a think tank promoting Christian theocratic oppression. It makes me wonder if the arrangement is one of temporary convenience, hastened by the threats to her life. While in the Netherlands she stood up for the rights of immigrant women. She fought against arranged marriages and female genital mutilation and exposed the surprisingly frequent honour killings of Muslim women in the Netherlands. She battled for immigrants to integrate into Dutch society to improve the status of women and have secular education for children so they could have better careers and peaceful lives. Of course she made enemies in the Islamic community - many (especially imams) did not want these changes. And yes, she openly criticized Islamic teachings and traditions. Freedom of speech implies the right to offend and the acceptance that you will sometimes be offended. After you wrote about Hirsi Ali oversimplifying situations (and I agree with you on some of this) I was shocked at your oversimplification by blaming her for the "Islamophobia and misunderstanding" in the Netherlands. You present as "proof" that you visited the Netherlands before and after Ali and can attest to the difference. This is simply invalid logic. Do you not think that other events during that time period may have contributed to this? Maybe 9/11, the Danish cartoon fiasco, the London subway bombings or the Madrid train bombing? Why drop the blame at Ali's feet? For real "blame" I think we have to look at other factors including American and British foreign policy over the past half century, Al Qaeda, the Wahhabi sect from Saudi Arabia, and the sheer stupidity of the Bush and Blair governments. To single out Ali for the unrest in the Netherlands, while ignoring a whole thundering herd of elephants in the room, is disingenuous."

Posted by: Deqa Farah | June 12, 2007 @ 5:55 pm

"While I am still at a loss as to how someone who markets herself as a champion of democracy and equality would so easily miss the fundamental nature of the global contradictions of today. I came to the conclusion that people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali are touted in the mainstream media because they make bigots feel secured in their bigotry. We are supposed to listen to her and to judge her personal experience not as the experience of one woman who happens to be Muslim but as the experiences of all Muslim women. She reduces a set of complex geopolitical situations that has varied historical and political contexts into simple statements of �Islam bad. America good�. Her simple explanations and analysis are marketable because the mass is only interested in simple explanations. Her erroneous analysis is the basis for the misunderstanding that lumps together the realities of over 1.4 million people who come from diverse ethnic, cultural, geopolitical and historical realities. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is at best a narcissist, but certainly a social climber more interested in her own career than in working for change. In the ten years she lived in Holland she created more Islamaphopia and misunderstanding than anyone else. I visited the Netherlands before Hirsi Ali and after her mayhem and I can attest to the difference. Finally to paraphrase the great American author James Baldwin: to be a Muslim in the world today and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time."

I should be ashamed of myself but I'm including the link to the Rightwing religious bigots who originally brought this to my attention: http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/017367.php

Ring around the rosie.... No, it's all a lie, as it turns out. Thank God for people like Avi to let the truth be known. The plague of Islam? No, it's all the Americans, it's that damned Bush and the neo-cons and their lap-dogs. If only I'd had the sense I would have asked any six year old. Then I would have known what Avi Lewis knows.