Child sacrifice in Afghanistan

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN -- A boy, possibly as young as 10, was used in a suicide-bomb attack against a joint Canadian and Afghan army patrol in Afghanistan yesterday.

Two Canadian soldiers and two Afghan soldiers were wounded in the attack about 40 kilometres from Kandahar city, the military said.

Military sources told CTV the boy was about 10, and that he approached the soldiers with his hands in the air, alluding to the possibility the bomb was possibly detonated from a distance by remote control.
[...]
The Forces released no further information on the nature of the attack, but Afghan police officials also speculated the bomb carried by the child was remotely triggered.

If true, it would represent a disturbing turn in the Taliban's campaign of suicide bombings that has been going on for more than two years.

"It would be of deep concern, but it's not that surprising," said Seth Jones, an analyst at RAND Corporation, who was at the airport on his way to Kandahar yesterday. "Children have been involved in fighting for decades, picking up AK-47s and shooting at coalition forces. If this became a pattern, it would be a deadly pattern of what you see in the West Bank, where there actually are younger kids that are suicide attackers."

Mr. Jones said if the suicide bomber was, in fact, as young as 10, this would show the depth of the Taliban's recruiting ability.

globeandmail.com: Suicide bomber as young as 10 hits Canadians

A couple of weeks ago, I couldn't help but ask why one of Canada's leading Islamists was so keen to use pretty young people as his public front for his campaign to reign in freedom of speech in Canada. I went off on a tangent and asked why are there no "elderly suicide bombers", only to find that term doesn't even return more than a few satirical Google hits.

Now for all those who, in moral relativism, consider all religions pretty much the same, or who insist Muslims, Jews, and Christians are all equally children of Abraham, you've got to wonder when you hear stories like this. What surely is the fundamental lesson of the Abraham story, if not to give up on the primitive practice of child sacrifice in order to follow the anti-sacrificial imperatives of the heavenly Father? If Western men found themselves at war and tactically and technologically out-classed by an outside enemy, would they take to the desperate tactic of blowing up their children in order to instill fear in the enemy and show their fervent commitment to some sacrificial cult? I don't think so. At a certain point, the Western man makes of himself the supreme sacrifice and if that is not enough, then so be it. As long as we are a Judeo-Christian culture, the West cannot produce child suicide bombers. I think that's pretty axiomatic.

So the question remains whether those "peace" activists in Canada who call for a withdrawal from Afghanistan, in the name of saving lives, will use the news of child suicide bombers in their arguments. Or will they begin to see that the Taleban is such an evil that everything must be done to free the people of Afghanistan from them? In answering these questions, we must ask, what we are? Are we a people impressed by a cult of child sacrifice? And if so, how? If we are Muslim, we must ask is Islam such a faith that it can ever call for child sacrifice in the war against the infidel?