American Muslim children get radicalized

May 5, 2019 • 10:35 am

I’ve written repeatedly about how children in some Middle Eastern countries are conditioned to hate both Jews and Israel from a very young age—an age far too low to be able to parse questions of politics and justice. This is state-sanctioned brainwashing, and reminds me of the South Pacific song “You’ve got to be carefully taught.” Have a look at these lyrics, which are especially apposite today:

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear
You’ve got to be taught from year to year
It’s got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught.

Many Muslim communities specialize in this kind of teaching, and, sadly not just in the Middle East. It also happens in the U.S., where Muslims are supposed to be far more integrated in local society than they are elsewhere. That’s surely true in general, but nevertheless stuff like this goes on. As MEMRI posts on this link, we have radicalization in Pennsylvania:

On April 22, 2019, the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia (MAS Philly) uploaded a video of an “Ummah Day” celebration to its Facebook page in which young children wearing Palestinian scarves sang: “Glorious steeds call us and lead us [to] the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The blood of martyrs protects us… Take us, oh ships… until we reach our shores and crush the treacherous ones… Flow, oh rivers of martyrs!” A young girl read a poem praising martyrs who sacrificed their lives for Palestine, and she asked: “Will [Jerusalem] be a hotbed for cowards?” Another young girl read: “We will defend [Palestine] with our bodies… We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque… We will subject them to eternal torture.”

MAS Philly belongs to the Muslim American Society (MAS), which has 42 chapters in the United States and one in the United Kingdom. MAS’ website says that its mission is to “move people to strive for God-consciousness, liberty and justice, and to convey Islam with utmost clarity,” and that its vision is “a virtuous and just American society.”

Here’s a video from the Ummah Day celebration. These kids can’t be more than eight or nine years old:

Part of the transcript:

Take us, oh ships, until we liberate our lands – until we reach our shores and crush the treacherous ones […]

Blow, oh winds of Paradise – flow, oh rivers of martyrs! My Islam is calling, who is going to heeds its call? Rise, oh righteous ones! […]

Girl 1: Our martyrs sacrificed their lives without hesitation. They attained Paradise, and the scent of musk emanates from their bodies. They compete with one another to reach Paradise. Will Jerusalem be their capital city, or will it be a hotbed for cowards? […]

Girl 2: We will defend the land of divine guidance with our bodies, and we will sacrifice our souls without hesitation. We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque. We will lead the army of Allah fulfilling His promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture.

Chop off their heads? Martyrs? Liberate our lands? Kids this young shouldn’t be parroting this stuff!

 

33 thoughts on “American Muslim children get radicalized”

    1. Before I reflexively respond, you would mind explaining what you mean? I wouldn’t want to misinterpret what you wrote. Thanks.

      1. Sorry . I have a brunch appointment and will be off line until late this evening. Go ahead and respond as you wish.

      2. I think OG’s point is that diversity for its own sake is not good. You would not want to encourage diversity when the diverse ideas are overtly harmful.

  2. This would not be happening if they put their kids in public school and this garbage is exactly why they don’t. A good and continuous brainwashing can only take place in the vast private religious schools across our land. As I found out in the city I currently live in, 25 percent of the kids are in private religious schools. How do you ever reduce religion with this going on.

    1. 25 percent is rather a lot. However, what are they learning? Not all religious schools teach things that are directly harmful.

      1. Inculcating children with superstition is harmful, tout court — but it’s protected by our constitution, and I thank god the framers for that.

  3. “Chop off their heads”? What a perfect example of “God consciousness” and, as MAS announces, “to convey Islam with utmost clarity”. The interesting question is how Christendom evolved out of this kind of “God consciousness”. The Old Testament of the bible would seem as bloodthirsty as any of the various religious documents.

    The intellectual evolution of the West flowed from the scientific revolution, the Enlightenment, maybe in certain ways the Protestant Reformation, and, indirectly, the movable type printing press—in regard to which the Islamic world lagged behind the West by at least three centuries. Its first printing press was set up in Istanbul in 1727, but it was closed 15 years later due to opposition from the Ulama clerisy; printing did not spread again in the world of Allah consciousness until the 19th century.

  5. “we will subject them to eternal torture”

    How does an 8 year old parse that?

  6. For what it’s worth, according to this Philadelphia Inquirer report, the national Muslim American Society leadership is horrified that this happened, and the local guy who organized it has been sacked. They say “This was an unintended mistake and an oversight in which the center and the students are remorseful. MAS will conduct an internal investigation to ensure this does not occur again” and “We stand resolutely in our condemnation of hate, bigotry, Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and all the illnesses of hate that plague our society”.

    For what it’s worth.

    The song isn’t really all that much worse than the French national anthem. Which might suggest it’s time to change that.

    1. MAS is going to investigate? Isn’t that like the fox guarding the henhouse?

      1. Well, perhaps in this case it’s the senior hens guarding the henhouse. If nothing else they seem to realize this kind of thing is bad for business.

  7. I suppose Hoda Muthana had been exposed to similar chants. Her mistake was that she took them seriously, tried to make them into deed, found out first-hand that dead bodies do not emanate scent of musk, and now keeps pushing the Undo button which does not work.

  8. For all the damage “Be good or you’ll go to hell” Christianity does to kids, at least they weren’t “Kill other people and send them to hell”.

    It’s like Islam looks at all the bad things Christianity has done, and responds with: “Hold my beer”.

  9. We had a song like that in kindergarten but perhaps I am misremembering. 😀 Very scary and sad to see kids being taught this terrible stuff.

  10. Or as the Guardian would report it, “Muslim children sing controversial song about Israeli occupation of Jerusalem.”

  11. While examining the lyrics of Islamic songs, we might want to take a look at the lyrics to The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Onward Christian Soldiers and the Star Spangled Banner. Islam does not have a monopoly on violent rhetoric.

    John J. Fitzgerald

    1. I’m sorry, but this won’t wash. Are you not able to perceive a difference between LYRICS and LYRICS that are inculcating people with hatred and telling them to cut off heads. Nobody does that with the three songs you named, nor are they used as excuses for present violence.

      You are simply distracting from the point at hand with some wooly “whataboutery”. I’m surprised that anyone can think such an argument is viable.

      1. Thank you for your comment. I think the historical context of the three songs I cited is worth considering. The Battle Hymn was written for the support of the Union army in the American Civil War. Post war it was sung at all the conventions of the Grand Army of the Republic and at Republican Party conventions. Onward Christian Soldiers was part of the collected hymns of the British Empire and its world-wide conquest and colonization activity. The Star Spangled Banner has become very much a part of the modern militarized American consciousness. It is our National Anthem. It is now played at almost every major sporting event, at times accompanied by a flyover of jet fighter aircraft. Not a very peaceful theme. Attempts to replace it with America the Beautiful have not succeeded.

        John J. Fitzgerald

        1. You seem to be missing my point. You are saying that Americans are doing just what those Muslim parents/educators are doing simply because the songs you cite are as bellicose as the Muslim songs. This is simply not the case. Americans are not singing those songs to indoctrinate their children to cut the throats of others. We are not like those Muslim schoolteachers, and yet everything you say is trying to imply a moral relativism that “we’re doing just what they are.” I flatly deny that, and find your argument weak and tendentious. It’s not the Civil War any more, and American schools don’t get their kids to act the way those Muslims educators do. That happens to be the truth.

    2. Islam DID not have a monopoly on violent rhetoric. Christians have changed. The prefered asymptotic state of religion is one of innocuous silliness.

    3. American kids don’t sing those songs in school (at least not in US public schools). The only one they’re regularly exposed to is the National Anthem, and then only right before ballgames, when the band plays while almost everyone else is running to grab a hot dog or scratching an itch — as if any of them know all the words or could carry the tune, anyway.

  12. I’m not sure this is much worse than what the children raised by parents in the white supremacist Christian Identity Movement are taught to think and do from a very early age.

    1. cottontail: Surely that’s not an excuse but a condemnation for both groups, isn’t it?

  13. Is there such a thing as a “muslim child”, a “christian child”, a “Keynsian child”, a “Marxist child”?

  14. I regret that it is not possible to hear Hitch sweetly remonstrate with CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper about this pedagogical matter.

  15. We should severely curtail the number of Muslims we let into the US at this stage.

  16. This is state-sanctioned brainwashing

    Which is the country with a daily oath in essentially all schools to the flag, somebody’s god (carefully not defined) and the infallible rightness of the country (however that is defined or determined)?
    I do like the look of stark incomprehension on people’s faces when they ask me “Aren’t you a patriot?” and I answer “Of course not.” It’s almost as if unquestioning acceptance of the “rightness” of your place of birth is brainwashed into many people.

  17. We must counter this with a rousing chorus of “I’m Gonna Wash That Imam Right Outta My Hair”!

  18. What has been happening in Philadelphia is incredibly disturbing and offensive, and we should all be concerned. And I agree with Jerry that nothing we have heard about in public or Christian schools in this country rises anywhere close to that level. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need to be on guard against the intrusion of such views into our public schools and institutions.

    Here’s an example from long ago. When I was in high school, in the mid-60s, the school choir would perform at each assembly. And, during those years, one of their standard numbers was the them song from Exodus – “This land is mine, God gave this land to me”, etc. This in Chillicothe, Ohio. I thought it was a beautiful and powerful song, was moved by it, and actually knew nothing about what the song was about, if you can believe it. But, then, to my knowledge there was only one Jewish student in the entire grades 10-12 student body of about 1,000 pupils. I graduated in 1966, and it wasn’t till I was in college the next year that it occurred to me that I had (without intention, I believe) been influenced to unthinkingly support one side of the 1967 war. As an atheist, I find the notion that “God” gave any people anything pernicious, to say the least. But I can’t help but wonder how many other school choruses across the land were performing that song in those days.

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