On Monday, a 13-year-old female child blew herself up in central
Baghdad, killing 28 and wounding 68. Among those killed were male
and female students; a tragedy of immense proportions.
Suicide-homicide attacks by female bombers, the handicapped, and
children, the last often detonated by remote control, are an
increasing trend this year. Sadly this latest example of perverse
child abuse is a symptom of a much greater problem.
The incitement and recruitment of innocent Muslim children to
become child soldiers, human bombs, and human shields is
occurring in varying degrees throughout the Muslim and Western
world. In Pakistan, Iran, the Palestinian Territories, Lebanon,
Syria and Saudi Arabia, children are being systematically
targeted through school textbooks, television programs, music
videos, cartoons, the Internet, by their teachers and Imams, with
hate propaganda aimed at building the next generation of Jihadis.
These children are being harvested by terrorist groups like ripe
fruit, driven across borders and detonated by adults as deadly
political pawns.
U.S. intelligence analysts recently reported that Islamic
terrorist groups are enlisting growing numbers of teenagers for
their most violent and deadliest of missions. The Taliban is
recruiting children as young as seven for their suicide missions,
while approximately 20% of all Palestinian suicide bombings since
the second intifada have been aged 18 and younger. During his
last visit to the United States, Afghan President Karzai's
pardoned a six year old who was told his bomb-belt would explode
flowers. A couple of months ago, England's MI5 Seized DVDs being
marketed to London-born Muslim youth encouraging them to commit
violent suicide attacks, while Al Manar, a Hezbollah-run network,
continues to be broadcast throughout the EU, preaching hate and
enlisting children to murder for the sake of jihad
The Islamic Maghreb, an off-shoot of Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda
network (AQIM), has gone as far as formally launching a group
called the "Young People of Paradise," which has mobilized a
collection of 14 to 16 year olds currently training for suicide
assignments.
Islamic terrorist groups turning to children and the handicapped
do so, in part, to thwart security checks, but the phenomenon may
be a sign they are losing support among adult males, who may be
realizing the futility of the act. Children also prove cheaper
recruits than adults who demand significant payments for their
surviving family members, and in the Palestinian context, for a
house that may be demolished.
UNFORTUNATELY, THE SYSTEMATIC and intentional state-sponsored
mass infanticide of Muslim children remains largely
under-reported by the media and under-condemned by human rights
groups. On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League hosted its annual
conference, this time entitled "Is Peace Possible," at the
Cardozo School of Law in New York City. Panelist, Shibley
Telhami, an Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at
the University of Maryland and board member of Human Rights Watch
(HRW), was asked by an audience member about the role education
plays in determining the future of a peaceful greater Middle
East. Apprehensive of acknowledging the issue, Telhami shamefully
blamed the questioner of accusing Palestinian parents of not
loving their children and apologetically concluded that hate
education wasn't as grave a problem as the questioner made it out
to be.
Asked why HRW and other organizations have not consistently
condemned or advocated against the use of Muslim children as
human bombs, Telhami ignored the question. Such denial and
refusal to condemn the practice unequivocally gives the green
light to terrorists to continue this practice with impunity.
President-elect Obama has a moral duty to address the
international problem of hate education aimed at Muslim children,
a nonpartisan and central issue in this war on Islamist terror.
