The Britain-based Islamic satellite channel “Birds of Paradise,” which is aired in Gaza, offers a musical number in which children sing the following to a bouncy Middle Eastern tune:
“When we die as martyrs
We will go to heaven.
No, don’t say we are young,
This life has turned us into gorwnups
Without Palestine, what meaning is there to childhood?
Even if they give us the whole world
It won’t make us forget her, no no,
My country and my blood are for her sake.”
A male adult singer answers:
“Children, you have fulfilled your religious obligations
There is no God but Allah and the martyr is his favorite.
You have taught us the meaning of manhood.”
The channel’s founder, Khalid Maqdad, is a Jordanian citizen of Palestinian origin.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Letters
Joshua T. Katz’s (“Pure Episcopalianism,” May 2025) reason for a theologically conservative person joining a theologically liberal…
The Revival of Patristics
On May 25, 1990, the renowned patristics scholar Charles Kannengiesser, S.J., delivered a lecture at the annual…
The Enduring Legacy of the Spanish Mystics
Last autumn, I spent a few days at my family’s coastal country house in northwestern Spain. The…
