...born with the gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad

Peace Corps Khadrs: Just took a gander at the Khadr family website for the first time and read this, a bio outlining the misunderstood mishpachah’s raison d’etre:

Greeting to all viewing this page, I hope you find it informative, interesting and enlightening as we tell our story, without media or political bias. We will try our best to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us OÁllah (God).

    In 1985, after spending two summers volunteering in refugee camps, my father resolved to move his family to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and try to help the country rebuild after its devastating invasion by the Soviet Union. This decision changed our lives forever, and made us who we are today.

    And so our life of giving, sharing and helping began, and what a great life it turned out to be. Overseas, people were suspicious of us and we were sometimes labelled as Western spies, and at home we find people are still suspicious of us and we are sometimes labelled as terrorists. But for all the fear and hatred, for all the rumors and lies spread about us, we remain what we have always been; a Canadian family proud to have used our contacts and resources to build a series of orphanages, schools and hospitals across war-torn Afghanistan.

    While living in Pakistan, we earned a few enemies after my father successfully took Arab leaders to court over Canadian donations that they tried to use for their own purposes.  When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, we earned a few enemies by continuing to build schools for girls and insisting they had a right to be educated. When the Americans invaded Afghanistan, we earned a few enemies by helping resolve disputes between warlords and militants peacefully instead of letting them kill each other. It takes courage to do the right thing, even when it is unpopular. Our father was killed, two of us have been shot in the back, four of us have been captured, two have been tortured. But still we stand.

    Our family has committed our lives to building a better Canada, a better Afghanistan, and a better world. And no amount of lies, threats or persecution will ever convince us to do otherwise.

Boy, don’t I feel the fool? Here I had them pegged as jihadists working to spread sharia and undermine the West, when all the while what they really want to do is build “a better Canada…and a better world.”

Kind of like John Lennon, without the tunes, or Jack Layton, without the ‘tache.  (Then again, you never know what Mama and Sissy may be hiding under those burqas.)

Posted by: scaramouche at 18:57 | link | comments

Comments: