Lil' Mo

Back in July, I decided to sponsor a child through Children's International. They let you pick who you want to sponsor, but unfortunately I couldn't find a "give me a random kid" button, so I HAD to choose.

Well hell, how do you choose? It's not like I would only want to help some poverty-stricken children, but others I wouldn't care about...

Or so I thought.

In a somewhat artificial way to narrow down my choices, and to keep myself from having to look at more pictures of these cute little kids in dire straits, I decided, "Well, I don't want to sponsor some Muslim kid in Pakistan and fund a future terrorist." (I was looking at kids from India at the time.)

And then of course, I felt bad. And then logic set in, and I remembered that while the Osama Bin Ladens and Muqtada Al-Sadrs may be rich and educated, the vast majority of their soldiers are dirt poor and often illiterate (which makes them easy to manipulate with religion - they can't read the Quran for themselves to confirm or deny) Hopelessness is the fertile soil in which violence thrives. That's as true for the middle east as it is for East St. Louis.

So, I thought, maybe if I did sponsor a Muslim child, when the recruiters come around to him at 15 and tell him how he needs to strap a bomb to himself to combat the Great Satan, he can say, "One of those Great Satans got me immunized, made sure I had enough to eat, kept me shod, and most importantly, allowed to go to school so I could learn to read the Quran and find out that you're full of crap."

And then, most importantly, I wanted to sponsor a Muslim child because all the bombs and bullets in the world can't make as positive and lasting a change as kindness.

So it was precisely my hesitation to sponsor a Muslim child why I HAD to now sponsor a Muslim child. I guess it helped me narrow it down after all.

So gents, I'd like to e-troduce you to 5 year old Mohammad Shahabuddin. He likes dancing and playing with cars. I wrote him a while back, and hopefully I get a letter from him in the near future (well, dictated to a coordinator - he's 5 and only speaks Hindi.)



I think he's a handsome little guy.