Zeitgeistlyrik: Who's the Fanatic Now? (Satis Shroff)

Who’s the Fanatic Now? (Satis Shroff)

‘So who’s the fanatic now?’
Was Hanif Kureishi’s question
Raised by a son to his Pakistani taxi-driver father.
A rhetorical question asked by many parents today.
The identification with western society that’s missing,
The opportunities to climb the social ladder simply blocked,
The mainstream is the dominant cultural power,
Leaving the underdogs to reject
The imperialistic demeanour of the bourgeois.

The Muslim son asks his father:
‘So who’s the fanatic now?’

In this chaos Baden-Württemberg
Has given shelter and food to 100,000 refugees.
A humanitarian duty only to be fulfilled
With Europe’s absent solidarity.
Will the refugees be distributed equally in the EU?
They fled because of tyranny, injustice and intolerance.
But geopolitical reasoning forces unholy alliances to be made,
With Saudis, Egyptians, Turks and Russians.

The Muslim son asks his father:
‘So who’s the fanatic now?’

Thousands of victims of the IS, al-Nasra and Assad
Have fled to Turkey and Europe.
Are the Europeans safe?
Is Europe really an invincible fortress?
After Paris we have serious doubts.
On the one hand the caliphate
In the minds of young Muslims,
Who dream of an invisible religious ideology.
The foreign legionnaires of the caliphate
Are recruited from 86 nations,
Forming an army of 31,000 fighters.
Over 5,000 of them were born in Europe.
Radical youth of Europe return home to roost.

The Muslim son asks his father:
‘So who’s the fanatic now?
Who is filled with excessive and mistaken enthusiasm?’