Note this video is a version of the song that was not recorded at the Texas mosque. See the Texas version of the video at this link on Twitter.
Iranian state media has been sharing a disturbing video of Muslim children at the “Houston Islamic Education Center” in Texas singing a choreographed radical Shia song “Salam Farmande” that praises Iran’s totalitarian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, where it is said that the children are singing a song of martyrdom similar to what has also been found to be occurring at other mosques in the U.S. and elsewhere. A portion of the song not in the video also praises the deceased Iranian general Qassim Soleimani who was reported to be killed in a drone strike by U.S. forces in 2020. The original video that was recorded in Houston was made private on YouTube on Friday afternoon. Shia Mosques in central Asia as well as in France and Australia have also produced their own versions of children singing the song.
Among the lyrics the children sing in the video are as follows:
The love, my soul, the Imam of my time (x4)
The world has no meaning without you
…
I will be in your service
and with my short height I will be your soldier (x2)
…
I make an oath
I will be useful to you one day
…
like Ayatullah Bahjat and your like your unknown soldiers
To be your servant
…
That I will stand by the Islamic Revolution
…
Salam Commander
Greetings from this new brave, left behind generation
The original iteration of the anthem was created earlier this year in Iran, and a petition on change.org is requesting that Spotify removes the song from its platform due to it containing radical content, where it depicts Iranian children singing their allegiance to the Twelfth Imam in front of a Iranian mosque. The Spotify video has so far received more than a million views by supporters of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The website alarabiya.net has reported that the video of the Texas children singing the anthem is being shared by Iranian state media.
A Huston Chronicle article has reported about the Texas video, where it interviews a Shia Muslim political science professor Cyrus Contractor at the University of Houston who tried to downplay the situation by saying, “Some people could see it as some kind of soft power … [with it carrying] more of a religious message than a political one.” The article then paraphrases him saying, “It is about standing for righteousness and good against all odds — rather than recruiting actual child martyrs.” However, contrary to that perception, videos of Islamic children singing songs of martyrdom are actually common, as is explained in this article.
The Houston Chronicle article also interviewed an anonymous Texas-based Middle East expert who explained that the song makes multiple indirect references to the Iranian Supreme Leader, and he shared links of the Houston video being shown on the state-controlled Iranian outlet Fars News, with the headline “Salam Farmandeh Went to America.”
The Housing Chronicle closes its article by saying, “The whole spat may have dried up with the removal of the video from YouTube. But if this viral video is like any other in the 21st century, new video renditions of the viral song will likely continue to pop up around the globe.”
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While the martyrdom advocated for in the above video may seem somewhat vague, other videos of Muslim children singing similar songs are more overt, as the following video demonstrates.
In this video, children in a 2019 assembly at the Philadelphia branch of the MAS sing songs of Jihad and beheadings. [Also see this article about that matter.]