It’s September 11 today. For a very obvious reason, this date has now only referred to the Twin Towers Incident in 2001 or more commonly known as the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks. This historical event has eclipsed many other historical events that took place in September 11, such as the US-backed coup d’etat of the then newly-elected president of Chile in 1973. As much as these are all important events in the history of mankind, I didn’t plan to discuss them in this post. Instead, I’ll talk about the connection between 9/11 and country music, the music that we all love (look at how I include you all in the kinship of country lovers regardless of your musical affiliations).

So, I checked twitter today and was wondering what the trending topic today–9/11/20013–was. I found that the hashtag #WhyIamNotMuslim was all over the place. The emergence of this hashtag in the twittosphere only says that 9/11 has evolved into a day to celebrate hatred towards Muslims or the religion of Islam. Anyway, I skimmed through tweets with the hashtag in question and found one nice picture of a young sexy man sporting a cowboy hat on a horse. That pic was tweeted by a Muslim girl in reply to a tweet by a supposedly a non Muslim young man saying that “#whyimnotmuslim because a man with a cowboy hat on a horse is sexier than a man with a turban on a camel” or something to that effect.

I “followed” that man on a horse picture wondering the connection between that picture and its use to reply the above-quoted tweet. On a closer look, I found that the “cowboy” didn’t look like a typical Caucasian cowboy. He has a hint of Arab-ness. It turned out that the cowboy’s name is Kareem Salama. I was like, what kind of cowboy has such name? I googled him, of course, because that’s what a man from the 21st century does when he is clueless. And here comes the giggly truth:

KAREEM SALAMA IS A COUNTRY SINGER BORN IN OKLAHOMA TO EGYPTIAN PARENTS! AND HE’S A MUSLIM!

Without further due, I also need to repeat what Wikipedia says about him: he is dubbed as THE FIRST MUSLIM AMERICAN COUNTRY SINGER!

There you go. Now the country music scene throughout USA, and the South in particular, has a Muslim to help them raise awareness about the virtue of rural life, simplicity, daily life, etc. Of course, with a name that literally means “Generous Peace,” Kareem Salama would not be–I guess–a country singer that sings about a fight in a bar, about a juvenile act as narrated in “Redneck Crazy” or stuff like that. Singers who sing about a nice preacher from the local Church of Christ or those who sing about returning to the Good Book in the face of mental earthquake can find in Kareem Salama a decent companion from the other side of the religious pathway.

So, again, without further due, let me present to you all country music lovers: Kareem Salama in his cowboy outfit

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQmS1yLJ4Oo&w=420&h=315]