No Terrorists at the Top of the Pops

A certain Pakistani pop song would be piffle if it were a love song, but it's not: it's an anti-terrorist ballad, an emblem of a “society-wide identity crisis,”  and as such it has meaning, writes Salon’s Andrew Leonard. Eight pop idols recorded the “We Are the World”-style ballad, and it’s become a major hit.

Brainchild of a British Muslim, the tune proclaims, “This story that is being spread in our names is a lie/The name by which you know us—we are not that.” Not only a “welcome counterpoint” to images of the Red Mosque siege, it's also a “heart-rending” expression of social pain. (More Pakistan stories.)