This past Remembrance Day, Canadians wore their poppies with the especial pride of knowing that our military forces were busy securing the vast opium fields of Afghanistan, keeping the world’s supply of heroin safely out of the clutches of terrorist fundamentalism and firmly in the able hands of democratic warlords — the Year of the Veteran therefore climaxed with smack(s) of John McCrae.

But not everyone in the country spent November 11 in staid, mournful meditation; over at CBC.ca — our national broadcaster’s “inter-net web site,” ostensibly aimed at the electronic fetish of the 18-35 year-old Stroumboulopoulos set — they were busy writing headlines for November 12. Good thing, too, as one of them summed up the current climate of Huntingtonian civilizational clash more succinctly than anything else I’ve seen in years. It read: Al-Qaeda ranks Queen among “enemies of Islam.”

At first, it seems paradoxical that Osama would take on Queen, especially after so many years; both have, after all, advanced insouciant critiques of Western media norms (“All we hear is/Radio ga-ga/ radio goo-goo/ radio ga-ga”), American oil consumption and fossil-fuel culture (“I want to ride my bicycle/ I want to ride my bike/ I want to ride my bicycle/ I want to ride it where I like”), President Bush and ballistic missile defense (“George was never my scene/ and I don’t like Star Wars”) as well as bemoaning the undignified, inhumane treatment of detainees (“I’ve got to get out of this prison cell/ I just can’t get no reliefâe¦ Can anybody find me/ Somebody to love?”).

But closer examination reveals a litany of reasons for Osama and his homeboys to take on the prototypical Arena Rockers, despite the delayed timing. We needn’t focus our attention on the non-Quranic proclivities of late front-man Freddie Mercury; we could, instead, turn to his stage name itself, an orgiastic celebration of the jahaliyya polytheism of the ancient Romans, who worshipped the “winged messenger” and god of primitive capitalism before a jealous, singular god (known as “God”) laid down the law.

Further, the sight of Mercury — né Farrokh Bulsara, a Zoroastrian Parsi — belting anthemic Western hubris such as We will rock you and Another One Bites the Dust to sports stadia full of cheering infidels must certainly have contrasted poorly, in Ayman al-Zawahiri’s eyes, with the solemnity of Wahhabism; particularly given the blithe rebuttal of al-Qaeda’s kamikaze tactics implied in the following meditation on mortality: “Mama/ Life had just begun/ And now I’ve gone and thrown it all away/ Mama/ Oooooooh/ I don’t want to die/ I sometimes wish I’d never been born at all.” What, you thought rhapsodic, bohemian Zoroastrians were just a problem for the Ayatollahs?

Cryptically, confusingly, the CBC article goes on to quote a “Buckingham Palace spokeswoman” who “wouldn’t comment on the report, saying it was a police matter.” I hardly see what this has to do with Queen; what beef could Islamist fundamentalists possibly have with the figurehead of the British Empire? After all, if it weren’t for the Empire’s confessionalization of South Asia and their promotion of the backwater, sandlot-warrior Saud clan to the status of a royal family, the form of Islam practiced by the bin Ladenist goons probably wouldn’t even exist anymore.

And besides, everybody knows that the terrorists only ever take the lives of blameless innocents who don’t have it coming — if that’s the case, then what could the British Royal family possibly have to worry about? Ah, well. Such are the unanswered questions in a world where lives are lived so tremendously Under Pressure.