Here's another article I found particulary interesting about religion in the armed forces, but this time about muslims in the US military. I found it because I did some researches about a man called Eric Rahman, who is an Arab-american with Iraqi origins (I was just able to find his whole grouping of 4 DCU jackets and so did some researches about him).

Too often we forget these muslims men and women are also victims of the terrorism and extremism in religion, that's why I wanted to copy here this article I found on the web. Hope you'll appreciate it. Never forget they are muslims and have arab origins, but they are also americans, and soldiers !





Abdi Akgun joined the Marines in August of 2000, fresh out of high school and eager to serve his country. As a Muslim, the attacks of Sept. 11 only steeled his resolve to fight terrorism. But two years later, when Mr. Akgun was deployed to Iraq with the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, the thought of confronting Muslims in battle gave him pause. He was haunted by the possibility that he might end up killing innocent civilians. “It’s kind of like the Civil War, where brothers fought each other across the Mason-Dixon line,” Mr. Akgun, 28, of Lindenhurst, N.Y., who returned from Iraq without ever pulling the trigger. “I don’t want to stain my faith, I don’t want to stain my fellow Muslims, and I also don’t want to stain my country’s flag.”

Thousands of Muslims have served in the United States military — a legacy that some trace to the First World War. But in the years since Sept. 11, 2001, as the United States has become mired in two wars on Muslim lands, the service of Muslim-Americans is more necessary and more complicated than ever before.

In the aftermath of the shootings at Fort Hood on Thursday by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan of the Army, a psychiatrist, many Muslim soldiers and their commanders say they fear that the relationship between the military and its Muslim service members will only grow more difficult.

On Sunday, the Army’s chief of staff, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., said he worried about a backlash against Muslims in the armed forces and emphasized the military’s reliance on those men and women. “Our diversity, not only in our Army but in our country, is a strength,” General Casey said Sunday on “Meet the Press” on NBC. “And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

It is unclear what might have motivated Major Hasan, who is suspected of killing 13 people. Senior military and law enforcement officials said they had tentatively dismissed the possibility that he was carrying out a terrorist plot. He seems to have been influenced by a mixture of political, religious and psychological factors, the officials said.

Muslim leaders, advocates and military service members have taken pains to denounce the shooting and distance themselves from Major Hasan. They make the point that his violence is no more representative of them than it is of other groups to which he belongs, including Army psychiatrists. “I don’t understand why the Muslim-American community has to take responsibility for him,” said Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America. “The Army has had at least as much time and opportunity to form and shape this person as the Muslim community.”

That sentiment was echoed by Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who told “Face the Nation” on CBS that the shooting was “not about his religion — the fact that this man was a Muslim.”

Yet also Sunday, Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, announced on “Fox News Sunday” that he would hold hearings to explore whether Major Hasan’s actions constituted terrorism.

Whatever his possible motives, the emerging portrait of Major Hasan’s life in the military casts light on some of the struggles and frustrations felt by other Muslims in the services. He was disillusioned with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which he perceived to be part of a war on Islam, according to interviews with friends and relatives.

He had been the subject of taunts and felt singled out by his fellow soldiers for being Muslim, friends and relatives said. His uncle in Ramallah, West Bank, Rafik Hamad, said Major Hasan’s fellow soldiers had once called him a “camel jockey.”

That term, like “haaji” and “raghead,” has become a more common part of the lexicon among soldiers on the frontlines of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, several Muslim servicemen said in interviews. They spoke about the epithets philosophically, saying they understood using them was a survival tactic to dehumanize the enemy.

But for Muslim soldiers, particularly those who speak Arabic, the struggle to distance themselves from those they fight has often proved more difficult in these wars.

Amjad Khan, who served in the Army for eight years and was deployed to Iraq, said he had tried to get used to the way his fellow soldiers talked about Iraqis.

“It gets to you sometimes,” said Mr. Khan, 32, from Queens, who is of Pakistani descent. “But the more personally you take things, the more you’re going to have a hard time surviving.”

For Mr. Khan, the most difficult part of his wartime service came before he was deployed, when a senior officer found his Islamic faith cause for suspicion.

“He said, ‘I have to watch my back because you might go nuts,’ ” Mr. Khan recalled.

Since Sept. 11, the nation’s military has actively recruited Muslim-Americans, eager to have people with linguistic skills and a cultural understanding of the Middle East. Some 3,557 military personnel identify themselves as Muslim among 1.4 million people in the active-duty population, according to official figures. Muslim advocacy groups estimate the number to be far higher, as listing one’s religious preference is voluntary.

Many Muslims are drawn to the military for the same reasons as other recruits. In interviews, they cited patriotism, a search for discipline and their dreams of attending college. Some Muslims said they had also enlisted to win new respect in a country where people of their faith have struggled for acceptance.

But if military service has brought approval among non-Muslims, it has sometimes invited a markedly different response among Muslims.

In the South Asian and Arab immigrant communities where the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are deeply unpopular, Muslim military members have often felt criticized for their service, Muslim chaplains, military members, veterans advocates and others said in interviews.

Some return exhausted and traumatized from their tours, only to hear at their local mosques that they will go to hell for “killing Muslims,” said Qaseem A. Uqdah, the executive director of the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council.

“Imagine you are 20 years old and you hear you’re going to purgatory,” Mr. Uqdah said. He argued that Muslim groups must work harder to help their veterans cope with coming home. “We are failing as a community here in America.”

During the first gulf war, Muslim scholars in the United States debated whether members of their faith could righteously engage in combat in a Muslim country on behalf of the United States military. The consensus was yes, provided the conflict met the Islamic standard of a “just war.”

“In the Koran it says that war is to end the state of oppression and to uplift the oppressed,” said Khaled Abou El Fadl, a professor at the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles.

But he and others interviewed said it has been increasingly difficult for Muslims to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as accounts have emerged of the killing of civilians, the corruption of American-backed local governments, and prisoner abuses like that of the Abu Ghraib scandal .

“Is it an army that defends the oppressed, or have you slipped into becoming the oppressor?” asked Mr. El Fadl, who has counseled Muslims conflicted about enlisting. “People from the military who contact me, that’s what I find they’re torn up about.”

And yet more than 3,500 Muslims have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, according to Defense Department figures provided to The Times. As of 2006, some 212 Muslim-American soldiers had been awarded Combat Action Ribbons for their service in Iraq and Afghanistan, and seven had been killed.

Too many Americans overlook the heroic efforts of Arab-Americans in uniform, said Capt. Eric Rahman, 35, an Army reservist who was awarded the Bronze Star for his service in Iraq at the start of the war. He cited the example of Petty Officer Second Class Michael A. Monsoor, a Navy Seal and practicing Christian of Lebanese and Irish descent who was awarded the Medal of Honor after jumping on a grenade and saving at least three team members during a firefight in 2006, in Ramadi, Iraq.

Yet Petty Officer Monsoor will never be remembered like Major Hasan, said Captain Rahman.

Regardless, he said, Muslim- and Arab-Americans are crucial to the military’s success in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Take a look at these conflicts,” he said. “We need those skill sets, we need those backgrounds, we need those perspectives.”

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/09/us/09muslim.html?pagewanted=2&ref=global-home

And here's another one :

Military Service A Challenge For Muslim Americans

When Nidal Malik Hasan joined the U.S. Army in 1997 to pursue government-paid medical training, he became part of a very different military from the one that exists today.

The Virginia Tech graduate, an American-born son of Palestinian immigrants, faced no foreseeable prospect of going to war. U.S. military brass had just written a new strategy that included terrorism as only one of numerous threats that could challenge the nation in the future. And ethnic or religious discrimination largely played out on a smaller scale, born usually of garden-variety ignorance and not unique to the military.

But the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, not only irrevocably changed the military's path and focus; they seem to have altered Hasan's own professional and personal trajectory — one that authorities say ended Thursday in a shooting rampage during which 13 people died and 30 were wounded. Among the wounded was Hasan himself, who lies in a coma.

In interviews, members of his family have suggested that the modern military had become an especially uncomfortable place for Muslims and Arab-Americans like Hasan. It was then, they say, that the newly minted doctor first began complaining of harassment over his Muslim religion and talking about a way out.

That goal had become more urgent in recent months as Hasan, a psychiatrist who counseled returning soldiers haunted by the horrors of war, faced his first deployment — to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Challenges For Muslims In Military

It is now tough to be an Arab-American or a Muslim in the military, said Marine reservist 1st Sgt. Jamal Baadani, 45, who lives in suburban Washington, D.C.

"Before 9/11, being a Muslim wasn't really an issue," he said. "I served as a Marine and never thought about it."

"9/11 is what really created the divide and misunderstanding about Muslim[s] and Arab-Americans," Baadani said.

But he is among those who argue that shortly after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the official military atmosphere changed dramatically. And with two wars in the Middle East, military leaders have invested time and money in an effort to attract and keep Muslims and Arab-Americans — and for very practical reasons.

Hasan "for whatever reasons went down this road, but it wasn't because of anything the Army had put in place," says Baadani, president and founder of the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military. "There has been tremendous progress and tremendous efforts at the highest levels of the Pentagon."

Muslim prayer rooms have been opened at the military academies, imams have been invited to serve at the academies and, on some military bases, Muslim holidays are honored. In September, a Ramadan Iftar, or fast-breaking meal, was held at the Pentagon and attended by about 140 people.

Though the military doesn't keep statistics of religious preference, military experts estimate that there are more than 10,000 Muslims and Arab-Americans, many of them linguists, supporting the U.S. Army's efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Official numbers, however suggest that the number of Muslims in the military is something less than 4,000.

"Our contributions are vital to what we're doing over there," Baadani said.

Alienation, Prejudice

But soldiers like Ahmed Shama, who joined the military as a Marine after 9/11, said that there were times he felt like an outsider, and that there is consistent anti-Islam rhetoric that infects non-official conversation in the military.

"During boot camp I was referred to by the phrase 'al-Qaida terrorist' by one of my drill instructors," Shama said, adding that the instructor was subsequently warned.

Shama said, however, that it was also easy at times for Muslim troops to feel alienated — including when reports surfaced that soldiers at the military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were shredding the Quran, and when Lt. Gen. William Boykin said that radical Islamists hate the U.S. because "we're a Christian nation and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

"There are no words to express my feeling upon hearing my religion referred to as Satan," says Shama, who is currently studying Arabic in Cairo. "Even worse was watching footage of mosques being blown up by U.S. forces and hearing reports of the Quran being shredded."

"That in no way makes me a 'radical' — I'm sure that any religious minority would feel the same if subjected to the same circumstances," he said. "Hearing prejudiced rhetoric can have a large effect on the morale of a Muslim Marine."

Hasan, by all accounts, was a devout, lifelong Muslim who regularly attended prayers and was a member of a mosque in Silver Spring, Md. Investigators are still trying to determine whether it was Hasan, or someone with the same name, who made comments on the Internet that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who protect their comrades by throwing themselves on a grenade.

Coincidentally, a hero in the Arab-American military community is Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor, 25, who died in 2006 doing just that, saving the lives of three of his fellow soldiers in Iraq. He was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Complications For Muslim Americans

The military can be a complicated fit for Muslim and Arab-Americans, particularly when war is being waged in regions where Islam is predominant.

But, says U.S. Army Reserve Capt. Eric Rahman, who grew up with Muslim traditions, the wars being waged now by the U.S. can't be successfully fought without those who know the language and culture of the Middle East.

"You cannot possibly carry out any of the conflicts we're engaged in without people with deep knowledge of the area and culture," Rahman says. "To say we could would be shortsighted."

Muslims in the military have mixed feelings about whether the Fort Hood rampage will discourage other Arab-Americans from joining the military.

"Anyone who joins the military is doing so for the chance to sacrifice for their country," Shama says. "My bigger fear is that the American public and military will stereotype all Muslims as "ticking jihad bombs" destined to strike."

And just like after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the servicemen acknowledge it will take some time again for people not to lump them with the image of the 39-year-old Hasan, who appears to have developed a growing hostility toward the military and its actions in the Middle East.

"This isn't us and them," Baadani says. "This is us together having to deal with crazy individuals like Hasan."

"His actions are shaming the service of all Arabs and Muslims who are serving."

Source : http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120185651

Hi PE, your article is really interesting, it's not easy for them to live in North America.

Thanks for posting it on the forum