The recent shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, have left many people wary of Muslims and those of Middle Eastern descent and wondering whether they should be allowed to serve in the U.S. armed forces.
For anyone who has forgotten the story or missed the news, on Nov. 5, Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly killed 13 people and wounded 31 at Fort Hood.
He was about to be sent to Afghanistan.
The massacre was not only a shock because it was one of the deadliest on a military base in history, but also because the attack came from the inside and happened on American soil.
It is logical to wonder whether it is safe to have Muslims and people of Middle Eastern descent in the U.S. military.
Sept. 11, 2001 spawned prejudice and fear of people in these groups. Our media has painted them as the enemy and shown us the horrors of what some in the communities have done.
And everyone knows the best way for an enemy to cripple its opponent is from the inside.
However, it would not be right to bar Muslims from the military, considering the many minorities and people that served in our military during times when they too were unpopular.
During the time of the Civil War, blacks were still far from free and looked at as three-fourths of a person by the U.S. government.
Yet, as the Civil War began, one-fifth of the northern regiments were black. About 25,000 black soldiers altogether fought on both sides during the war.
Blacks, who were thought to be unintelligent and worthless, were technically the last people the Union and Confederate armies would pick to fight for them. But, they needed soldiers, and blacks stepped into these roles and served faithfully.
Some Japanese people also deserve mention for their service in the U.S. military during World War II.
After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese people in America received the finger of blame and were thrown into internment camps as America feared that they would attack the country from the inside.
However, just as blacks served during the Civil War, Japanese people also served faithfully in the military.
The 442nd regiment combat team (known simply as the “442”), a mixture of mainland Japanese and Japanese people living in Hawaii, became the most decorated regiment in the war.
The regiment earned 9,500 purple hearts, 7 Presidential Distinguished Unit awards and 18,000 individual awards for bravery.
Still, when Japanese people returned home to the states, they faced discrimination from the Americans they had fought for, often finding their homes sold, pillaged and heavily vandalized.
Furthermore, many of them were not properly recognized for their efforts until many years later.
Just like the Japanese, blacks who had consistently served America for years received terrible treatment and second-class citizenship for years despite their devoted service.
Blacks and Japanese people were some of the last anyone would expect the U.S. military to trust, and still, they served their country with honor and passion despite prejudice and mistreatment.
As reported by the Department of Defense, there were 3,409 Muslims on active duty in April 2008. However the number may be much higher given the military’s intensified recruitment of Muslims and people of Arab and Middle Eastern descent.
Some also hid their affiliation with Islam to avoid discrimination, which has also made numbers inaccurate.
Again, some may wonder if anyone out of this large number of Muslims in our army has enlisted for the purpose of doing harm to our country.
However, in Hasan’s case, he was showing warnings and giving hints of his potential change in loyalty for many months before he allegedly carried out the shooting at Fort Hood.
While the military should not discriminate against Muslims, it should watch for reports or signs that could lead to situations like Fort Hood and act accordingly. Paying attention to the signs and carefully monitoring all soldiers, whether Muslim or not, is a better solution than barring specific peoples from the armed forces.
Despite the Fort Hood incident, Muslim and people of Middle Eastern descent should not be prohibited from joining the military.
Many people of different races and nationalities have served in the military when they were not popular, such as blacks and the Japanese.
Furthermore, many Muslims have served and are serving our country faithfully at this time.
Although we, as a country, must be careful and conscious of our safety, we cannot address these concerns with fear and discrimination that would only hurt our country in the long run.
Increase Text Size
Decrease Text Size
Print Story
Mail to Friend
More Stories
Comments
Good atricle, the military should be more alert to red flags that show up on any of it's personell.
The military has infact just recently stepped up recuiting efforts to bring Arabic speaking people. There is a desperate need for interpreters.
Let's try not to create a problem or conflict where there is none or inflate it beyond reason. I haven't heard any serious person or anyone with any shred of credibility - particularly nobody associated with DoD or any service branch - suggest that racial and religious minorities should not be allowed to serve or should be restricted in any way. That isn't even on the table and is so ludicrous that it won't be discussed by any serious people.
"The recent shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, have left many people wary of Muslims and those of Middle Eastern descent and wondering whether they should be allowed to serve in the U.S. armed forces."
This is where you guys go wrong, your exagerations, automatic assumption of pervasive racism in America, and casting of such wide nets. Many people??? Exactly who are you talking about? Who are the "many people"? Anyone who feels this way is in the fringe and felt this way before the shooting. I haven't heard anyone from the mainstream, either side of the aisle, make an argument for limiting the extent to which American Muslims can serve.
"Although we, as a country, must be careful and conscious of our safety, we cannot address these concerns with fear and discrimination that would only hurt our country in the long run."
I think everyone in America - barring the nuts - both Left and Right, conservative and liberal, would agree with this statement. However, if someone, of any faith, does express extremist views advocating violence against other religious groups, as we clearly know Major Nidal Malik Hasan did, or has contact with such groups, they should probably not be allowed to serve.
Jelani writes, "Sept. 11, 2001 spawned prejudice and fear of people in these groups. Our media has painted them as the enemy and shown us the horrors of what some in the communities have done.
And everyone knows the best way for an enemy to cripple its opponent is from the inside."
Interesting choice of words. The Koran speaks often of "deceit" and encourages Muslims to join the enemies rank so as to defeat them from within.
As to the "prejudice" spawned by 9/11 I would more accurately describe it as a wake-up call. "Prejudice" is to mis-characterize a religion, race or people.
To characterize Islam as inimical to our interest is simply accurate, not prejudice.
People do not want to believe it but Islam is a supremacist religion where all non-Muslims are second-class people. Islam is also about Jihad and the never-ending expansion of Islam. We see this today in western China, southern Russsian, Kashmir, Israel, Lebanon (where the Christian population is plummeting while the Muslim population is taking over), Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Yemen, etc...
To pretend this reality is something it is not, as Jelani tries doing, is a mistake that will continue to come back to haunt us.
Ali, can you actually post a verse in context where the Qu'ran encourages deceit to undermine the enemy? If you're speaking of Taqiyya, that is a Shi'a practice that historically has been a means of self-preservation, not aggression. It's bandied about by Islamophobes like Pam Geller and Robert Spencer these days in an exclusively bigoted way. I doubt you know anything Islam.
Also I think an editor wrote that "headline" that has nothing to do with Sims' story. Hello? Does anyone proofread?
I have my clock radio set to go off at 5:00am. That’s when my local public radio station carries BBC World News. I usually listen long enough to determine whether anything particularly catastrophic happened while I was asleep … like India and Pakistan tossing nukes at one another. I usually end up going back to sleep for awhile.
But on the morning of Nov. 17 one of the first things I heard was this quote from Bryan Fischer of the conservative American Family Association:
“The more devout a Christian is, the more patriotic he is. The more devout a Muslim is, the more of a threat he is to national security.” This apparently is Mr. Fischer’s way of saying that Muslims need to be purged from the U.S. military.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Yes, it seems to be the dawning of a new era in conservative Christian McCarthyism.
CHUCK ANZIULEWICZ
http://anziulewicz.livejournal.com
JJ,
I don't need to know the Koran to know what Islam is all about. All I need to do is read or watch the news. Here is what I read:
1) 4,000 Buddhists have been killed over the last few years by devout Muslims. Sometimes when they behead a Buddhist monk the quote passages from the Koran.
2) Devout Muslims in Sudan have killed hudreds of thousands (black Muslims, Christians, Animists) in their quest to spread Islam across all of Africa.
3) In neighboring Somalia devout Muslims are killing everyone and anyone who disagrees with the most extreme interpretaion of Sharia law.
4) The leaders of Iran encourage genocide against Israel. The men promoting this are devout Muslims.
5) In Nigeria devout Muslims are killing Christians as these devout Muslims force their way south into the heart of this country.
6) Devout Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan commit suicide bombings on practically a daily basis. They often shout out "Allah Akbar" just as Nidal Hasan did before their murderous acts.
7) Devout Shias are killing Sunnis in Yemen on a daily basis in Yemen and vice-a-vers. The same thing is happening in many Middle Eastern Islamic countries.
8) The best example of the above was the 7 year Iraq/Iran War in which one million Muslims were killed in a Sunni/Shia war.
9) In western China devout Muslims are killing Chinese.
10) In southern Russian devout Muslims are killing Russians.
11) In the Arabian peninsula in the years surrounding 700AD a man named Mohammed established the Islamic religion and spread it by murdering, enslaving and forcibly converting others to its tenants. The Koran and Hadiths are filled with tales of his murderous achievments and of his encouraging his followers to do the same.
JJ,
You will find listed below a few examples from the Koran and Hadiths justifying murder and war.
I'm not sure why you need to see these listed. It's just as easy to find and to listen to what Jihadists shout out as they behead their innocent victims. In any case, here it is:
-1- ``Fighting is prescribed for you'' (Koran 2:216);
-2- ``Slay them wherever you find them'' (Koran 4:89);
-3- ``Fight the idolators utterly'' (Koran 9:36);
and such hadiths as the one related by Bukhari and Muslim that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said:
``I have been commanded to fight people until they testify that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform the prayer, and pay zakat. If they say it, they have saved their blood and possessions from me, except for the rights of Islam over them. And their final reckoning is with Allah'';
and the hadith reported by Muslim,
``To go forth in the morning or evening to fight in the path of Allah is better than the whole world and everything in it.''Details concerning jihad are found in the accounts of the military expeditions of the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace), including his own martial forays and those on which he dispatched others. The former consist of the ones he personally attended, some twenty-seven (others say twenty-nine) of them. He fought in eight of them, and killed only one person with his noble hand, Ubayy ibn Khalaf, at the battle of Uhud. On the latter expeditions he sent others to fight, himself remaining at Medina, and these were forty-seven in number.) [...]
The caliph (o25) makes war upon Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians (N: provided he has first invited them to enter Islam in faith and practice, and if they will not, then invited them to enter the social order of Islam by paying the non-Muslim poll tax (jizya, def: o11.4) -which is the significance of their paying it, not the money itself-while remaining in their ancestral religions) (O: and the war continues) until they become Muslim or else pay the non-Muslim poll tax (O: in accordance with the word of Allah Most High,
"Fight those who do not believe in Allah and the Last Day and who forbid not what Allah and His messenger have forbidden-who do not practice the religion of truth, being of those who have been given the Book-until they pay the poll tax out of hand and are humbled" (Koran 9.29)
Trust but verify.
Speak softly, and carry a big stick.
Life is tough. It's tougher if you're stupid.
We may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.
@Ali
And the Serbians (Orthodox Christians)committed genocide against Bosnians (many of whom were Muslims). Hitler (a Christian) orchestrated the Holocaust. The various Inquisitions employed brutal methods of torture and murder to force people to convert to Christianity. The Bible has plenty of passages promoting violence, slavery, and treading on women's rights. What's your point?
People kill people. It doesn't matter what religion you are, someone who believed in it has at one point done something appalling. You can take any religion and use it to justify killing when you don't look at the whole. However, you've conviently left out all of the passages in the Koran that do promote peace. I'm sure you hate it when atheists pick and choose passages from the Bible to paint it as hateful, please don't do it to other religions. Especially one that essentially believes everything you do, with the addition of one more prophet.
Post a comment
Commenting requires registration.