Muslims Who Love America

There’s an interesting article by Niraj Warikoo in Sunday’s Free Press about patriotic Muslims in the U.S military. (“Muslim soldiers: We love America”).

I’m happy to say DU doesn’t have to eat any crow over this as we’ve always known there were patriotic Muslims serving. We even posted on this very thing last month. ("Soldier mom home from Iraq").

In spite of the widespread warnings from the usual folks that the Ft. Hood attack was going to result in unfair criticism from “right-wing bloggers” of Muslim soldiers who weren’t acting like Major Hasan, I never believed that kind of wide-brush criticism was going to happen, nor advocated it. Nor did it happen. The focus has been on Hasan, who was doing everything he could think of to communicate, “I’m getting ready to do some jihad.” This has nothing to do with profiling Muslim soldiers.

What I found most interesting in today’s article is that the real flak these Muslim soldiers face is from their own community. It also comes through that these servicemen view themselves as Americans, and they view America as “us,” while their detractors in the Muslim community view America as “them.”

Marine 1st Sgt. Jamal Baadani, originally from Dearborn, and who fought in Fallujah, says:

"We're getting so much criticism from our own community for serving," Baadani said. "The No. 1 question I used to get was, 'Why do you want to serve a government that's going to kill your own kind?' "

Baadani's response was:

"The U.S. military did not go over there to kill your kind. They went over there to attack a threat that came to this country to attack us."

Baadani also says many Muslim families are “reluctant to have their children serve in the U.S. armed forces, partly because they would have to fight fellow Muslims.” When Baadani was visiting home a few years ago and tried to play with his 5-year old nephew, the boy didn’t want to play as he always had before.

"What's the matter?" Baadani said he remembers asking him.

"You kill Arabs," replied the boy, apparently repeating what he heard adults around him utter.

Part of the problem with the Muslim community is a perceived unwillingness that Muslims don’t want to assimilate into our country. That combines with polls that indicate sizeable numbers of Muslims would prefer to live under Sharia law. Then there are those who are OK with Sharia replacing the U.S. Constitution, (like CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper, who told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, “I wouldn't want to create the impression that I wouldn't like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.”).

Warikoo makes an extremely obscure reference to some “director with a conservative Christian group [who] says Muslims should be banned from serving.” That’s a stretch, whoever said it.

After all, it was Nidal Hasan who said in his Powerpoint presentation that American Muslims shouldn’t serve in the military. And his chosen Imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, who says that “Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier.”

According to Warikoo’s article, the real dirty looks against Muslims in uniform seem to be coming from their fellow Muslims.