[Vision2020] Muslim Soldiers Face Mixed Reactions

[Tom Hansen]

As long as ignorant blogs continue to pursue a paranoid agenda, we will
never be free from fear.

"At his previous duty station at Fort Bliss, Texas, his 12-year-old
daughter, wearing her head scarf, was in a grocery store when a woman said
she wanted get a passport so she could go to the girl’s country and blow
people up.

'She said that to my little girl!” Stewart asked. “What do you do with
that?'"

Courtesy of the November 23, 2009 edition of the Army times.

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Muslim soldiers face mixed reactions
By Jon Anderson, Army Times reporter

FORT HOOD, Texas — Everyone is angry at the killer, all mourn for the
lost, and everyone wonders what hap­pens next after the Nov. 5 bloody
rampage that killed 12 soldiers and one civilian here. These senti­ments
are felt in particularly pow­erful ways by the Army’s Muslim community.
For the Muslim sol­diers who have sworn to sacrifice for a nation that
often still doesn’t understand them, there is fear —

and some resentment.

When Maj. Dawud Agbere sat horrified in front of the TV at his home at
Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as events unfolded, he said he prayed for the
victims, their fami­lies, the police and for everyone caught in the melee.

But when the news filtered out that the shooter called himself a Muslim,
Agbere’s heart sank. One of just six Muslim chaplains in the Army, Agbere
said he told wife “This is the nightmare of every Muslim in the military.”
Three days later, Agbere joined more than half a dozen other chaplains
tasked with ministering to the suffering at Fort Hood, and the
hundreds-strong Muslim com­munity here among them.

“There is anger, there is terrible disappointment, and there is fear,” he
said of the Muslims he’s met with since arriving.

“[The gunman] had the audacity to hand out Korans before he did this and
shout out my God’s name?” lamented one Muslim sol­dier. In interviews,
Muslims across the Army said the man who allegedly brandished those guns
at Fort Hood was unrecognizable to them as a Muslim.

“We do understand to be a minority that you have some spe­cific
challenges, especially when people start to question, ‘Can I trust these
Muslim soldiers?’ ” Agbere said.

At the same time, he said, there is real frustration that one man could
wield the power to cause so many to question the loyalty of all Muslims.

“They have been working so hard to prove that we are good sol­diers, and
all of a sudden one per­son comes to destroy everything they have been
doing, so there is anger,” Agbere said.

Few feel the anger as much as Mackenzie Agee at Fort Bragg, N.C. She said
she and her hus­band, who is deployed to Af­ghanistan, are devout Muslims.
She is intensely angry at the killer, and baffled and hurt by the response
she’s felt by members of her own military community.

As she and a friend were sitting in the PX food court watching the news
unfold, she said her friend said, “No offense to you, but Mus­lims
shouldn’t even be allowed in the U.S. Army.” The next day, Agee — wearing
the traditional head scarf — went shopping at the Fort Bragg com­missary
where she found herself in the line of fire.

“As I was passing by people, under their breath but just loud enough for
me to hear, they were saying things like, ‘f—-ing rag head’ and ‘get out
of our country’ and ‘G—-damn Muslims,’ ” she said. “I couldn’t believe
it.” Where before there was at least an air of tolerance, she said, now
people are glaring.

Immediately following the attacks, her husband was sudden­ly pulled from
his normal duties in Afghanistan and assigned to help build an Army chapel
while under standing orders to not talk to local workers, she said.

“This is my country, and my hus­band is serving it and continues to serve
it despite the harassment and racism he encounters,” she said.

Abdul-Rashid Abdullah, a former soldier and now the deputy director of the
American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Coun­cil, said friction
like that is usually a simple lack of understanding, but one unfortunately
that goes back almost 1,000 years to the Crusades.

“America is the place where we’re closing in on that divide. It’s
happening, but it’s not there yet,” said Abdullah, who served as a
parachute rigger from 1991 to 1998.

The divide is perhaps most clearly seen, at least symbolically, at the U.S
Military Academy at West Point were one of the cadet companies is
nicknamed the “Cru­saders.” The company mascot can be seen at games
wearing holy warrior regalia. Critics say it’s the equivalent of having
another cadet company dubbed the “Jihadists.” “It would be bad enough if
Bob Jones University were doing that, but this is the U.S. Military
Acade­my,” Mikey Weinstein said, a for­mer Air Force officer and counsel
in Ronald Reagan’s West Wing who now heads the Military Reli­gious Freedom
Foundation, a watchdog and advocacy group.

Weinstein said he was contacted by a cadet at the academy claim­ing to
represent another 40 stu­dents and faculty who are baffled by the mascot.

After inquiries from Army Times, the academy announced it is looking into
the appropriateness of having the C-1 Company mas­cot named the Crusaders,
a spokesman said.

Since the Fort Hood attack, Weinstein said the foundation’s caseload has
jumped with Muslim service members calling about problems, going from 80
active cases to about 100.

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr. told reporters he’s wor­ried the
Fort Hood killings could “cause a backlash against some of our Muslim
soldiers.” “I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that,”
Casey told CNN. “It would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as
well.” Weinstein said he’s been disap­pointed that top commanders have not
been more forceful.

The brass should issue a sterner message, he said, of “zero toler­ance for
any — even the slightest tacit nuance — of harassment, reprisal or
retribution taken against any Muslim member of the United States military.

“I almost wanted to projectile vomit,” Weinstein said, “when I watched
Gen. Casey say, ‘Wow, I’m a little concerned there could be some
backlash.’ Issue the order, General: ‘There will be none.’ You’re not the
CEO of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Isn’t that the least we can do?”

‘Got your back’

Clearly, though, there are many pockets of not just tolerance, but the
same loyalty you’d expect from any battle buddy. Sgt. Fahad Kamal, a
Pakistan-born combat medic at West Fort Hood Medical Center, prayed at the
same Fort Hood-area mosque as Hasan. He said he wasn’t surprised at all
when the leaders in his unit ral­lied around him in the wake of the
shootings.

Before the incident, fellow sol­diers and supervisors had shown him
nothing but respect in all matters of faith, allowing a slight­ly longer
lunchtime on Fridays so that he could pray, and skipping PT during the
fasting season of Ramadan, he said.

After the shootings, Kamal’s supervisor wasted no time bringing him into a
huddle to talk him through how to report any harass­ment. “He’s only been
more caring about what’s going on,” said Kamal. At Fort Lewis, Wash.,
Capt. Ken Stewart saw the same wagons cir­cle around him when a master
sergeant in his battalion went out of his way to come find him as soon as
the news broke that the shooter was a Muslim.

“He said, ‘I got your back, sir. You let me know if you have any
prob­lems.’ And then he pointed to my NCOIC and said, ‘Hey, take care of
him, make sure no one messes with your commander.’ It was pret­ty funny;
my NCOIC was actually insulted that he even said that. He was like, ‘Of
course I will.’ ” While Stewart said he does sometimes feels a subtle
tension in the air, “Sometime I wonder if the tension is more of my own
creation than anything else.”

Flashpoints

Still, there have been undeni­able flashpoints over Stewart’s 17 years of
service, which began as an enlisted medic. There was the commander, whom
he still respects, who told the troops in a pre-deployment pep talk to
Iraq “how we were going to go after those rag heads.” Or the first
sergeant not long ago who, during a unit run, sang a cadence about
stabbing an Iraqi in the neck.

But in his experience, “the moment you call it what it is,
dis­crimination, people realize real quick that they crossed a line.
They’re used to seeing that now with other minorities, but they’re still
learning what that looks like with Muslims.” Of bigger concern he said is
the bigotry his three kids have to face off post. Recently, his
fifth-grade son suddenly faced a classmate yelling “terrorist” at the top
of her lungs when he said he was Mus­lim.

At his previous duty station at Fort Bliss, Texas, his 12-year-old
daughter, wearing her head scarf, was in a grocery store when a woman said
she wanted get a passport so she could go to the girl’s country and blow
people up.

“She said that to my little girl!” Stewart asked. “What do you do with that?”

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Pro patria,

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the
tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."

-- Adlai E. Stevenson, Jr.





"The Pessimist complains about the wind, the Optimist expects it to change
and the Realist adjusts his sails."

- Unknown