The American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD) has called on the US Army to deny PFC Naser Abdo’s application for status as a Conscientious Objector (previously discussed).

“Muslims serve with distinction throughout the United States Military and AIFD sees Abdo’s traitorous public assertions as a slap in the face to all American Muslims especially those Muslims who fight in our armed forces for the liberty and freedom guaranteed by the American Constitution,” the group said in a statement it issued on Friday.

The group’s president, Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser (a former Navy officer), went one step further, saying the root of Abdo’s dissension with the US military was not Islam, but the very “Islamism that threatens our security:”

Abdo’s actions are an affront to every American Muslim who has proudly donned a U.S. military uniform. His assertions are not built on Islamic teachings but on a feeble adherence to the global political ideology of Islamism that threatens our security and radicalizes our Muslim youth.

The statement by the AIFD has a scathing rebuttal to Abdo’s claim of CO status, and it makes an interesting point:

If [Abdo] understood conscientious objection, he would have been pleading that Islam teaches pacifism. It does not.

In a somewhat less florid criticism, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of Clal, The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, essentially said that those who don’t want to fight shouldn’t be forced to; they can simply accept the consequences of their choice and go to jail.

Ironically, Abdo has become a “fan” of Michael Weinstein on Facebook, despite the fact that many of the AIFD statements could have easily come from Weinstein’s organization, if Abdo wasn’t a Muslim:

[Abdo] is a traitor who clearly is serving his Islamist loyalties and beliefs about the “ummah” (the Muslim nation) above his sworn loyalties to the United States and our security.

AIFD’s mission advocates for the preservation of the founding principles of the United States Constitution, liberty and freedom, through the separation of mosque and state.

The fact that Weinstein would likely launch a similar invective against Abdo were he a Christian seems to escape him.  To date, Weinstein has characteristically said nothing about this “religious freedom” controversy.

Story also covered at FoxNews.