{"id":13862,"date":"2011-11-02T02:00:14","date_gmt":"2011-11-02T07:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=13862"},"modified":"2011-10-30T23:31:38","modified_gmt":"2011-10-31T04:31:38","slug":"muslim-soldier-on-faith-and-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/02\/muslim-soldier-on-faith-and-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Muslim Soldier on Faith and Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The <em>Stars and Stripes <\/em>ran an article entitled &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.stripes.com\/news\/some-muslim-servicemembers-struggle-to-balance-faith-and-service-1.157422\">Some Muslim servicemembers struggle to balance faith and service<\/a>,&#8221; though the article\u00a0cited only a single <em>former <\/em>servicemember, former Army SSgt Mohammad A. Hasan.\u00a0 After 9 years of service, with his Islamic faith a non-issue, he said a deployment to Iraq set him apart from his peers:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>With a dark complexion and Muslim name, the Bangladesh-born soldier\u2019s loyalty was at times questioned by suspicious troops during his deployment in Iraq, he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article continues to use the plural with reference to &#8220;struggling&#8221; Muslim Soldiers, though it fails to mention any others.\u00a0 In fact, it quotes both former Navy <!--more-->Muslim Chaplain Muhiyyaldin Ibn-Noel and CAIR&#8217;s Ibrahim Hooper practically defending the military.\u00a0 They noted incidents may occur &#8220;at the small unit level,&#8221; but the military does &#8220;a good job of handling&#8221; those issues &#8212; once it knows about them.\u00a0 Hooper specifically noted<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cWe don\u2019t see it as a systemic problem from the top down.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The article also cites currently serving SPC Anza Ali, a Soldier raised Islamic who &#8220;no longer practices&#8221; her faith, and who<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>never encountered any serious discrimination.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The reach of the\u00a0<em>Stripes <\/em>article hearkens back to the case of US Army SPC Zachari Klawonn, another Michael Weinstein &#8220;client,&#8221; who <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/09\/17\/us-soldier-calls-training-propaganda-against-islam\/\">criticized the US Army on al Jazeera<\/a>\u00a0(in uniform, no less).\u00a0 The emphasis at\u00a0the time was\u00a0on his complaints, and some missed\u00a0that &#8220;about 180&#8221; US Army Soldiers of the Islamic faith were stationed at Fort Hood with Klawonn, and they\u00a0had no similar complaints.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s almost as if the <em>Stripes <\/em>went out looking for a Muslim struggling with their faith, and even then the best they could come up with was a former Soldier and a current Soldier with no issues.<\/p>\n<p>As an institution of nearly 3 million members, there are certainly cases of imperfect or inappropriate conduct of every stripe within the military.\u00a0 Sometimes it seems, though, that the search for a media story practically results in the <em>creation <\/em>of an otherwise <em>non<\/em>-story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Stars and Stripes ran an article entitled &#8220;Some Muslim servicemembers struggle to balance faith and service,&#8221; though the article\u00a0cited only a single former servicemember, former Army SSgt Mohammad A. Hasan.\u00a0 After 9 years of service, with his Islamic faith a non-issue, he said a deployment to Iraq set him apart from his peers: With a dark complexion and Muslim [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[64,2382,88,331,97,675,44,85,2,2380,2381,10,327],"class_list":["post-13862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-al-jazeera","tag-anza-ali","tag-army","tag-cair","tag-fort-hood","tag-ibrahim-hooper","tag-islam","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-mohammad-hasan","tag-muhiyyaldin-ibn-noel","tag-religion","tag-zachari-klawonn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}