{"id":16946,"date":"2012-03-21T01:30:47","date_gmt":"2012-03-21T04:30:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=16946"},"modified":"2012-03-20T23:29:34","modified_gmt":"2012-03-21T02:29:34","slug":"us-troops-revel-in-role-of-infidels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/03\/21\/us-troops-revel-in-role-of-infidels\/","title":{"rendered":"US Troops Revel in Role of Infidels"},"content":{"rendered":"

While stories of political insensitivity or incorrectness sometimes shock the public (or political) conscience, those within the military often\u00a0find such displays far less offensive — or rare.<\/p>\n

A few years ago, US Air Force F-15 pilot 1Lt Ali Jivanjee<\/a> was killed in an F-15 training accident.\u00a0 He was a Muslim fighter pilot who took it upon himself <\/em>to sign his name “Jihad” — apparently because he’d been “teased” (hazed? bullied?) about his first and middle names being “Ali Akbar” (similar to “Allahu akbar,” a phrase often connected to “jihadists,” for those that don’t make the connection).<\/p>\n

His F-15 peers eventually named him “Danny Boy,” because he “needed a good Irish name.”<\/p>\n

A fighter squadron is definitely not a bastion of political correctness, or cultural sensitivity.<\/p>\n

A recent Military.com article notes the same theme throughout much of the rest of the military<\/a>.\u00a0 Makers of accoutrements — including unofficial\u00a0military uniform patches — with variations of “American infidel” on them are doing gangbuster business:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

There are infidel hats, infidel T-shirts and infidel uniform patches — an entire genre of morale wear that emerged from the ashes of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks…<\/p>\n

It started as a humorous tactic for poking fun at intolerant Islamists ignorant of American ideals.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marine Corps Reserve Maj. Ramsey Sulayman, who is also a representative of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, claims the “anti-Muslim” apparel undermines the US mission:<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you are trying to hold the moral high ground and you\u2019re trying to say, \u2018This is who we are and this is what we do\u2019 \u2013 those sorts of incidents and the \u2018Major League Infidel\u2019 just erode that ground under your feet that you are trying to stand on. Pretty soon you\u2019re in the swamp with everybody else,\u201d Sulayman said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One manufacturer, Clayton Montgomery, took issue, saying the slogans poke fun at oneself, not Islam.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, with regard to Islam the slogans may technically be theologically incorrect.\u00a0 By the strictest definitions, US troops are only infidels if they’re atheists<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Then again, the bullets and IEDs of the Taliban and al Qaeda don’t make that distinction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While stories of political insensitivity or incorrectness sometimes shock the public (or political) conscience, those within the military often\u00a0find such displays far less offensive — or rare. A few years ago, US Air Force F-15 pilot 1Lt Ali Jivanjee was killed in an F-15 training accident.\u00a0 He was a Muslim fighter pilot who took it upon himself to sign his […]<\/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":[58,134,326,20,3088,3086,222,2723,52,44,1778,149,2,3087,10],"class_list":["post-16946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-afghanistan","tag-air-force","tag-ali-jivanjee","tag-atheism","tag-clayton-montgomery","tag-danny-boy","tag-f-15","tag-infidel","tag-iraq","tag-islam","tag-jihad","tag-marines","tag-military","tag-ramsey-sulayman","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16946","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=16946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}