{"id":18253,"date":"2012-06-21T02:35:33","date_gmt":"2012-06-21T05:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=18253"},"modified":"2012-06-21T02:35:33","modified_gmt":"2012-06-21T05:35:33","slug":"beard-controversy-continues-in-fort-hood-shooter-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/21\/beard-controversy-continues-in-fort-hood-shooter-case\/","title":{"rendered":"Beard Controversy Continues in Fort Hood Shooter Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.airforcetimes.com\/news\/2012\/06\/ap-army-hood-nidal-hasan-judge-bars-bearded-from-hearing-061912\/\">kicked out of the courtroom<\/a> again for wearing a beard in violation of military grooming standards.\u00a0 The issues of accommodation were already discussed, but this exchange was particularly interesting:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Lead defense attorney Lt. Col. Kris Poppe told the judge that Hasan grew the beard as a \u201cdeeply sincere\u201d expression of his faith&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ll wait for him to shave if he wants to come back in here,\u201d [Judge Col Gregory] Gross told Hasan\u2019s attorneys. \u201cHe has a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>[Attorney LtCol Kris] Poppe responded that it was a choice to \u201cto obey you or his religious faith.\u201d\u00a0 <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat\u2019s not a choice for a soldier,\u201d Gross shot back.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Is Hasan acting in obedience to his religious faith, and is the military obligated to accommodate that obedience?<\/p>\n<p>Public information appears to indicate none of the thousands of Islamic members of the US military currently wear a beard, though members of other religions do.\u00a0 Hasan never had a beard during his prior military career.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, if Hasan was in the Iraqi Army, he&#8217;d be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/2012\/06\/20\/us-iraq-religion-beards-idUSBRE85J0TQ20120620\">banned from wearing a beard there<\/a>, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan was kicked out of the courtroom again for wearing a beard in violation of military grooming standards.\u00a0 The issues of accommodation were already discussed, but this exchange was particularly interesting: Lead defense attorney Lt. Col. Kris Poppe told the judge that Hasan grew the beard as a \u201cdeeply sincere\u201d expression of his faith&#8230; \u201cI\u2019ll [&#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":[88,97,1979,44,3358,2,1431,17,171],"class_list":["post-18253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-army","tag-fort-hood","tag-gregory-gross","tag-islam","tag-kris-poppe","tag-military","tag-nidal-malik-hasan","tag-religious-expression","tag-religious-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18253","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=18253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}