{"id":6131,"date":"2010-07-02T00:35:02","date_gmt":"2010-07-02T06:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=6131"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:07","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:07","slug":"muslim-joins-military-because-of-his-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/07\/02\/muslim-joins-military-because-of-his-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"Muslim Joins Military Because of His Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Youngstown (Ohio) news covers the story of local Falak Mir Shafi, an immigrant from Pakistan who became a US citizen in the fast-track process provided by service in the US military. The article notes Shafi’s faith<\/a> — he is a Sunni Muslim — and also attempts to highlight the “problems” of being a Muslim in the US military:<\/p>\n

In some cases, Muslims and noncitizens have filed discrimination complaints against military branches. Atty. Mikey Weinstein, director of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says such discrimination is as omnipresent as gravity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The discrimination is so ubiquitous, apparently, that there are precisely zero examples provided in the article.\u00a0 In fact, the counterexample is presented instead:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Shafi, though, says he has experienced nothing of the sort. In fact, he says his faith was one of the reasons he enlisted.<\/p>\n

“All of these Islamic [extremist] organizations are abusing the teachings of Islam…for their own benefit.\u00a0 Islam is the religion of peace, and they are spoiling my religion,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are certainly cases in which people of any faith might experience, or perceive, mistreatment from the military.\u00a0 In an organization of millions of people, such isolated cases rarely demonstrate an institutional problem.\u00a0 The US military bends over backwards — sometimes to a fault<\/a> — in its attempts to be religiously sensitive and accommodating, in accordance with mission requirements.\u00a0 All Weinstein does is relate unsubstantiated anecdotes of\u00a0“problems,” presenting an inaccurate picture of the state of religious freedom in the US military.<\/p>\n

Despite Weinstein’s assertions to the contrary, religious freedom continues to be a valued — and protected — right within the US military.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Youngstown (Ohio) news covers the story of local Falak Mir Shafi, an immigrant from Pakistan who became a US citizen in the fast-track process provided by service in the US military. The article notes Shafi’s faith — he is a Sunni Muslim — and also attempts to highlight the “problems” of being a Muslim in the US military: In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[88,671,44,85,2,5218,7,672,10,171],"class_list":["post-6131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-army","tag-falak-mir-shafi","tag-islam","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-pakistan","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6131","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=6131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}