Human Interest -- It is tough to be a Muslim in America

What is it like to be a Muslim in the United States now? 

In editorials and comments here on Gather, I often find the words Muslim and terrorist used interchangeably.  I often see people make statements that "demonize" or stereotype all Muslims as being our enemy.  

Unfortunately, this hatred toward Muslims seems to be increasing around the United States as more of our soldiers are killed in Iraq.  Last summer, burned Qurans were found on the steps of the Islamic Center of Blacksburg, Virginia.   In a September 2006, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim organization, reported that there was a 30 percent increase in anti-Muslim incidents in 2005 as compared to 2004.   A CBS Poll in April found that 45% of respondents queried said they have an unfavorable view of Islam, and 36% said they haven’t heard enough or don’t know enough to say either way.  Another poll by ABC-News and the Washington Post last year, found that one in four citizens admitted to being prejudiced against Muslims.  

Today's anti-Muslim climate causes me to recall from our history when Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 in 1942 and began the round-up of 120,000 Americans of Japanese heritage to one of 10 internment camps — officially called "relocation centers"— in California, Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and Arkansas.  More than 2/3 of the Japanese who were interned were citizens of the United States.  A congressionally-established committee in 1983 found that the internment as "unjust and motivated by racism rather than real military necessity."  

I think it is very important for us to recognize that there is a difference between terrorists and Muslims.  As Colonel Douglas Burpee, the highest ranking Muslim officer in the U.S. Marine Corps points out: "These people who commit terrorism have just adopted the face of Islam - nothing they say or do have anything to do with Islam," he says. "The Taliban is a terrorist organization - they are bad people doing bad things and they've attached religion to it. They are ruthless when it comes to killing people, but that's how you move helpless people around - you use fear." 

The military has made some very public demonstrations to show that it does not equate Islam with terrorism.  In the last year they have created a new Muslim prayer center in Quantico, commissioned the Air Force’s first Muslim chaplain, and inaugurated its first Muslim prayer room at the U.S. military academy at West Point.

Here is a brief demographic look of the military as it pertains to Muslims: 

• The Pentagon lists 3,386 Muslims in active service, compared with 1.22 million Christians.
• There are more Jews and Buddhists in the military than Muslims
• In the Marine Corps, there are only slightly more Muslims than Wiccans, who practice witchcraft.   In the Air Force, Wiccans outnumber Muslims by more than two to one.
• Black Americans make up the majority of Muslims serving in the U.S. armed forces.
• In the U.S. population as a whole, people of South Asian origin make up the biggest proportion of Muslims, accounting for 33 percent.  Black Americans come second, with 30 percent, followed by Arabs with around 25 percent. 
• Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the United States, driven by conversions and immigration.  

A lot of right-wing activists see this as a threat.  They feel that it will just enable the terrorists to more easily infiltrate the military.  They like to point to the 2003 incident in which an Army sergeant who converted to Islam, Hasan Akbar, rolled grenades into the tents of sleeping soldiers at a base in Kuwait and opened fire on those who ran out.   Military officials for the most part did not believe his religious beliefs had anything to do with the attack.  Conservative journalists tended to attribute his actions to a supposed allegiance to extremist Islam; liberal journalists tended to propose that Akbar had simply snapped from the stress of constant racial and religious harassment.

It is my hope that the public as a whole can direct their hatred toward the terrorists and not toward Islam as a whole.  Our country was built on the ideal of religious tolerance.  I believe it is our obligation to protect that ideal.

So here are some discussion points:

• Should the military allow Muslims to serve in military in Afghanistan and Iraq?  Can their fellow soldiers trust them?
• Does the conflict in Iraq have religious significance, not just political significance? 
• Are Christians and Muslims doomed to fight one another?   

• http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1227/p03s01-usmi.html
• http://www.nysun.com/article/31393
• http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/04/09/MN188241.DTL
• http://www.pluralism.org/news/index.php?xref=Muslims+in+the+Military&sort=DESC
• http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20030924-091208-9162r.htm
• http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0919-02.htm
• http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/12/national/main1494697.shtml