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Muslim soldiers reconcile faith with U.S. military action

New Crisis, The, Nov/Dec 2001 by Robinson, Lori

UpFront

Never should a believer kill another believer," pronounces the Koran.

Muslims in the United States military, the majority of whom are Black, might have questioned their role in the current war against terrorism after reading this line in Islam's holy book. But shortly after the Sept. 11 tragedies, Islamic scholars in the Middle East alleviated such concerns.

"It's a relief to hear the leaders of Islam say that it is permissible to be a military member fighting against Muslims under certain conditions," says Sgt. 1st Class Gregory Thompson, an African American Muslim at Fort Dix, N.J.

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Issued by a group of well-known Islamic scholars - three in Egypt, one in Syria and one in Qatar - the Sept. 27 fatwa, or Islamic legal decision, declared it acceptable for Muslim U.S. soldiers to fight against enemies professing the same faith.

A hot discussion topic among some military Muslims, says Thompson, he had already come to the same conclusion by consulting with at least 10 Islamic religious leaders, including African American Army Capt. Abdul-- Rasheed Muhammad. The fatwa was issued in response to a religious inquiry made by Muhammad, who in 1993 became the first Muslim chaplain in any branch of the U.S. military and now serves at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. (The Army denied Muhammad permission to be interviewed by The Crisis.)

"Even if fighting causes him discomfort spiritually or psychologically, this personal hardship must be endured for the greater public good," reads the decision.

Among concerns for some Muslim soldiers are the possibility of harming innocent civilians and the decision to wage war through Ramadan, the Islamic holy month observed this year from Nov. 17 through Dec. 16. U.S. officials justify the policy by pointing to the continuation of wars among Muslims through past holy months.

"I attribute their acts to fundamentalism, which I don't think has a place in [Islam]," says Sierra Leone-born Muslim Petty Officer 2nd Class Yahya Kaloko, a dispersing clerk stationed at the Navy Annex in Virginia, a half-- mile from the Pentagon."But I am in the military. I took the oath of allegiance. And if it comes to fighting, I'll be ready to fight."

Neither Kaloko nor Thompson has experienced anti-Muslim backlash, but both have become valuable information resources for colleagues. "The awareness of Islam has definitely increased," says Thompson about the number of questions he's answered about his religion, as well as increasing media coverage of Islam since Sept. 11.

African American Muslim Army Chaplain Ibraheem Raheem, stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., says a new facet of his work has been teaching several special classes on Islam to Army personnel since the tragedies. "The biggest question is always how does the faith of Islam view the actual act [of suicide bombings]. Definitely, it's unacceptable in our faith," he says.

Also, according to Raheem, the tragedies have had no impact on the Muslim religion.

"There are people out there who have a lot of skewed ideas about the faith and they claim to be Muslim. That happens in other faiths, but in light of media coverage sometimes those things get magnified when it comes to Islam. And that's largely due to a lot of people not understanding or knowing much about it."

Opportunities for Americans to learn about Islam from practitioners are growing rapidly. According to Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of international studies at Shaw University in Raleigh, N.C., Islam could overtake Judaism as the second-largest U.S. religion in five years.

Also the lead researcher for a recent study of the Washington, D.C.-based Islamic advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations, Bagby reports that in the United States African Americans were 64 percent of new converts to Islam last year.

Raheem says Muslim soldiers reflect the disproportionately high Black population of non-immigrant civilian Muslims. For fiscal year 2000, declared Muslims were less than half of one percent of each branch of the military, which reports having about 4,100 Islamic soldiers. Some Muslim leaders estimate the actual number of practicing Muslim soldiers to be two or three times higher.

The Fiqh Council of North America, a group of 15 Muslim scholars in the United States and Canada, will issue another fatwa on the same topic in December. But it won't likely make much difference to Islamic soldiers, particularly Kaloko.

A decade-long civil conflict has prevented him from returning home since coming to the United States six years ago. He considers the Sept. 11 attacks a personal affront to his newfound freedom. "Muslims in the United States military are there to serve," Kaloko says. "They're called upon to fight against enemies of this great nation. They are ready to do that."

Muslim soldiers reconcile faith with U.S. military action

New Crisis, The, Nov/Dec 2001 by Robinson, Lori

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