OK the article’s very old.
i thought it was an interesting read anyways.
Military, Muslim Life Meld on U.S. Bases, Caryle Murphy
Washington Post 21 December 1998
Military chaplain M. Malak Abd al Muta’ali Ibn Noel, a lieutenant in the Navy, zips around Norfolk Naval Station in a 1995 Nissan Altima whose license plate reads, “IWRK4GD.” He wears Islam’s universal symbol – a crescent moon – on his shirt collar.
And as a new moon cued the onset of Ramadan last night, the first Muslim chaplain commissioned by the Navy led prayers in the first mosque built on a U.S. naval base. He joins at least 4,000 Muslims on active duty in the U.S. armed forces in observing Islam’s annual holy month of fasting and spiritual reflection.
“It’s a month of reconnecting spiritually with ourselves and Allah,” said Noel, 37, who has been in the Navy for 19 years. “In the Koran we are taught that this month is for God, period.”
The nation’s estimated 3.5 million to 6 million Muslims are becoming more visible in every layer of American society, and the military is no exception. Since the 1991 Persian Gulf War, when a massive deployment of U.S. troops to the Middle East increased American awareness of Islam, U.S. military officials have redoubled efforts to give the faith the same recognition and status as other religions.
Against the backdrop of the latest U.S. bombing of Iraq, as well as U.S. retaliatory attacks in August on Sudan and Afghanistan after terrorists blew up U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the military’s support for its Muslim servicemen helps counter perceptions by some Muslims that the United States is antagonistic toward their religion.
“There has been an intentional and systematic effort to provide for the Muslim men and women serving in our military service,” said Capt. Mel Ferguson, executive assistant to the Navy chief of chaplains and until recently executive director of the Armed Forces Chaplains Board. The rising number of Muslim military personnel, he added, “is clearly a growing phenomenon which we have recognized.”
That recognition has included appointing three Muslim chaplains, beginning with the Army in 1993; drafting about a dozen others into chaplain training programs; offering pork-free field rations; allowing Muslims to leave duty stations to attend prayers on Friday, Islam’s Sabbath; facilitating travel to Mecca for Muslim personnel making the hajj, or pilgrimage, to that holy city; and according Islamic symbols parity with those of other religions.
In June, for example, a crescent was added to the Christian cross and Jewish Star of David that long have adorned the exterior of the military chapel at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda.
“This speaks loud of the naval interest in honoring and enhancing religious diversity within the military,” said the hospital’s civilian Muslim chaplain, Yahya Hendi.
During Ramadan, when Muslims refrain from food and drink during daylight hours, military commanders are urged to accommodate their fasting servicemen and women – excusing them, in some cases, from rigorous physical exercise. The commanders also allow flexible work hours so Muslims can take iftar, the traditional fast-ending meal, and attend the social gatherings and community prayers that usually follow.
Many U.S. military bases have rooms set aside for Muslim prayers, and at least two military facilities have their own mosques. In 1992, the Saudi Arabian government donated funds to transform an office at Fort Eustis Army Base in Newport News, Va., into a mosque. And in November 1997, about a year after Noel’s chaplaincy appointment, Norfolk Naval Station’s mosque opened in a complex that also houses a synagogue and two Christian chapels.
“I thought it was an important thing to do so that our Muslim sailors had the same type of religious support that our Christian and Jewish sailors were being afforded,” said Capt. John N. Petrie, the former base commander who now is assigned to the chief of naval operations at the Pentagon.
About 70 percent of the 1.4 million active-duty U.S. military personnel have voluntarily declared a religious preference, said Lt. Col. Tom Begines, Defense Department spokesman. Of those, 4,000 have identified themselves as Muslim, up from 2,500 in 1993.
Because of a common reluctance to publicly state their religion, Air Force Master Sgt. Talib Shareef, president of the recently formed Muslim American Military Association (MAMA), estimates there may be as many as 10,000 Muslims in the armed forces.
These include American-born converts such as Noel, who is from Salem, N.J., and converted to Islam in 1989, and immigrants such as Navy Capt. K.M. Mohamed Shakir, who was born in India. Shakir, a U.S. citizen since 1978, is program director for endocrinology training at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda and was on the physicians’ team that treated then-President Bush’s overactive thyroid condition.
Some Muslims, recalling how the military was a leader in breaking down racial segregation after World War II, say it can play a similar role in furthering understanding of their faith.
“I went into the military when integration began,” said Ghayth Nur Kashif, who is imam, or prayer leader, of Masjidush-Shura Mosque in Southeast Wash ington and spent four years in the Air Force.
Other Muslims say their growing presence in the military helps assuage fears about Islam caused by the embassy bombings and other terrorism.
“Our presence here today should serve as condemnation of . . . any act of violence against the innocent or against peace,” Shareef said at a recent conference organized by MAMA on the theme, “Muslim Americans serving Allah and serving your country.”
“Such acts are against our religion. . . . It’s not Islamic behavior,” Shareef added.
Terrorist attacks sometimes cause tension between Muslims and non-Muslims in the military, said Shareef, who is stationed at Fort Gordon Air Force Base in Georgia. In interviews, some Muslims told of being asked, “Is that a bomb in your bag?” and “Is your name Saddam Hussein?” One man recalled an experience several years ago when his fellow boot camp trainees marched to the cadence, “I wanna kill an Arab.”
These Muslims, however, said such incidents were minor. In general, they said, the U.S. military is doing a good job to accommodate Islamic adherents.
“A lot of people who know me have already learned a little from me about my religion,” said Petty Officer 3rd Class Undra Tincani, 24, a machinist mate stationed at Norfolk. When terrorist attacks occur, her non-Muslim fellow sailors “can tell those people aren’t practicing their religion like they should.”
A Los Angeles native who converted to Islam in 1994, Tincani said that when she is on duty, she uses her uniform’s cap as a substitute for the head covering many Muslim women believe is required by their faith. Unless she is in an area of the ship where all sailors must go capless, “I just keep that on all the time,” she said.
“I’ve never had any trouble with the military” for practicing religion, said Noel, who served aboard a battleship during Operation Desert Storm and later studied for his master’s degree in Islamic law on a Navy scholarship.
The goal, he said, is “to educate the military as to what we’re really about.”
Ramadan, a month of spiritual discipline and growth, offers Muslims that opportunity. “People read all these negative things about Islam,” Noel said. But when they “see people who are actually practicing orthodox Islam . . . and doing it sincerely, submitting to God . . . they begin to see there is a commonality between all people of faith.”
