By the "current situation," Mohammed is referring to the 19-year occupation of Afghanistan, the 17-year occupation of Iraq, and multiple conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, the large majority of which are Muslim-majority nations. Even today, the Trump administration continues to increase tensions with Iran, sparking fears of another long and bitter war.
"My brother did 20 years in the Navy, and he had it worse than me. When the Iraq War started in 2003, and his peers were saying 'put him in jail because we are going to kill his people.' So the racism is there and it is brutal," Mohammed added. For so many American Muslims, the prospect of going to war with their own country of origin or that of their close friends is unpalatable, to say the least.
Walid, a member of the Michigan Muslim Community Council Imams Committee, explained that:
For those Muslims who are immigrants or children of immigrants and are underrepresented [in the military], most likely feel a sense of alienation from the American military for similar reasons. If we look at the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians that were killed during that time, and the use of drone bombings that killed high percentages of civilians and the extrajudicial assassinations via American drones; these are factors that I believe have stopped many American Muslims from joining the U.S. military."
Inside the armed forces, Muslims are often suspected of being disloyal and often are the targets of their superiors' prejudices. Last year, Sgt. Cesilia Valdovinos was forced by a senior non-commissioned officer to remove her hijab while at a briefing. She had previously complained of being made to cook pork and of being labeled a "terrorist" by another soldier. In 2016, Marine Corps recruit Raheel Siddiqui leapt to his death after being constantly hazed and bullied by drill instructors during training. One instructor reportedly labeled him a "terrorist" and had slapped him a number of times. He was also known to have
forced other Muslim recruits into industrial clothes dryers and turned the machine on. While the official verdict was suicide, Siddiqui's family contested the decision. Mohammed suffered similar treatment at training, with instructors punishing him more than others, attempting to sow division between him and his peers, encouraging others to fight him, calling him a "towel head," and placing sand around his bed to "make him feel more at home." As stated previously, Mohammed is originally from the Caribbean island of Trinidad, and of Indian extraction, but knowledge of geography is
not many Americans' strong suit.
Walid suggested that if Siddiqui had been from a different religion or race, the story would have become a "national scandal" and there would have been a senate committee hearing. But, "when it comes to Muslims, the anti-Muslim bigotry is overt and subtle," he said.
The "reality of systemic racism"
When the parents of a Humayun Khan, a fallen Muslim-American soldier spoke up against Trump's proposed Muslim ban, he mocked them, implying Khan's mother was silent as a result of Islam's backward practices and repressive attitude towards women. While he scandalized many in the punditry class, a majority of Americans supported the ban on entry to the United States, such is the level of demonization of the religion in media and public life. 1 in 9 Americans say they would refuse to accept a Muslim as a neighbor and 41 percent believe that Islam encourages violence more than other faiths, with nearly two-thirds of Republicans polled saying that a great deal of Muslims are anti-American, and 16 percent saying almost all are. The same survey found that Americans are far more likely to hold Islamophobic beliefs if they do not know any Muslims personally.
As a result, Muslim Americans are much more likely to hold liberal economic, political and cultural views, with only 13 percent identifying with the Republican Party at all. Three-quarters say they face a lot of discrimination living in the U.S. "I don't think it is limited to the military at all," Walid told MintPress. "I think it goes back deeper beyond religion to an issue of systemic racism that takes place in America. Muslims are a faith group, but we are predominantly seen as people of color and non-white in the American imagination. And the reality is that non-white people in America have never been treated equally in American institutions. That is the historical reality."
There is perhaps no better example of this than Minnesota Congressperson Ilhan Omar. As a black, African, refugee, hijab-wearing Muslim democratic socialist woman, her existence is a bingo card for bigots. A study published in November in the Social Science Research Journal found that roughly half the tweets mentioning her contained some kind of hate speech.
Omar has drawn public attention as an outspoken critic of the police's role in the killing of George Floyd. However, less well-known is how authorities' surveillance of Muslims contributed to his death. Since the days of the Nation of Islam, black Muslims have been targeted by law enforcement and the secret services as an enemy of the state. Minneapolis has one of the largest populations of black Muslims in the United States, due in part to its large Somali community. Under Obama's Countering Violent Extremism program, Minneapolis was plied with cash and equipment to surveil supposedly radical extremist groups, leading to a situation where blackness became to be seen by police as a crime in itself. As Venessa Taylor argued in The Progressive, state surveillance of Muslims "paved the way for George Floyd's murder."
While the U.S. military does want and need to recruit soldiers from Islamic and Arab-American background, they have also been fighting decades-long campaign against Islamic groups in Muslim-majority countries, leading to a heightened level of casual and toxic Islamophobia within its ranks, alienating many Muslim Americans who might otherwise consider joining. Soldiers are trained to see brown-skinned Muslims as the enemy, meaning those who join their side are subject to abuse or mockery. Still more of a question for other American Muslims is whether any war, especially these wars are worth fighting and dying for. Considering the dearth of Muslim recruits, It appears that, for many, the answer is "no."
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