Posted on 09/25/2003 10:13:31 AM PDT by quidnunc
The arrest of two Muslim-American servicemen based at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, (a developing story originally broken by this newspaper), raises some complex questions about the conflicting loyalties of Muslim-American soldiers in the war against radical Islamic terror. Dueling it out are two policy imperatives dear to our tradition of government: equal treatment of all regardless of race and religion, and the need to guarantee national security. The threshold must be high for a policy to curtail one of these fundamental values in favor of defending the other — but it is a threshold that can be met in extreme cases. The ancient imperative of self-defense is such a case, but it remains to be seen whether we have reached that situation.
The complex connections between terrorist organizations, Islamic charities and some mainstream Muslim groups bring up the uncomfortable issue of whether Muslim chaplains and men in the ranks should be treated differently than recruits of other faiths. The military is confident in checking with the Vatican to confirm the character of a Catholic priest, but relying on the judgment of Muslim groups has proven to be less reliable.
Trouble was bound to happen eventually, as the military has sought assistance to approve chaplains from Muslim groups that are themselves questionable. According to Robert Spencer, author of the new book "Onward Muslim Soldiers," the Air Force "in July 2002 asked for help recruiting Muslim chaplains from the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). ISNA is subsidized by high-placed Saudi Wahhabis. Many Muslim military chaplains have been trained by the American Muslim Foundation's American Muslim Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs Council; the AMF has been investigated for suspicions of funding terrorism." Because of this system, many Muslim chaplains in the U.S. military have strong Wahhabi beliefs. The risk of conflicting loyalties is not limited to the chaplain corps.
Considering that there are only approximately 4,500 Muslims in uniform, their record of religious-based crimes is significant. The most notorious case of conflicting loyalties was that of Sgt. Hasan Akbar, who killed two of his commanding officers in a grenade attack in Kuwait last winter and shouted, "You guys are coming into our countries, and you're going to rape our women and kill our children." As Mr. Spencer pointed out to us yesterday, "He explicitly identified himself as a Muslim, and not an American."
The author provides other serious examples of enemies within the ranks. Naval Reservist Semi Osman was charged last May with illegally trying to become a U.S. citizen (he had altered birth certificates and other related papers) and possession of a handgun whose serial number was altered. Maj. Ali A. Mohamed, an Egyptian, joined the Army as a resident alien in the late 1980s even though he was on a State Department terrorist watch list. After leaving the Army in 1989, he joined Egyptian Islamic Jihad, worked directly with Osama bin Laden and was charged with involvement in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1998. Army reservist Jeffrey Leon Battle was indicted last year for conspiring to wage war against the United States, and according to the Justice Department, "enlisting in the Reserves to receive military training to use against America." He planned to go to Afghanistan to join up with the Taliban.
-snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Agreed!
If you weren't reading, then you wouldn't be replying. You may be trying to "tune me out", but you're not doing a particularly good job at it. And once again, what you have posted above is irrelevant to the discussion, and a futile attempt to change the subject.
I am "incredibly agressive and overbearing" against those who blindly support Islam because Islam wants to murder me ("slay the infidels wherever you find them, and take them captive and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush", as Sura 9:5 says, or "Seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or helper", as Sura 4:89 says; similar quotes demanding murder of those who refuse Islam can be found throughout the Quran).
It is perfectly rational to be "incredibly aggressive and overbearing" when someone is supporting an ideology that wants to kill me or enslave me, and that is what you are doing, either through your ignorance of Islam or through al-taqiyah (mentioning the latter since the premise of the former seems both unlikely and surreal in a post 9-11 world; even with the ignorance you have displayed in previous posts it seems unlikely that you could be that uninformed).
Zealotry in self-defense is not a vice.
Don't you get it? Its not a discussion anymore.
No; you're just trying to not make it a discussion. If you don't want to press the issue, you can walk away and ignore the subject. But you will not be allowed to dominate the subject of conversation by doing the electronic equivalent of putting your hands on your ears and whining.
I dont give a s%#@@ what you have to say.
If that were true, then you wouldn't be reading.
You're pushing me the other way.
Since you started out at one of the extremes in favor of tolerance of Islam, then that can only be a good thing.
You're shouting in people's faces does about as good as the drunk crazy man on the corner of the street screaming how we're all going to hell.
I am not shouting in people's faces; I am simply denying you the power to make ad hominem attacks unanswered. For the sake of this discussion, the probability that you're "going to hell" isn't relevant to the conversation. Regardless of the fact that the point of discussion is Islam, the argument against Islam has nothing to do with differences of theological beliefs. The reason we hate Islam isn't that Islam is a different belief structure, it is because Islam is a different belief structure that insists that all other belief structures must be destroyed, using physical violence including our murder, and demands that its followers strive to achieve that goal.
To fail to resist the advocacy of such bad ideas is irrational, and it is that irrationality which you are trying in vain to assert. When your attempts at argumentum ad ignorantiam failed you resorted to argumentum ad hominem. You are free to offer such fallacious arguments, but such assertions will not go unanswered.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.