Muslim-bashing betrays military

The worst thing about the anti-Islam course that was taught to hundreds of U.S. military officers at the war college in Norfolk is how helpful it is for educating and recruiting Islamic extremists.

All al-Qaida need do is lift the course's power-point slides verbatim to convince fellow Muslims that the West is at war with Islam. That America plans to destroy them ? their religion, their cities and civilian populations.

It's hard to misinterpret language like this:

?"There is no such thing as 'moderate Islam.'"

?"(Muslims) hate everything you stand for and will never co-exist with you, unless you submit."

?"It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction."

Not just facilitate its self-destruction, but starve Muslims, if need be. Or bomb their holy cities on the scale of Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Wage "near total war." Reduce Islam "to cult status."

What self-respecting Muslim anywhere in the world wouldn't want to defend against an overwrought superpower spewing hate like this?

Who wouldn't oppose a military that appears to consider all the world's 1.4 billion Muslims as two-dimensional as the cartoon character depicted in one slide wearing a maniacal grin and a Sikh turban (Sikhs are not Muslim), swinging a bloody sword to decapitate an ostrich, its head still buried in the sand. The label on the ostrich: "Liberals." The caption: "Our response to date..."

After one student complained about the "Perspectives in Islam and Islamic Radicalism" course at the Joint Forces Staff College, it was suspended last month along with its instructor, Army Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley.

Pentagon brass rushed to clarify we're not at war with all Muslims, but "with al-Qaida specifically," and ordered all course material scrubbed of hysterical garbage like this.

If Dooley never met a "moderate" Muslim, he never met Ali Faruk, a red-blooded American born 28 years ago on a U.S. Air Force base in California, now living in Williamsburg. He never met Faruk's father, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. He never met Faruk's brother, an Air Force captain, or his godfather or best friend ? proud Americans, all Muslims, all serving in our Armed Forces.

Full disclosure: Faruk's wife is a colleague here at the Daily Press, born in Lexington, Ky., and, yes, a headscarf-wearing Muslim.

"This is really hurting our ability to combat terrorism," Faruk said of the course material in a phone interview Wednesday. Counterterrorism, he said, is "ultimately a battle of ideas.? You beat them through the war of ideas, by building allies, so the population turns against them, and you win.

"Second, this is just parodying exactly what the extremists say: 'The U.S. is at war with you and your culture and your religion. So you have to fight them with me. Or at the very least, you have to not help them.'"

Such gross misinformation about Islam, Faruk says, is a betrayal of our servicemen and women charged with sacrificing their lives, if need be, in counterterrorism efforts.

Faruk grew up in Prince William County in a "huge military community" of Asians, Muslims, Hispanics, blacks and whites. It was a culture of service, he says, where seeing American military uniforms at Friday prayers was normal.

"To now see that there are people going around telling our service members that everybody of a particular creed or religion, that it's in their blood to hate America, or in their religion to hate America, it's just absurd," he said.

This is intellectual dishonesty, he said, that thrives on quotes and beliefs attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that are either false or out of context.

The prophet Faruk ascribes to is the man who invited Christians to pray ? as Christians, in their own tradition ? in his own mosque. Who practiced religious inclusion. Who in 628 ACE issued a charter of protection "as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them," and committed his followers to defend them.

Faruk trusts that the anti-Islam paranoia of recent years will be replaced by reason. For him, it's a matter of faith.

"I always have faith in America," Faruk said. "We're not perfect, so there'll always be times when our discourse degenerates. But I have faith Americans are amazing people.

"I think the goodness of America will win."

Contact Tamara at 757-247-7892 or tdietrich@dailypress.com.

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