Muslims Can't Be Good Americans ..... Huh?

A long while ago, I discussed one Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter. He was, at the very least, one of the candidates most likely to be kicked out of the US Army, having given a June 2007 PowerPoint presentation that discussed “adverse events” that would occur if the Army did not accept the precepts of Islamic Shariah law and grant Muslims serving in the Army conscientious objector status.

I'm sure Maj. Hasan would be quite, quite happy to learn that the US Army has now taken his advise.

Enter Pfc. Naser Abdo, 21, a member of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Ky. He refused to deploy to Afghanistan, claiming that Sharia law prevented him from killing other Muslims.....

Ahem ....

Let's start with the fact that Sharia is the sort of thing used in Sudan to justify hacking off limbs for theft, stoning for adultery, and crucifying members of other religions.  This is the sort of thing that makes you arch an eyebrow and wonder "What the....?"  

All in all, this is a generally Bad Idea.

Not to mention that it is pure and utter garbage.[More below the break]

"Muslims can't kill other Musilms" .... since when?  Can you say Iran-Iraq War? Operation Desert Storm? Blowing up parts of Riyadh? 

But, let's ignore that part. This is about Pfc Abdo's beliefs, not the beliefs of others, that make him a conscientious objector ....

At which point, I have to ask, this man is 21. The youngest he could have joined the military is three years ago, under President Bush. 

Who exactly did he think he was going to be fighting?

Oh, well, the poor little darling claimed that he initially believed that he could be a soldier and a Muslim at the same time. But his understanding of Islam “changed” as he went through training ahead of a planned deployment to Afghanistan. He worried whether going to war was the right thing to do...

Really?  He magically had that epiphany during training. 

Friends of mine in the military, and friends who have ties to the military, when commenting on Don't Ask, Don't Tell, wrote it off as an easy fix to an annoying, complicated problem. If you have openly gay soldiers, where do you put them? The same barracks? Segregated barracks, because they could be, arguably, a different sex?  It's not so much a matter of keeping it a secret -- it's hard keeping your orientation a secret when you're all living in a barn together -- but a matter of what the bureaucracy doesn't see, it doesn't have to deal with.

When DADT was in place, Pfc Abdo would have just gone to his nearest sergeant, said "I'm gay," and he would have been a civilian in no time.  Despite what some tv shows would have you believe, most of those people taken out under DADT were voluntary admissions -- and I suspect that most of those "gays" are about as homosexual as I am. 

So, without DADT, I suspect that Abdo saw what was coming, decided that it was a good time to jump ship, and jumped with the nearest available ripcord. 

And that is the saddest possible outcome.

By allowing Abdo to use such a flimsy excuse as Sharia law for his justification, the army has just agreed with him that Muslims can't be good Americans.

How so?

The military vows to defend against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Abdo just said that he couldn't defend against any enemy that was Muslim, even if said enemy was trying to blow him and his friends to Kingdom Come.

All enemies, foreign and domestic, is the same oath given to politicians and to newly made citizens of the United States.

Abdo and the United States military have just said that Muslims cannot honestly be expected to fulfill those oaths.

A position which I think we all know is utter and complete .... I'm going to say garbage, because this blog is PG-13.  If it weren't garbage, Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn would be Fallujah, and Dearborn, Michigan would be a Caliphate. 

At the end of the day, this was a matter of convenience. Abdo didn't want to serve, and the military didn't want to send in anyone who could be unreliable into combat (possibly to avoid a CAIR lawsuit), and they both took the nearest excuse they could latch onto.  I, personally, am waiting for a few protests by Muslims to picket Abdo's home, because he has essentially slandered all of them in one cowardly brushstroke.

The sad thing is, Abdo's excuse used to be considered a libelous charge against Roman Catholics in America. "Social humanitarians" like Sydney Hook and John Dewey said that Catholics and Communists could not be good citizens, because each owed their allegiance to a foreign power: The Vatican and Moscow.

Abdo's excuse is that Muslims owe an allegiance to Mecca before the United States.

I hope I'm not the only one who finds this offensive to Muslims.