The anti-Muslim rhetoric and fear-mongering hot air flying out of the mouths of elected officials after events like the Ft. Hood shooting and the Christmas Day attempted bombing have serious consequences for Muslim-Americans, particularly those who are serving their country in the Armed Forces.
No one is more aware of these consequences than Muslim-American soldier, Army Spec. Zachari Klawonn, whose sad ordeal in trying to patriotically fight for his country illustrates exactly how the discriminatory stereotyping from Capitol Hill has an effect on our citizens and our soldiers.
Immediately after the Ft. Hood shooting, the main-stream-media was focused on alleged shooter Nidal Hassan's Muslim faith, and Senator Joseph Lieberman was calling the crime the "worst terrorist attack since 9/11" and convening a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on "radicalization" and the dangers of "Islamic Extremist Ideologies." However, non-Muslim A. Joseph Stack, who flew his plane into an IRS building in February, 2010, escaped the "Lieberman Treatment," and his attack received a (rightly) more measured reaction from our elected officials. There was no rush to have a Congressional hearing on anti-tax radicals or middle-aged white men with hatred of the government. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano even tried to avoid giving Stack the "terrorist" label so quickly slapped on Hasan.
The message from our elected officials is: it's not terrorism unless a Muslim commits the crime, and we best be wary of homegrown terrorists "radicalizing" right under our noses. This discriminatory, anti-Muslim message is not the message of a society that values freedom for all religions or no religion at all.
Army Spec. Klawonn got a different message from Army recruiters: that "the Army desperately needed Muslim soldiers like him to help win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." Army Spec. Klawonn believed that message, joined the Armed Forces, has an unblemished record with the Army, routinely scores exceptionally high on fitness and weapons tests, and is a young, patriotic, Muslim-American volunteering to fight, and maybe sacrifice his life for, the United States.
Army Spec. Klawonn's experience, documented in today's Washington Post, shows us that, tragically, many of Klawonn’s fellow soldiers got their cues from our Congressional and Cabinet officials.
Army Spec. Klawonn's appalling treatment includes being ordered not to fast and pray:
If I catch you praying during a duty day, I'm going to smoke the dog piss out of you. You understand me?.
He had his Koran was torn up, endured other soldiers jeering at him and throwing water on him, was warned by his platoon sergeant to conceal his faith to avoid beatings, and found threatening hate notes on his barracks room door:
F--- YOU RAGHEAD BURN IN HELL.
The harassment only escalated after the Ft. Hood shooting in November, 2009, with the link between alleged shooter Hasan and Army Spec. Klawonn being made immediately, and based solely on their common religion, and the taunts included:
Hey, Klawonn, your brother just shot them up.
We better check Klawonn for weapons.
Don't piss him off, he's gonna go Hasan on us.
The Post details similar accounts from other Muslim soldiers in the aftermath of Ft. Hood, despite Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey post-Ft. Hood message that: "As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well."
This horrific treatment of Muslim-American soldiers is a more thinly-veiled expression of the same derogatory rhetoric spewing out of the mouths of our elected officials in the aftermath of the Ft. Hood shooting, such as Lieberman's statement at his Ft. Hood hearing that the war on terrorism "started here [in the U.S.] officially on 9/11, but this pattern of homegrown radicalization is a significant one."
We cannot pontificate about religious freedom out of one side of our mouths while blowing oxygen on the fire of anti-Muslim sentiment out of the other side. It is the wrong message for all Americans, particularly Muslim-Americans and most importantly, for those young Muslim-Americans like Army Spec. Klawonn, who volunteer to serve in our Armed Forces.
More information about the "homegrown terrorism" fear-mongering and resulting discrimination is available from the Government Accountability Project.