Muslim American veterans reflect on Fort Hood attack

By Khalil AlHajal
Monday, 11.30.2009

Maj. Nidal Hasan's face continues to haunt Muslim and Arab Americans, his image floating around news media endlessly as investigations go on, details emerge and commentators associate his alleged crimes with his religion and ethnicity.
For many Arab and Muslim veterans of the U.S. military, hearing about the victims of the Fort Hood shooting, their families and the stigma caused by the crime hurts that much more.
"It really stings," said Vietnam veteran Ron Amen, who is Arab and Muslim.
He described Hasan's alleged shooting rampage that killed 13 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood Army Base in Texas as the act of a madman.
He hopes not to hear more about the shooter's motivations.
Even if Hasan held radical, distorted religious beliefs that contributed to his crime, Amen said, "who wants to listen to the ramblings of a madman."
"I don't want to hear his story... I can only say that this guy had some sort of nervous breakdown," Amen said. "I don't know what these guys are going through."

Ron Amen was drafted into the Army in 1965 at age 19 and served in a combat helicopter platoon in Vietnam.

Amen, of Livonia, was drafted into the Army in 1965 at age 19 and served in a combat helicopter platoon in Vietnam. He said he never came across another Arab or Muslim in two years of service. His dog tags, even though he identified himself as a Muslim on his paperwork, initially indicated he had no religion. His objections were ignored until he reached a more sensitive Hispanic American captain who demanded the tags be corrected immediately. He said that while it wasn't easy being an Arab Muslim in the military at the time, soldiers today likely have it much worse.
"There was a little bit of chiding here and there," he said. "Most of the guys had never laid an eye on an Arab at the time, let alone a Muslim. But it was nothing near what these Arab Muslim guys are dealing with now."
One Marine who served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006 said bigotry has an everyday place in that war.
"Your average service member is not particularly racist and not necessarily more racist than your average American. But in order to go be involved with killing large [numbers] of other human beings, you have to dehumanize the enemy," Marine Corps Cpl. Dave Hassan told reporter Aaron Glantz of New America Media, "and the easiest way to dehumanize them is to racialize them. In my experience, they're much more prone to talking about 'f** hajjis,' if only 'these f** hajjis' wouldn't be here, this wouldn't have happened... People would say, 'Why are hajjis wearing dresses all the time,' [talking about traditional Iraqi dishdash]."
Hassan said it surprised him to hear it was a psychiatrist who committed the crime, but that being exposed to racism through his patients in addition to hearing countless traumatic stories may have contributed to the stress that led him to snap.

Amen in Vietnam

"He was probably treating guys with PTSD [post traumatic stress disorder] and there's a lot more overt racism in that crowd than there is in the rest of the military," Hassan said. "...It's no longer surprising to me that returning veterans would kill a bunch of people. But this guy was a psychiatrist who hadn't been deployed, and he was also a major, which means he was in for a long time. If he had been at Walter Reed for a long time it was probably the first time that he had to think in detail about actually deploying to a foreign country and what that means." But according to some soldiers, while stressful, the experience of a Muslim in the U.S. military serving overseas can be fulfilling.
One American Muslim soldier of Nigerian descent said via phone from Iraq that he's been an asset to his platoon, able to build trust with locals as a Muslim to whom they can better relate, accomplishing more and helping more Iraqis to increase security.
"It helps a lot being a Muslim," said Army Lt. Shakir O. Shinaba. "It makes it easier for me to be able to ineract with the people here just as a Muslim."
He said one particularly distrustful Iraqi major from Tikrit, after grilling Shinaba on the five pillars of Islam, became much more communicative with his platoon.
He said knowing there are Muslims who choose to serve in the U.S. Army causes them to think "ok, I cannot hate all American soldiers."
During one mission, a young Iraqi boy who spoke some English asked Shinaba why he was fighting for the U.S. army if he is a Muslim.
"That kind of really crushed me," Shinaba said. "They are indoctrinated that the U.S. is at war with Muslims... I took my time explaining to that little kid that there are Muslims in the U.S. and there are Muslims all around the world and that the U.S. is a secular country."
About the Fort Hood shooting, "To me Islamic religion means peace... It really breaks my heart. One incident, I hope it doesn't wipe away all our contributions in the military."
Every year, a group of Arab American veterans marches in the Dearborn Memorial Day Parade.
Amen marches with the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military, founded by Marine Corps Sgt. Jamal S. Baadani in 2001."
"Thousands of Arab Americans and American Muslims serve honorably everyday in all four branches of the U.S. military and in the National Guard," Baadani said. "There have been three Congressional Medals of Honor awarded to three of our nation's heroes. One of those heroes is Arab American Petty Officer Michael Monsoor of the U.S. Navy."
Monsoor dove onto a grenade to shield his fellow soldiers in Ramadi, Iraq on Sept. 29, 2006. He was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously on March 31, 2008.
Amen, while opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and being critical of many aspects of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, takes pride in the time he spent as a soldier.
"I'm very proud of my service to America and I'd do it again if I had to," he said.
One local veteran, while proud of his service, can't bring himself to march with the group on Memorial Day.
"I can't with a clear conscience," said Don Unis, 70, of Dearborn. Unis served in the Army. His father, a Syrian-Lebanese immigrant, fought in World War I and a cousin died fighting for the U.S. in World War II.
He said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and ongoing occupation in the Palestinian territories, which he sees as facilitated by the U.S., wear on his conscience too intensely to take pride in the country's military.
"I was proud to serve my country, but tell me that I'm serving my country and not the interests of some corporation," he said. "We have to stop glorifying war... That's not the America that I served. That's not the America that my cousin died for. That's not the America that my father fought for in World War I... We love America. God, we love America. We want America to be better than that."
Unis' experience in the military, like Amen's, was characterized by some mild isolation as an Arab and a Muslim. He, as did Amen, bonded with a Jewish soldier in his platoon as a fellow outcast.
He said the two were once singled out during a large gathering by an Army chaplain who demanded that any non-Christians stand up.
"Twelve hundred people looked at us like we were from outer space," Unis said. "A Jew from California and a Muslim from Detroit. We had to explain for the next three months what a Jew and Muslim was."
He said bigotry toward Arabs and Muslims has intensified and has taken much more of a toll in recent years.
"We've been attacked on Fox News every night for the last eight years," he said. "How many times as an Arab American do I hear 'we wanna go over there and kill all them bastards.'"
Unis said bigotry and pro-war rhetoric, multiplied in a military environment, may have contributed to the Fort Hood shooter's rage.
"If he heard it time and time again, he was just pushed over the edge — not that there's any excuse," he said. "After hearing all the horrible horrific stories of what is happening in Iraq, he committed suicide. He was supposed to have been shot dead. And very sadly, he took the lives of innocent people. Is that any excuse for Maj. Hasan's act? Of course not. But those of us who idenitify with his background and his faith, we feel it...
"My family has paid our price serving America. We're very saddened when we hear of things like what happened at Fort Hood."