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    Muslim Americans in the Military: Centuries of Service
    Muslim Americans in the Military: Centuries of Service
    Muslim Americans in the Military: Centuries of Service
    Ebook146 pages1 hour

    Muslim Americans in the Military: Centuries of Service

    By Edward E. Curtis

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    About this ebook

    Stories of Muslims who have served, dating back to the Revolutionary War.
     
    Since the Revolutionary War, Muslim Americans have served in the United States military, risking their lives to defend a country that increasingly looks at them with suspicion and fear. In Muslim Americans in the Military: Centuries of Service, Edward E. Curtis illuminates the long history of Muslim service members who have defended their country and struggled to practice their faith.
     
    With profiles of soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors since the dawn of our country, Curtis showcases the real stories of Muslim Americans, from Omer Otmen, who fought fiercely against German forces during World War I, to Captain Humayun Khan, who gave his life in Iraq in 2004. These true stories contradict the narratives of hate and fear that have dominated recent headlines, revealing the contributions and sacrifices that these soldiers have made to the United States.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 17, 2016
    ISBN9780253027214
    Muslim Americans in the Military: Centuries of Service

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      Book preview

      Muslim Americans in the Military - Edward E. Curtis

      ONE

      TWO FALLEN SOLDIERS NAMED KHAN

      ARMY RESERVES CAPTAIN HUMAYUN KHAN, twenty-seven years old, knew that sacrifice might be required.

      Could he know how symbolic that sacrifice would become?

      It was his day off, but Khan wanted to check on the troops under his command. His mission, according to Khan’s senior officer, retired Maj. Gen. Dana J. H. Pitard, was to protect wheeled convoys and guard the gates of Forward Operating Base Warhorse in eastern Iraq. The 201st Forward Support Battalion, Humayun’s unit, later wrote Pitard, was the most motivated and combat-oriented logistics unit I had ever seen.

      More than one thousand Iraqis worked at Camp Warhorse, and Khan’s unit was responsible for inspecting their cars. According to Pitard, We had killed or wounded several innocent Iraqi drivers at our gates over the previous month for failing to heed our warning signs and our gate guards’ instructions. But Khan consistently worked to improve relations with the Iraqi workers and would do everything possible to prevent further accidents.

      Khan worked from midnight to noon on June 7, 2004, and he was tired. Sgt. Crystal Shelby spoke freely with him, telling him that he needed to get some rest before working further.

      But Khan insisted, as he was worried. Shelby drove him to the base entrance.

      Khan was well-liked among his troops in the 201st Forward Support Battalion, First Infantry. According to S.Sgt. Marie Legros, he was a soldier’s soldier … just that type of person, wanting to make sure his soldiers were okay.

      Sgt. Laci Walker said that he never put his rank about his care for his soldiers and comrades. Khan would throw an extra towel to someone in need, and he made sure that everyone knew they could steal sandwich condiments from his personal stash.

      He tried to protect troops in harm’s way, putting himself between those under his command and the danger.

      Soon after arriving at the base entrance on June 8, 2004, he saw an orange taxi winding its way through the gate’s serpentine barriers. This was during the morning rush at Camp Warhorse, when Iraqi workers would enter the base. Khan ordered his solders to get down. He walked toward the vehicle and gestured to the driver, indicating that he should stop. Humayun probably moved toward the suspicious vehicle to avoid killing the driver unnecessarily, reasoned Pitard.

      A bomb detonated.

      It killed Khan, two Iraqi civilians, and two insurgents.¹

      Khan was laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors and Islamic funeral prayers. He was awarded a Bronze Star, a military medal for heroism, and a Purple Heart, the medal given to armed service members who were killed or injured in the line of duty.

      Capt. Humayun Saqib Muazzam Khan (1976–2004) was one of three to six million Americans who identify as Muslim, followers of the religion of Islam. Born in the United Arab Emirates, where his family was living at the time, he traced his roots to Pakistan, a country inhabited by about 10 percent of all the world’s Muslims, around 167 million people. About one quarter of all Muslims in the United States have ethnic roots in South Asia, which includes the countries of Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and depending on who is counting, Afghanistan.²

      South Asian American Muslims are among the approximately four thousand active duty military members—and a perhaps a couple thousand more in the reserves—who identify themselves officially on Department of Defense documents as Muslims.

      Khan was also one of over a dozen Muslims who gave his life in the post–9/11 era as a member of the armed forces.

      He came to the United States as a little boy and grew up around the Greater Washington, DC, area. Khan graduated from John F. Kennedy High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1996, and went to college at the University of Virginia. He enrolled in the US Army’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), which trains future officers while they are still in college. He wanted to become a lawyer.³

      Khizr and Ghazala Khan, parents of the late Capt. Humayun Khan, appeared at the last night of the 2016 Democratic National Convention to endorse Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. (REUTERS / Lucy Nicholson / Alamy Stock Photo.)

      Khan graduated from the University of Virginia in 2000 and was planning on attending law school.

      And then came the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent wars in Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2003).⁴

      Khan had to delay his plans for law school. In 2002, he was posted to Vilseck, Germany, and during a visit to a local Bavarian café, he struck up a conversation with a German woman named Irene Auer. He had a beautiful voice, she remembered.

      Khan and Auer began dating, spending weekends together in his apartment, which was located outside the base. They enjoyed debating everything from the meaning of life to the war in Iraq. Auer was opposed to the US invasion; Khan said that he would do his duty. You know that I am married, he said jokingly to Auer. I am married to the US Army.

      When his mother, Ghazala Khan, visited him in 2003, he introduced his girlfriend to her. Then, Auer flew to the United States to meet his father, Khizr Khan. By the time Khan had to leave for Iraq on February 9, 2004, they had decided to get married. An email from Iraq encouraged Auer to pick out her engagement ring.⁵

      Shortly after, Khan was killed.

      A dozen years later, this soldier’s sacrifice was transformed into a political symbol during the US presidential contest between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. Capt. Humayun Khan’s story became a debate over what it means to be an American.

      On the final night of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan gave a speech immediately before Chelsea Clinton, who introduced her mother, Hillary Clinton. The fact that the speech was given so close to the candidate’s acceptance speech itself shows just how important the message was to the candidate’s campaign.

      Ghazala Khan stood next to her husband. She was wearing a blue, loose-fitting headscarf that partially covered her hair—a typical Pakistani style also worn by former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto. Khizr Khan wore a dark suit and blue necktie. (Blue is the color of the Democratic Party.)

      He began his speech by acknowledging the service of all veterans and all those still in military uniform, saying that he and his wife were patriotic American Muslims with undivided loyalty to our country. His meaning was clear: some Americans may think you cannot be Muslim and American, and he wanted to correct that.

      He went on to identify himself with other important American symbols—immigrant success, democracy, and hard work. Then came praise of Hillary Clinton and criticism of Donald Trump. In an earlier speech, Clinton had called Capt. Khan the best of America.

      But if it were up to Donald Trump, Khizr Khan said, his son would never have been permitted to immigrate to the United States, referring to Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the country.

      In one of the most dramatic gestures of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Khizr Khan reached into his pocket to grab a small copy of the US Constitution. He was known to carry them around with him at all times, offering a copy to people who visited him.

      Let me ask you, he challenged Trump, have you ever read the US Constitution? I will gladly lend you my copy.

      He continued his attack on Trump, saying, Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? He described the diversity of people who had sacrificed their lives for the United States. You have sacrificed nothing and no one, he said.⁶

      Interviewed by George Stephanopoulos of ABC News two days afterward, Trump responded to a question about Khizr Khan’s speech by referring to Ghazala Khan. If you look at his wife, Trump commented, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably—maybe she wasn’t allowed to say. You tell me. But plenty of people have written that. She was extremely quiet. And it looked like she had nothing to say.

      In Trump’s formulation, the mother of a fallen soldier, standing next to her husband, became another kind of symbol. A symbol of the oppressed, silent Muslim woman. That stereotype continues to resound in US politics and is often an effective appeal—used by both conservatives and liberals—on behalf of US foreign policy in Muslim-majority countries. The Muslim woman in need of saving has been offered more than once as a reason to go to war.

      In this case, however, it not only offended Muslims and those sympathetic to their plight, but it also awoke conservative voices who saw Ghazala Khan not so much as an oppressed Muslim woman but instead as the mother of a soldier killed while serving his country.

      My family has been Republican ever since my maternal grandparents migrated from Jim Crow South Carolina to Philadelphia in the late 1920s, wrote Maj. Gen. Pitard. But for Pitard, a lack of respect for Khan’s family was a matter that transcended political party: I join all those who stand in support of the Khan family. This family is our family, and any attack on this wonderful American Gold Star family is an attack on all patriotic and loyal Americans who have sacrificed to make our country great.

      Without ever mentioning Donald Trump by

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