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New York Sun – April 21, 2006
Muslims in the military
By John P. Avlon
His call sign is "Hadji," meaning "one who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca."
"It's a pilot thing," explains Colonel Douglas Burpee, the highest ranking Muslim officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Now in his 23rd year of military service, Colonel Burpee recently returned from flying helicopters in Afghanistan.
"Everyone knows I'm a Muslim. When I fly, attached to my dog tags, I wear a pendant with a passage from the Koran," he says. "I try to set a good example based upon what I believe.... I can be a soldier and a Muslim at the same time. I have no problem with that."
In the era of the war on terror, the example of a devout Muslim serving in the American Military is a heartening sign that highlights the difference between America and its self-appointed enemies in this conflict. This is not a clash of civilizations, but a fight between a modern pluralistic democracy and intolerant murders who have hijacked one of the world's great faiths.
Certainly that's Colonel Burpee's view. "These people who commit terrorism have just adopted the face of Islam - nothing they say or do have anything to do with Islam," he says. "The Taliban is a terrorist organization - they are bad people doing bad things and they've attached religion to it. They are ruthless when it comes to killing people, but that's how you move helpless people around - you use fear."
Out of the 1.4 million service men and women serving actively in the American military, an estimated 3,700 are Muslim, according to the Department of Defense.
Colonel Burpee's path to both Islam and the military is not necessarily typical. With blond hair that is now going gray, he was born in America and raised Episcopalian. He converted to Islam when he was 19 for a very American reason: "I met a pretty girl" - an Egyptian woman named Hala who was a fellow student at the University of Southern California in the late 1970s. Three years later he was accepted at the Officers Candidates' School in Quantico, Va. Now he and Hala and their five sons live in Glendale, Calif.
http://www.nysun.com/article/31393
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