Veterans speak out against religious intolerance

The organization Iraq and Afghan Veterans calls for respect for Muslims, the great majority of whom are not engaged in or supporting violent actions toward US troops or others in these two countries or elsewhere, including in the US itself.

Implicitly, the organization rejects Islamophobia and groups that advance this racist, irrational, hatred, rejects the notion that there is an international war between Islam and Christianity, and rejects the justification that we are fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because of the Muslim faith of the people in these two countries.


Iraq, Afghan Veterans Call For Respect For Muslims: 'America, You Gotta Have Our Back'

The push by some in the media against rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States gained valuable voices of support over the weekend -- and now joining that chorus are veterans who fought alongside U.S. servicemembers of Islamic faith in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A small but growing group of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have signed onto an open letter, provided exclusively to the Huffington Post, which calls on the American public to respect "the values we risked our lives to protect" and to avoid endangering the mission -- and safety -- of U.S. forces in the Mideast. Like Gen. David Petraeus, the veterans warn that U.S. troops will face blowback from demonstrated intolerance for Muslims at home.

"America, you gotta have our back," reads the letter, composed by signatories Roy Scranton, Philip Klay and Perry O'Brien. "Those who would vilify and target Muslims on grounds of their religious belief not only show a deep disrespect for American values, but put American lives at risk. It's easy to burn a Koran when you won't feel the heat."

O'Brien told HuffPost that he, Scranton and Klay, all of whom are now writers living in New York City, wrote the letter together out of mutual frustration with the uptick in anti-Muslim rhetoric and violence, then learned that "many of our buddies felt the same way."

They're not alone. A Quinnipiac poll released Monday found that 50 percent of respondents said "mainstream Islam" is a peaceful religion, while only 27 percent said it encourages violence toward non-Muslims. And though the Park51 project -- the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" -- is still opposed more than two-to-one by the general populace surveyed by Quinnipiac, support for the project is growing in New York itself.

The "frenzy" whipped up in response to Park51 "was one of the key events that drove us to write the letter," O'Brien wrote in a follow-up email, along with the Muslim cab driver stabbing late last month. "I think we all feel that this city has become the center of much of this renewed intolerance, at least in the popular imagination," he wrote. "As vets living in New York, we wanted to speak on behalf of friends currently deployed and remind people that hysterical culture wars have very real, and very dangerous impact for people fighting real wars."

Read the full letter:

As veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have watched with increasing alarm the rise of anti-Islamic rhetoric within the US.We've seen attacks on Muslim citizens, intolerance toward religious expression, and even book burning. This goes against the very values we risked our lives to protect.We have served beside Muslim Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airmen. The success of our mission, and the safety of our lives have depended on Muslim translators, who've risked their own lives and the lives of their families to help us. For the servicemembers currently deployed, the success of their mission and the safety of their lives depends on a basic respect for, and interaction with, Islamic culture.

Those that would vilify and target Muslims on grounds of their religious belief not only show a deep disrespect for American values but put American lives at risk. It's easy to burn a Koran when you won't feel the heat.We speak as infantrymen, truck drivers, medics, and the whole host of military professions that depend on good relations with a deeply religious Muslim population. That population sees the American flag we wear on our uniform and judges us, not only by our actions but on the values our nation upholds.

We must be able to point back home and say, these are the values we respect. Chief among those values is our courage as a nation to peacefully and openly engage with differences of culture and religion.How does the squad leader in Kandahar respond to the Afghan woman who asks why Americans burned her holy book?When Americans participate in hateful rhetoric and intolerance toward Muslims, it leaves us exposed.America, you gotta have our back.--

Roy Scranton, US Army Artillery, Iraq
Philip Klay, USMC Public Affairs Officer, Iraq
Perry O'Brien, US Army Medic (Airborne), Afghanistan
James Redden Jr., USAR Journalist, Iraq
Joshua Casteel, US Army Linguist, Iraq
Logan Mehl-Laituri, US Army Forward Observer, Iraq
Hart Viges, Army, Infantry (Airborne), Iraq
Jason M Wallace, US Air Force Maintenance, Kuwait
Chantelle Bateman, USMC Supply, Iraq
Geoffrey Millard, US Army Infantry, Iraq
Nicholas Przybyla, US Navy Cameraman, Pakistan Coast
John McClelland, US Army Medic (Ranger), Afghanistan and Iraq
Andrew Johnson, US Army Radar Technician, Iraq
Daniel Paulsen, US Army Medic (Airborne), Afghanistan
Fernando Braga, US Army Supply, Iraq
Maggie Martin, US Army Signal, Iraq
Adam Kokesh, USMC Civil Affairs, Iraq
Lisa Zepeda, US Army Lab Technician, Iraq
Brian Turner, US Army Infantry, Iraq
Matt Gallagher, US Army Cavalry Officer, Iraq
Michael Anthony Ruehrwein, US Army OR Tech, Iraq
Erika Sjolander, US Army Supply, Iraq
Bryan Reinholdt, US Army Apache Maintenance, Iraq
Jason Chambers, US Air Force Air Freight Specialist, Iraq
Joe Wheeler, US Army Surgical Assistant, Iraq
Ash Woolson, US Army Combat Engineer, Iraq
Chris Hellie, US Army Cavalry Officer, Iraq
Sara Beining, US Army Intelligence Analyst, Iraq
Helen Gerhardt, US Army Transport, Iraq
Garett Reppenhagen, US Army Cavalry Scout, Iraq
Groups:
New York City
Staff
Loading comments...

Problems loading Disqus?