Arizona Islamist Media- (Issue No. 1.5)– Local Muslim Voice continues anti-military extreme bias

The following are excerpts from an article in the February 2006 local Muslim Voice entitled: “ﾓMilitary forces criticized as a persistent problem for every day youthﾔ. ﾓThey want you! The military wants people to join now more than ever. With the ongoing war in Iraq, and people being killed and the militaryﾒs numberﾒs dwindling. The military is a great opportunityﾅif youﾒre moderately poor, and canﾒt afford college or if you just want to serve your country. Even though you would be fighting for a pointless war, and a brainless leader. Most of the people that join the service do so because the military offers to pay for your college once you are done serving.” “However, with the ongoing war, many may not even come back from the war and even be able to go to college and others may be so disabled that they will have to endure many months or even years of rehabilitationﾅ.ﾔ ﾓthough the DEP (delayed entry program) military policy clearly states that recruits are allowed to change their minds and not enlist, and the military recruiters who help the students sign up sometimes ﾑthreaten them , tinimdate them, and tell outright liesﾔ These are among the findings of a five-month investigation entitled ﾓGI Liesﾔ led by reporter Dale Russell of Fox 5 TV News.ﾔ ﾓThe military goes crazy when theyﾒre trying to recruit you, they wonﾒt stop calling you and sending you stuff,ﾔ Sunnyslope junior Amanda Nelson said. The military barges into peopleﾒs lives and wonﾒt leave them alone. ﾅ they donﾒt care how they do it, just as long as they do it.ﾔ AIFD Comment: While a few of our American military recruiters could be inappropriate in their tactics, this piece in distribution to the Muslim community malignantly paints a skewed picture of our entire military. In fact it baits the Muslim community to hate all military recruiters. If extreme opinions such as this were balanced by more positive truthful examples of the benefits of military service to our youth and service to our nation, this piece would be insignificant. But in the context of repeated anti-military polemics in this newspaper with no local rival, it is exceedingly harmful to the perceptions of the Muslim and Arab communities. There is no wonder the numbers of Muslim youth applying for our military academies, ROTC, and other military programs continues to be abysmal. This propaganda may sell and be inconsequential on Al Jazeera, but locally left without balance it only serves to drive a malignant wedge between our Muslim community and our American military. Anecdotal and sloppy reporting like this is intentionally placed in cultural newspapers by Islamists in order to turn off any interest potential local moderate Muslim youth may have in serving their nation in the military. This piece is an example of the repeated subversion of the image of the American military by some of those who have never served and have no first hand knowledge of their biases. This article and its views run at the core of the war of ideas that we need to wage against the Islamists and the threat which their ideology poses to our youth and to our security. If Islamists succeed in destroying the image of our American military within the local Muslim youth, enlistment in the armed forces will be a rare occurrence from our youth and greatly discouraged by their parents and family. The one-sided nature of this type of negative propaganda within the Muslim community should no longer be unopposed. It is time for the Muslim community to be exposed to other viewpoints about the honor and distinction of serving in uniform with any branch of our armed services. It is in fact the deep tradition of voluntary military service from American families from across our nation which is the backbone of our strength as a democracy. Demonizing the military is akin to demonizing the American people. As the only print so far in the Valley speaking specifically to the Muslim community in Arizona, this cannot represent the majority of Muslims in the Valley and their viewpoint of the honor of serving in the U.S. military. In fact, many American Muslims serve today proudly in active duty. However, one would be hard pressed to ever find a positive piece in the Muslim Voice about our brave soldiers who protect our nation and fight radical islamists abroad. A balanced debate about the activities and conduct of our armed services is always healthy in a democracy; however, constant one-sided discouragement from service and dissemination of blatant prejudice and bias against our military is a disservice to our nation and to our security. Until our Muslim youth are encouraged to participate more readily in our armed services this type of hate will continue. Until our Muslim youth begin to personally testify to their own families and thought leaders in our community of their positive experiences in serving their nation, the conspiracy theory mentality upon which all of this hate is based will continue to certainly propagate. Meanwhile, back at home, local Islamists will continue to disseminate this type of vitriol and keep the divide of hate wide between American Muslims and the U.S. military wide rather than encourage participation in the most direct form of fulfillment of their citizenship oath- military service.