The United West, an anti-Islamic organization led by Tom Tentro, will host an event in Tallahassee on the first day of Florida’s 2012 legislative session to honor members of the U.S. military who served in Iraq. The group has called for an investigation into U.S. Muslim organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations due to ties it alleges exist between them and the Muslim Brotherhood.

“The first time I met Tom, he was with his original organization the Florida Security Council, showing The Third Jihad,” Hamze said. The Third Jihad is a movie about “radical Islam’s vision for America.”

Hamze added that GOP Senate candidate Adam Hasner “was there, promoting the movie, making blanket statements of Muslims.”

He told the Independent that the narrative that CAIR is a terrorist organization made by individuals like Trento, the United West and Adam Hasner is ridiculous. “There is no serious law enforcement agencies that take any of those people seriously,” he said.

“That is how they win their vote,” Hamze said. “Adam Hasner is going all over the state propagating this Muslim Brotherhood threat, that they are coming to take over the United States, but the reality is there is no Muslim Brotherhood in Florida. T hey are grandstanding and sensationalizing.”

Hamze added that “unfortunately right now to bash Muslims, or bash Islam, has become mainstream GOP strategy. You have quote after quote from Republican presidential candidates that are absolutely ludicrous and fringe. It’s unfortunate because if you take those quotes and you replace Islam with Judaism or Christianity, it is completely unacceptable, but for some reason it has become mainstream in the GOP to attack Muslims.”

“The traditional Republican values of conservatism is where I align myself, with the traditional Republican Party platform and not necessarily the mouthpieces of the GOP of today,” Hamze said. “You take fiscal issues, spending issues, foreign policy and I will got toe to toe with any Republican out there.” He added that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and Ron Paul are two of the very few GOP leaders who do not use anti-Muslim rhetoric.

Last night, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart aired an episode on the decision by the Broward Republican Executive Committee to reject Hamze’s application to become a member of the Executive Committee and create a Muslim Republican Club last September:

Fischer wrote on Thursday:

Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.

Our government has no obligation to allow a treasonous ideology to receive special protections in America, but this is exactly what the Democrats are trying to do right now with Islam.

From a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America. They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked if, as is in fact the case, Islam is a totalitarian ideology dedicated to the destruction of the United States. The Constitution, it bears repeating, is not a suicide pact.

Later Thursday morning Bachmann joined Fischer for his radio show and confirmed the CNN report that she would be making the decision whether or not to run for president early this summer. Here’s the interview:

The AFA has been listed as a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center for making false statements about gays and lesbians, as well as Muslims.

At least one watchdog group has asked Bachmann and Pawlenty, who appeared on Fischer’s radio show in January, to publicly denounce Fischer’s extremism towards Muslim and LGBT Americans.

People for the American Way sent a letter to both asking them to refrain from attending events with Fischer and cited a year’s worth of his statements.

Fischer has said that no new mosques should be built in the U.S., that inbreeding has caused Muslims to be stupid and violent, that Muslims should be banned from serving in the U.S. military, and that all Muslims are traitors and should be deported from the U.S. He’s said that “homosexuals should be disqualified from public office,” that gays are biased, sexually deviant felons, not to mention pedophiles, and should never serve on the Supreme Court, that gay adoption is “a terrible, terrible, inexcusable, inhumane thing to do to children,” that legislators should “impose the same sanctions on those who engage in homosexual behavior as we do on those who engage in intravenous drug abuse,” that “gay sex is a form of domestic terrorism,” and that Hitler recruited homosexual soldiers because they “had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after.”

Neither Pawlenty’s nor Bachmann’s spokespeople returned requests by the Minnesota Independent for comment on Fischer’s latest statement.

This morning, Bachmann is speaking during the AFA’s Renewal Project event in West Des Moines.

He cited GOP efforts to curtail abortion rights, freedom of worship — particularly non-Christian faiths — and the right for same-sex couples to marry.

Crooks and Liars has the transcript of Ellison’s remarks:

Now see, the conservatives in this body, they like to talk about liberty. And then when they’re talking about liberty they’re not talking about a woman’s right to choose, ’cause that’s liberty. They’re not talking about the freedom of worship — to be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Bahai, no religion at all — they don’t believe in that. They believe in only one way to seek the divine and they get more radical with it every single day. They don’t believe in liberties like that. They don’t believe you should be able to say whatever you want to say, they don’t necessarily believe in the liberties that I’m talking about.

He added that “justice” in the pledge means for all and cited the controversial hearings into radicalized Islam held recently.

Now, this last part in some ways is the best part. For all. For every one. Last week we had some hearings in the Homeland Security Committee where one particular religious group was pointed out for persecution, actually. That was a sad day.

For all, though. America is about for all. For everybody. All Americans. Of whatever faith group, of whatever color, of whatever — rural or urban. Straight, gay, all of us.

Here’s the full video:

Rep. Keith Ellison is known for his impassioned speeches, especially when it comes to religion. At last summer’s General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association in Minneapolis, his fiery speech about Christianity touched on themes of unity and love. But today he testified not with bravado but through tears at New York Republican Rep. Peter King’s controversial Homeland Security Committee hearings on Muslim-American “radicalization.” Ellison, Congress’ first Muslim member, broke down while telling the story of 23-year-old Muslim American paramedic Mohammad Salman Hamdani, who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

A first responder, Hamdani — who loved the Star Wars movies and sang in Handel’s “Messiah,” Ellison said, and “wanted to be seen as an All-American kid” — was initially thought by some to be involved in the attacks.

“Some people spread false rumors that speculated that he was in league with the attackers because he was Muslim,” Ellison said. “But it was only when his remains were identified that these lies were exposed. Mohammad Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans. His life should not be identified as just a member of an ethnic group or just a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow Americans.”

The hearings have been “pilloried as an exercise in attention-grabbing ethnic-baiting and scapegoating and as an essentially unfair government-sanctioned exercise in Islamophobia,” as John Tomasic writes at the Colorado Independent. King, who is chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, defended the hearings today.

“To back down would be a craven surrender to political correctness and an abdication of what I believe to be the main responsibility of this committee — to protect America from a terrorist attack,” he said. “Despite what passes for conventional wisdom in certain circles, there is nothing radical or un-American in holding these hearings.”

Update: Minneapolis DFLers have offered their take on the hearings and Ellison’s words. “It’s simply wrong to single out the Muslim community,” said Rep. Phyllis Kahn in a statement. “Terrorism knows no single race, creed, or religion and alienating an entire population is not only incredibly intolerant and unjust, it undermines our goals of preventing terrorism here and abroad.”

“The Muslim community doesn’t deserve this treatment,” said Rep. Jim Davnie. “As Representative Ellison pointed out, they have helped foil several terror plots since 9/11. The Minneapolis Muslim community has developed a solid, trusting relationship with law enforcement, and hearings like these jeopardize that relationship.”

“I’m proud to stand with my US Representative and stand with our Muslim community,” said Rep. Karen Clark. “These are our friends, neighbors, colleagues and fellow citizens who deserve our respect, not suspicion and witch hunts.”

Carl Paladino, the Tea Party-inspired candidate in New York’s GOP gubernatorial primary, has cut what appears to be the first political ad referencing the Cordoba House (a.k.a. the Ground Zero mosque).

The ad, which is running across New York State except in Paladino’s native Buffalo, says, “As governor, I will use the power of eminent domain to stop the mosque and to use the site as a memorial instead of a monument to those who attacked our country.”

According to Slate, there’s not much opponents can do to stop the mosque at this point — the area is already commercially zoned to allow a religious site, the Landmark Preservation Commission voted not to give the building landmark status, and the 2000 Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act prevents religious discrimination in land-use decisions. Or as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked rhetorically at a speech on Governor’s Island Tuesday, “Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion?”

Paladino has at least some chance of upsetting GOP-endorsed candidate Lazio in the New York State GOP primary September 14: The latest Quinnipac poll showed Lazio leading Paladino 39-23 percent, but 28 percent of Republican primary voters were undecided.

Unlike Lazio, Paladino considers himself a member of the Tea Party, which could well organize to get out the vote for him. The news this April that Paladino sent racist and sexually-explicit e-mails around to friends (including racist images of President Obama) led many people to see him as a sideshow, but he managed to collect enough signatures to get on the ballot. He also has pledged to spend up to $10 million of his estimated $150 million wealth in the campaign, and as Jesse Zwick wrote earlier this week, self-financed candidates, usually losers, might actually win their races this year.

This story originally appeared at The American Independent.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday (epa/ZUMApress.com)

A year after President Obama’s speech in Cairo vowing to reset relations with the Muslim world, Muslims worldwide are telling pollsters about their disillusionment with what they consider unfulfilled expectations.

According to the Pew Center’s new survey of global attitudes (PDF), released Thursday morning, citizens of Muslim nations report disproportionate antipathy to Obama’s foreign policy. With the exception of Indonesia, where Obama spent a portion of his childhood, Muslims are the exceptions to the Pew poll’s findings that eighteen months of the Obama administration have seen a surge of international support for the United States after the public-opinion troughs of the Bush administration.

[Security1] “The Pew results reflect growing dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies, as many Arabs and Muslims are disappointed that Obama has not lived up to his promises, especially on the Arab-Israeli conflict,” said Marc Lynch, a George Washington University professor and the co-author of a recent Center for a New American Security report measuring Obama’s global engagement efforts. “They don’t see his actions matching his words, and until they do then it isn’t likely that there will be a sustained recovery in America’s image.”

In Jordan, the U.S. approval rating has fallen to 21 percent. It’s at 17 percent, the lowest of any countries Pew surveyed, in Turkey, Egypt and Pakistan. And this comes after the Obama administration has presided over the largest non-military aid package to Pakistan — the $7.5 billion, five-year Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill — in history.

“Opposition to key elements of U.S. foreign policy remains pervasive,” Pew analyzes, “and many continue to perceive the U.S. as a potential military threat to their countries.”

The news is not universally negative. Nigerian Muslims give Obama a 70 percent approval rating, up from 61 percent in 2009. But they’re the outliers. In Egypt and Lebanon, Obama’s ascendance — and the departure of George W. Bush — elevated Muslim attitudes toward the U.S. somewhat: 25 percent of Egyptians reported favorable opinions of the U.S. in 2009, up from 20 percent a year earlier; Lebanese Muslims in 2008 had given the U.S. a 34 percent favorability rating, which rose to 47 percent in 2008. Now Egyptian Muslims have reverted to their pre-Obama 20 percent favorability rating. Lebanese Muslims have settled into a 39 percent favorability rating.

More ominous from the perspective of Obama’s Cairo speech, Muslims express a sentiment directly opposite the speech’s offer of partnership: They fear that the U.S. will attack them. Majorities, and sometimes large ones, of respondents in Egypt (56 percent), Lebanon (56 percent), Indonesia (76 percent), Pakistan (65 percent), Jordan (52 percent) and Turkey (56 percent) believe the U.S. is a potential military threat. That shouldn’t be surprising: Pakistan, despite being a Major Non-NATO Ally of the U.S., is currently battered in its tribal areas by CIA drone strikes, a step the U.S. has taken in response to what it considers insufficient Pakistani military action against al-Qaeda-aligned extremist groups. In Cairo, Obama pledged that the U.S. “is not, and never will be, at war with Islam,” but many Muslims worldwide believe that the U.S. still has them in its crosshairs.

Support for the Afghanistan war and U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Muslim countries is also anemic. Lebanon is the only Muslim country surveyed by Pew where even 20 percent believe that the U.S. should keep fighting in Afghanistan. (Neighboring Pakistan? Seven percent.) While support for U.S. counterterrorism efforts have grown in non-Muslim countries since Obama took office, it’s at 18 percent in Egypt, 12 percent in Jordan, and 47 percent among Nigerian Muslims.

Several counterterrorism experts believe the U.S.’s counterterrorism efforts will ultimately be hobbled if they run into a headwind of Muslim antipathy. Malcolm Nance, a retired veteran military intelligence officer who served in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the Middle East, argues in a new book that rather than attempt to change Muslim attitudes, a more productive strategy would involve moving the conversation to al-Qaeda’s apostasy. Nance code-names this approach CIRCUIT BREAKER, and writes in “An End to Al-Qaeda” that subjecting al-Qaeda to a “deep analytical dissection of their religious motives” can provide a path to “a new era for reconciliation and cooperation with the Muslim street.” It would also provide a platform for popular acquiescence to military or intelligence action against al-Qaeda — or at least limit blowback from it.

The administration appears to be attentive to the challenges, even if it hasn’t figured out a programmatic way to overcome them. Last month, the Pentagon quietly established a new office to ensure that military efforts don’t inadvertently undermine the administration’s broader promotion of the rule of law around the world.

Lynch, who also recently evaluated Obama’s counterterrorism efforts for CNAS partially through the prism of Muslim acquiescence, disputed that the Pew numbers demonstrate that Obama’s outreach to the Muslim world was in vain. “It’s more that he said he would do things, but thus far hasn’t delivered,” Lynch said, “so the words lose their meaning. It’s a real problem for the broader counterterrorism strategy, since winning over mainstream support is absolutely key to the strategy.”

Among Muslim publics – except in Indonesia where Obama lived for several years as a child –  the modest levels of confidence and approval observed in 2009 have slipped markedly. In Egypt the percentage of Muslims expressing confidence in Obama fell from 41% to 31% and in Turkey from 33% to 23%. Last year only 13% of Pakistani Muslims expressed confidence in Obama, but this year even fewer (8%) hold this view. And while views of Obama are still more positive than were attitudes toward President Bush among most Muslim publics, significant percentages continue to worry that the U.S. could become a military threat to their country.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee about the war in Afghanistan on Dec. 2. (Oscar Matatquin/ZUMA Press)

It sounded like a throwaway line in President Obama’s West Point address about the Afghanistan war. “It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak,” the president said, tying his troop increase in Afghanistan to direct threats to U.S. national security. “In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror.”

That was all Obama said about the relationship between al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in the Pakistani tribal areas and potential domestic terror attacks. But at a Congressional hearing shortly afterward, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton cited those same recent arrests in the United States to argue for the wisdom of the administration’s strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The extremist “syndicate” headed by al-Qaeda and located in the Waziristan region of Pakistan has an “unmatched” capability to export terrorist activities to “Yemen, Somalia, or, indeed, Denver.” That was a reference to Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year old Afghan-American whom authorities charged in September for conspiring with members of al-Qaeda to pull off a terrorist attack.

[Security1]Zazi’s case is part of a recent and rapid upswing of announced arrests of American Muslims suspected of involvement with extremism, including in Chicago and Minneapolis, where young Muslims have been accused of aiding anti-Indian terror groups and al-Qaeda-linked Somali militants. Dramatically, last week, Pakistani authorities arrested five young Virginians whom they claim were seeking to liaise with al-Qaeda in the tribal areas. Those arrests prompted stories this weekend in The Washington Post and The New York Times asking whether American Muslims’ resistance to extremism has frayed in recent years.

But current and former counterterrorism officials and al-Qaeda experts warn that while the Pakistani tribal areas represent the center of international Islamic terrorist extremism, its connections to recent domestic terror threats are more ambiguous than the administration has recently portrayed. And they add that the recent arrests indicate a silver lining: intelligence and law enforcement are increasingly equipped to intercept domestic terror threats, particularly if they have some tie to al-Qaeda in Pakistan, raising questions about how potent a threat al-Qaeda remains.

Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials who have testified before Congress this year, is under significant threat in the Pakistani tribal areas. Pakistan’s Army has reinvaded those areas and forcibly confronted its allies in the Pakistani Taliban, constricting al-Qaeda’s freedom of action. The CIA and the military’s Joint Special Operations Command have harassed al-Qaeda and its allies for the past two years, primarily through missiles fired from unmanned aerial vehicles. Most recently, a strike Tuesday may have killed al-Qaeda’s chief liaison to its affiliate in Yemen.

If so, the targeting will have highlighted a revealing fact about al-Qaeda eight years after 9/11: boxed into the tribal areas, the organization seeks less to pull off major terrorist attacks than to inspire and in some cases fund them. It has inspired a multiplicity of extremist websites, allowing people worldwide — including in the U.S. — access to its propaganda. And it also seeks to establish a presence in Muslim countries like Yemen and Somalia, often by offering financial or training support to existing extremist groups outside Pakistan. While those two approaches offer al-Qaeda a continued lease on life, analysts say they also dilute al-Qaeda’s brand and raise questions about the actual degree of danger it still poses.

“The tendency to lump all threats in to one big bin” ultimately “hurts the policy and strategy decision process,” said one U.S. counterterrorism official who requested anonymity because he was not cleared to talk to the media. Instead, “We need to better understand the motivation, goals, and links — where they exist– of the disparate groups from al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb to [the Somali group] al-Shabab and criminal networks in [the Horn of Africa] to Pakistani opposition/terrorist groups and to the various Taliban in Afghanistan.”

Indeed, Marc Sageman, a former CIA official and terrorism researcher affiliated with several universities and think tanks, testified in October to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the number of successful al-Qaeda attacks in the past 15 years was significantly smaller than the number of successful attacks carried out by al-Qaeda-affiliated or al-Qaeda-inspired organizations. Furthermore, only 22 percent of attacks by terrorist groups with worldviews similar to al-Qaeda’s over the past five years actually tied back to al-Qaeda itself, according to Sageman’s research. In an interview with TWI, Sageman said that Clinton’s testimony “an oversimplification to the point that the truth is unrecognizable.”

The Obama administration is mischaracterizing the terrorist threat to get the public to back escalating the Afghanistan war, Sageman said. “Secretary Clinton’s distortions are typical of a politician,” he said, “who distorts reality to muster support for a policy.”

But al-Qaeda’s message is finding at least some appeal, however marginal, among American Muslims in their teens and 20s, more than it did to their older brothers, cousins or fathers. “Those people were 10 years old when 9/11 happened” and have since “felt like they grew up under a cloud of suspicion because of their religion.” said a former counterterrorism official who declined to speak for the record. Those individuals — whom the ex-official clarified were “a few bad apples” among millions of law-abiding American Muslims — “saw issues like torture, Guantanamo, and Iraq and decided to react because they lacked an understanding of history, and view things instead from a conspiratorial view and are open to being radicalized.” By contrast, the older generation — the families of the five Virginians — were encouraged to go to the FBI with their worries about their children’s travel to Pakistan after the prompting of a major American Muslim lobby group, the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Like in the United Kingdom, the ex-official said, where in 2005 homegrown radicals like Mohammed Sidique Khan perpetrated the July 7 London bombings with direct aid from al-Qaeda, the recent American Muslim arrests show some youths “felt discriminated against and tried to find their roots somewhere else, and they went back to the Pashtun tribes.”

But their ability to pull off terrorist attacks after making contact with al-Qaeda may not be as great as the administration as the Obama administration portrayed. Of all the recent arrests, only one, a Chicagoan named David Coleman Headley, had any involvement in a successful attack, the mass killings in Mumbai last November, an attack not believed to be connected to al-Qaeda. Neither did the only successful case of post-9/11 violence by a radicalized American Muslim: the shootings at Ft. Hood last month by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. In the other cases, from Zazi to the Virginians arrested in Pakistan, intelligence and law enforcement were able to monitor and then arrest suspicious individuals before any attacks occurred.

“Zazi is interesting in this respect,” said Leah Farrall, a former senior al-Qaeda analyst with the Australian Federal Police. Farrall said she would watch Zazi’s forthcoming trial for clues to how al-Qaeda actually reaches out to Muslims in America. “Did he meet an Afghan gatekeeper or an al-Qaeda linked gate keeper? Whatever the case, he either met them in the U.S. or online. These things are crucial to understanding the threat posed.”

All that points to a poor prognosis for al-Qaeda, even if younger American Muslims are somewhat more prone to radicalization, according to the former counterterrorism official.

“Al-Qaeda’s are capabilities basically almost nothing these days,” the ex-official said. “Sure, they’ve got a couple good operatives, and maybe will try to pull something big to make themselves relevant again … If we make them appear relevant — they’re at war with the greatest country on earth — then guess what? They’re gonna be big.” Instead, the ex-official continued, “if we treat them as insignificant, small, pathetic men with nothing to do with Islam, they’ll lose their relevance.”

iStockphoto

Jamal Baadani was driving home from work outside Washington on November 5 when a friend called to tell him a gunman had shot up the Army base at Fort Hood, Texas. It didn’t take long for Baadani to learn that the suspect, Nidal Malik Hasan, was an Arab-American, a Muslim, and a member of the U.S. military. In other words, nothing like him and everything like him, all at once.

“I was just praying, man,” recalled Baadani, 45, a sergeant in the Marine Corps Reserve. “That’s just been my worst nightmare.”

[Security1]Three weeks after Hasan allegedly killed 13 people and wounded 40, even more aspects of that nightmare threaten to come true. Prominent elements of the conservative movement, particularly from the Christian right, have suggested that Arab-Americans and Muslim Americans, and especially those in the military, ought to pay for the crime. An official with a conservative organization, the American Family Association, wrote, “It is time, I suggest, to stop the practice of allowing Muslims to serve in the U.S. military.” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, asked at a congressional hearing last week if “political correctness” had prevented the military from addressing Hasan’s extremism before the shooting. More intimations of collective punishment are possible if and when Hasan stands trial. For Arab-Americans and other Muslims serving in the military, the post-Ft. Hood pressures are rising.

But Baadani and some of his Arab and Muslim friends in uniform consider it, in President Obama’s occasional phrase, a teachable moment. They are muting their frustration at having to demonstrate their patriotism in public, preferring to answer uncomfortable questions in order to promote cross-cultural unity, something they consider an opportunity that comes with the uniform they wear. After all, Colin Powell cited a New Yorker photo essay of the crescent-engraved headstones of American Muslim troops who died in Iraq and Afghanistan as an example of the national unity he hoped to inspire by voting for Obama last year.

“If we’re looking to heal divides and bridge gaps, I’m out there every day educating people about our history, culture and contributions to America,” said Baadani, the founder of the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military, the support and outreach group he formed after 9/11. “We don’t have to prove we’re not terrorists. We have to prove we’re willing to work to educate our fellow countrymen.”

APAAM is an informal network Baadani put together both to provide support for other Arab and Muslim-American service personnel and to show other American communities that their communities eagerly serve in the military. It takes no money and has only as many as 200 members — active and retired military — around the country representing the group. Its outreach efforts, Baadani said in an interview, are mostly centered on the group’s website, which features stories of prominent Arab and Muslim American officers like Gen. John Abizaid, who served as commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East from 2003 to 2007. Baadani is an eager proponent of not letting even minor slights go unanswered. He replied to a derogatory email forward by writing respectfully to its author, “As a Muslim American Marine, I have lead Marines in combat on numerous occasions and since 9/11, I participated in counter-terrorism operations to pursue those terrorist bastards who attacked our country … The attachments I sent you will give you some other information regarding Muslim patriotism in helping defend our country.”

The military does not keep statistics on how many Arab-Americans or Muslims serve in its ranks. APAAM’s website estimates that 3,500 Arab-Americans and 6,000 Muslims currently serve in the military. It’s a sensitive subject. Baadani even said that he was a Methodist before his first deployment overseas, to Lebanon in 1984, explaining that he “didn’t want to attract attention to myself.” Post-Ft. Hood, the military has shown additional signs of apprehension about discussing Arab and Muslim Americans in the ranks. Although an Air Force sergeant based in Florida named Bassel Noori expressed interest in commenting for this piece, Noori’s chain of command denied a request for an interview. The Air Force, explained a public-affairs officer for Nouri’s unit, did not want to appear to be expressing a perspective on what it considered an internal Army matter.

That sensitivity makes APAAM all the more important to its members. One of Baadani’s first recruits was Ace Montasser, a Marine from Brooklyn, N.Y., whom Baadani met when both were stationed at Camp Lejeune, N.C., shortly after the 9/11 attacks. “I was just a Marine under his wing,” remembered Montasser, an Iraq veteran and a 27-year-old radio DJ in Detroit. Baadani got in touch the old fashioned way: he knew Montasser’s cousin, and so placed a phone call asking if the young Marine would be interested in helping form a support organization for servicemembers like them. The organization grew from there, through family contacts and emails to friends. Media appearances soon followed, as reporters called for feature pieces about American Muslim military service.

Like several interviewed for this article, Montasser said his fellow Marines “never had an issue” with his heritage. Nidal Allis, a former Air Force intelligence expert who served in the Pentagon on 9/11, said the worst he has experienced was ignorant comments on his Facebook page from non-servicemembers. Indeed, it has been notable how in the wake of Ft. Hood, the most prominent military voices have been those like Gen. George Casey, the Army’s chief of staff, who said in a televised interview that the Army had to take care not to indicate an unwelcomeness to Arabs and Muslims. Baadani said the Marine Corps reached out to him in 2006 to help advise the service on Middle East culture while Marines serve in Iraq. Many APAAM non-online events, accordingly, come at the military’s behest, like the post-Iftar feasts hosted either at the Pentagon or at military events in Muslim countries.

Baadani hastened to add that he has not received additional accounts about internal military discrimination against Arabs and Muslims after Ft. Hood. But Allis said that he felt as if Hasan’s alleged crimes have cast a dark cloud over him. “Personally, it’s been a little challenging,” said Allis, 34, who owns his own technology company in Colorado. “I have the same first name as him. He comes from the same village my family comes from, which is in Palestine. There’s definitely been some pressure. You see it on CNN, ‘can you truly trust Muslims,’ but they forget Muslims have been fighting for this country since the Revolutionary War.”

Montasser feared for his mother, whose headscarf, he worried, might make her a target. “It’s bad enough what the media is doing to us right now, but he made it worse,” Montasser said of Hasan. “He just ruined and trampled our reputation even more. He’s made it so much harder. Arabs are not going to feel safe on the street.”

Some writers have suggested after Ft. Hood that Muslim soldiers should receive exemptions from serving in Muslim countries after accounts emerged of Hasan’s distress of a possible deployment to Afghanistan. In 2004, the Army convicted a sergeant named Abdullah Webster of violating a lawful order after Webster said his religious beliefs prevented him from serving in Iraq. But Allis blasted the idea of Muslims opting out for service in Muslim countries for the impact it would have on military discipline.

“If you’re signing up to defend this country as I did, you take on that uniform with the risk you may have to go in and fight,” Allis said. “If you have problems with that, you shouldn’t sign up.”

While the military has not indicated that it will place additional scrutiny on Arabs or Muslims, some senators at a Government Reform Committee hearing last week endorsed the creation of guidelines for the military to recognize Islamic extremism. But the hearing was light on details on what “warning signs” might be part of those guidelines, although Jack Keane, an influential retired senior Army general who helped spearhead a crackdown on white supremacists in the Army, said it would be helpful for the military to create them.

Baadani declined to comment on developments in the Senate, saying he wanted to focus on engaging and educating those who distrust Arabs and Muslims, rather than appearing political. “I approach it from the perspective of tearing down a wall, and the only way to do that is to respect one another,” he said. “I just ask people [to] hear me out. That’s the approach I always take, and the example I set. You can’t change someone’s mindset by calling someone a racist — they get defensive, draw lines, dig their heels in.”

Instead, Baadani said, he hoped APAAM would continue to provide information on its website about Arab and Muslim contributions to America. But he added that he felt the environment for Arab and Muslim-Americans is much better now than after 9/11, even in the aftermath of Ft. Hood.

“The backlash towards our community is nowhere even close,” Baadani said. “I attribute that to the intellect and the resiliency of the American people. And that’s why I’m proud to be an American.”

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