Army Muslim Recruitment Drive Mysteriously Fails

NOBODY could have been particularly surprised to read the following statement (from The Daily Telegraph):

'The Army is facing fresh claims of a recruitment crisis after the failure of a high-profile campaign to get Muslims to join up. Only a handful of the 200,000-strong Islamic community in the Midlands have joined the Army since the first recruitment drive aimed specifically at Muslims last year, it emerged... It is thought that many did not want to join up because they
opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are just 330 Muslims in the entire Armed Forces.'

It will be recalled that in July 2006 Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi of the Royal Signals, a Briton of Pakistani ethnicity, was killed fighting Islamists in Afghanistan. Within hours of the news reaching the UK a website run by those pleasant chaps in Al Ghurabaa' had, in a distasteful stab at irony, denounced brave L/Cpl Hashmi as a 'home-grown terrorist'. Muslims in his hometown of Bordesley Green, Birmingham, also expressed their displeasure at L/Cpl Hashmi's career choice:

'I don't see how any Muslim can be in the British army, not with all the shit that's happening in Muslim countries. It doesn't make sense. It's not right. There's no space for Muslims in the army.'

This intolerance is not just reserved for those who dare to enlist in our Armed Forces either. In December last year a Muslim community worker in Waltham Forest, North-East London, spoke of his attempts to persuade his coreligionists to liaise with the local constabulary in the fight against Islamist violence. He was consequently branded an 'enemy' by his fellows for his efforts. The unnamed man complained: 'I am, at times, seen as the enemy and have to defend myself against criticism when I talk about both loyalty within our community and the loyalty we should show to the wider state' (full story). With the threat of social ostracism from their community, and even of wider familial liability, were they to join up, is it any wonder so few Muslims do? To be simultaneously patriotic and Muslim is, it would seem, an impossibility. Unless your patriotism is to the ummah, that is.