The ignorance of Andrea Elliott in this report is staggering.
Then her world unraveled. Separated from her husband, who had taken a second wife, and torn from her children, she moved to Brooklyn to start over. Struggling to survive on her own, she answered a recruiting ad for the Army and enlisted in May. Hamdan's passage through the military is a remarkable act of reinvention. It required courage and sacrifice. She had to remove her hijab, the headscarf that is a sacred symbol of the faith she holds deeply. At the age of 39 she had to embrace an arduous and unfamiliar life.
In return, she sought what the military has always promised new soldiers: a stable home, an adoptive family, a remade identity. She left one male-dominated culture for another, she said, in the hope of finding new strength along the way.
Elliot wants to plant the idea that only the poor join the military. She's spreading myths about our soldiers More here and here. Later on you learn the Army wanted her because she spoke Arabic. And what's all this twadle about a stable home, adoptive family and a remade identity? Elliot's implying that those that join the Army come from broken homes, are foster children or are escaping from the law.
Elliot, like most in the media and government, has yet to learn that the veil is not a religious symbol but a radical political statment, is not in the Koran or Islamic law, is banned in some Muslim countries and Muslim scholars attest to all this.
Elliot then drops this on us.
It helped, Hamdan thought, that there were so many similarities between Islam and the Army.
Well, except that in the Army you're allowed to practice whatever religion you want, gays are barely tolerated but at least they're not hung and women are treated as equals instead of being stoned to death for adultry. Yeah, there a lot alike alright.
Continuing her trip down the yellow brick road...
Soldiers, like Muslims, were instructed to eat with one hand. The women ate apart from the men and always walked with an escort, as Muslim women traditionally travel.
I hate to tell you this Elliot but this is done in boot camp and basic training. Once in a regular outfit, this is not the case.
Are you gagging yet? No? Ok, here's more to choke you.
The Army taught soldiers to live with order. They folded their fatigues as women folded their hijabs and woke before sunrise as Hamdan had all her life. They always marched behind a flag, as Muslims had done in the days of the Prophet.
Nothing felt more familiar than the military's emphasis on respect. Soldiers learned to tuck their hands behind their backs when speaking to superiors. When Hamdan tried this with Brannon, she thought of her father. Her eyes automatically dropped to the floor, with customary Muslim modesty.
Excuse me while I visit the toliet.
The difference is Elliot, the Army is marching behind the American flag of freedom which is not out to conquer the world, while the black flag of Islam stands for subjugating the world. And Hamdan isn't dropping her eyes out of modesty but out of fear and oppression.
After all of Elliots fawning over Islam, she relates this nugget.
Brannon, an African-American Baptist from North Carolina, had never met a Muslim before coming to Lackland. He soon concluded that the Muslim women in his charge had survived greater struggles outside the military than anything they would face inside it.
"They've been through a lot," he said.[...]
"It seems like a heavy burden has been lifted from her," Brannon said.
"Greater struggles", "been through a lot" and "a heavy burden"? Why whatever on earth are they talking about? I thought Islam was the religion of peace and tolerance, order, piety and all united behind one big flag? Elliot, you can't have it both ways. Perhaps the fact that, as a Muslim woman, she is not eaqual to a man and as such has to avert her gaze, tolerate many wives, lose her children and eventually be cast out.
Yeah, Elliot, the Army and Islam are a lot alike - in your left wing dellusional brain.
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