Army Pvt. Naser Abdo, a 20-year-old member of the storied 101st Airborne Division, received CO status because he claimed that Sharia law will not permit him to kill fellow Muslims. Writing in the Washington Times, retired Adm. James A. Lyons says the Army’s decision implicitly concedes that Sharia law trumps the Constitution and the oath a soldier takes to defend the United States against all enemies. CO status for Abdo, he argues, sanctions sedition.
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The Case
After Abdo refused to deploy to Afghanistan and declared himself a conscientious objector, the Army deferred his deployment to investigate the case. The Army permitted Abdo to hide in the burqa because it was worried he would endanger his life or the lives of his fellow soliders, the Associated Press reported, adding,
A recommendation from the commander of his battalion’s rear detachment based at Fort Campbell said if Abdo deployed to a combat zone, he could jeopardize the lives of fellow soldiers as well as his own because of his convictions as a conscientious objector.
Although Abdo joined the military thinking he could be a soldier and a Muslim, he determined, having suddenly studied his religion, that such was not the case. “Abdo cited Islamic scholars and verses from the Koran as reasons for his decision to ask for separation,” the AP reported. “I realized through further reflection that God did not give legitimacy to the war in Afghanistan, Iraq or any war the U.S. Army would conceivably participate in,” he wrote.
Encouraging Sedition
Lyons says the Army has erred greatly in giving Abdo what he wants. The former commander of the Pacific Fleet, Lyons says Abdo’s CO status recognizes the legitimacy of the arguments put forth by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, the Muslim jihadist who killed 14 at Fort Hood in November 2009. He had given presentations suggesting that Muslims soldiers could not kill other Muslims.
The fact that Shariah law is totally incompatible with the U.S. Constitution and has no legal basis in the United States was somehow overlooked in the Army’s decision process. Shariah is a totalitarian legal-military-political system that is designed to control every aspect of an individual’s life and is antithetical to our concept of freedom and democracy. By its dictates, Shariah is seditious.
By acceding to the dictates of Shariah, the Army has tacitly endorsed an absurd position that in effect sanctions Muslim service members to kill non-Muslims but forbids them to kill Muslims. Further, it is an unbelievable basis on which to classify them as conscientious objectors.
When Pfc. Abdo enlisted, he stated he initially believed that he could be a soldier and a Muslim at the same time. What changed his vision? He stated that his understanding of Islam “changed” as he went through training ahead of a planned deployment to Afghanistan. He worried whether going to war was the right thing to do. …
By granting conscientious objector status to Pfc. Abdo, the Army is tacitly accepting a key tenet of the Islamic doctrine of jihad, as embraced by al Qaeda and other terrorists groups, which states that any incursion by non-Muslims into the Islamic lands makes it the duty for all Muslims to fight the “occupiers.” This view is shared by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has challenged American efforts in Afghanistan as “unwelcome outsiders,” in effect, occupiers.
Lyons reports that Abdo likely received guidance from one the Army’s Muslim chaplains, who were “personally selected” for the chaplaincy by Abdurahman Alamoudi, who is serving 23 years in prison for terrorist fundraising.
According to Discover the Networks, Alamoudi created the Muslim chaplains program in 1991. Alamoudi “established the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC), whose purpose was to ‘certify Muslim chaplains hired by the military.’”
In 1993 the Defense Department certified Alamoudi's AMAFVAC as one of two organizations — along with the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences — authorized to approve and endorse Muslim chaplains. Among the chaplains endorsed by Alamoudi's group was James Yee, who eventually would be arrested in 2003 on suspicion of espionage.
Hasan
The connection between Abdo’s legal argument and of Hasan’s adamantly expressed views is alarming, as Lyons reports. In February, a Senate report said the FBI Joint Task Forces on Terrorism should have stopped Hasan before he began murdering his fellow soldiers while shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” meaning "Allah is the greatest."
Reported the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee:
Evidence of Hasan’s radicalization to violent Islamist extremism was on full display to his superiors and colleagues during his military medical training. An instructor and a colleague each referred to Hasan as a “ticking time bomb.” Not only was no action taken to discipline or discharge him, but also his Officer Evaluation Report sanitized his obsession with violent Islamist extremism into praiseworthy research on counterterrorism.
The Senate report also said, “DoD possessed compelling evidence that Hasan embraced views so extreme that it should have disciplined him or discharged him from the military, but DoD failed to take action against him.”
Hasan had offered his colleagues a slide presentation, “The Koranic World View as It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military,” to explain why Muslim soldiers must be granted CO status. One of the slides said “fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam.” Said another, “Muslims soldiers must not serve in any capacity that renders them at risk of hurting/killing believers unjustly.”
The Army and FBI were well aware of Hasan’s commitment to jihad and did nothing.
Now, Lyons says, the Army has validated Hasan’s ideology by granting Abdo’s request to be declared a conscientious objector.
Child Pornography
After the Army accommodated Abdo’s claim, it found he possessed child pornography and recommended he be court martialed. He will also face charges for going AWOL. These criminal accusations have delayed his discharge.
But Lyons argues that the child pornography charge is no surprise: “Shariah sanctions marriage of girls 9 years old and younger, in effect, legalized pedophilia.” Islam’s founder, Mohammed, married his “favorite wife,” A’isha, when she was 6 or 7 years old, and consummated the marriage when she was 9. Mohammed was 54.
Photo of Muslim chaplains: AP Images
