Through the Eyes of Three Soldiers: A View of the Middle East
The view of the Middle East by Americans is a very broad spectrum as is evident by the encouragement and outrage over our current involvement. Here are three opinions of America and the Middle East, all soldiers, but all with very different stories.
The first solider to be interviewed is a 21 year old student who was Pakastani born but American raised. Coming from Pakistan at age 8, he grew to be an American soldier who served in Afghanistan.
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His view of the Middle East focused on social issues in America and how America influenced the Middle East. He became more educated while in college regarding the history of the Modern Middle East and that, combined with his time in Afghanistan seeing first hand the effect Americans have had, formed his opinions.
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The second soldier to be interviewed had to be over email due to distance and lack of internet connection. They are a 27 year old marine from Mississippi, who served, outside of America, in Afghanistan.
Before you joined the military, did you know anything about the Middle East or Islam?
More about the Middle East than Muslims specifically. The Middle East research I did tended to pertain to things like the Durand Line and the way national borders were determined, how that influenced the way the region was involved in the Cold War, and how it led to the modern regional instability. I had a basic understanding of Islam.
What media outlets did you hear from regarding the Middle East?
I heard things in general, most of it about how the Middle East related to international events. Mostly I got my information from NPR, the BBC World Service, and PBS. I never watched much cable news. We had a mandatory world history class in high school that covered the major world religions, including Islam. We mostly went over the life of Muhammed and the Five Pillars, basic stuff.
Did you know any Muslims prior to entering the service?
No, like I said before I knew about Islam but it wasn't really an issue that factored into daily life where I was from. I'd also never met a Jew, Catholic, Mormon, or Buddhist before I joined.
I think I became a lot more cynical about the likelihood of political and social progress being made there. I'm from a VERY religious area, but even that's blown out of the water when you compare it with how much religion is tied into culture and daily life in the Middle East. Everything is Insha'Allah, including you stubbing your toe in the morning or if you get a flat tire. That can be interpreted to mean that Allah doesn't want you to do whatever you had been planning on. It wasn't uncommon for people to turn around and go home, and that was considered an acceptable reason for not being somewhere or doing something.
You can't view religious identity by itself the way you do in the west. Religion is inherently sectarian and ethnic. There isn't the same separation between private and public life, and so organizations and voting almost universally falls along religious and ethnic lines. There isn't much of a pan-Islam mentality like you would find in other religious groups (the different sects of Jews, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists are all pretty open to working with each other or even or religions to achieve a common goal.) It's nigh on impossible to get different groups to work together because it's a tribalist society that also heavily mixes religious beliefs with ethnic and cultural identity.
It's also difficult because there are some toxic cultural views that end up getting appropriated into local/cultural religious practice. Things like female genital mutilation, bachi bazi (ritualized feminization and prostitution of young boys), refusing to educate women, and honor killings can have a lot of local religious support in a given area despite not being universal Islamic practice.
Born in the deep south as a preacher's son, their opinion regarding Muslims are usually portrayed as xenophobic without reason. Having a background of general knowledge of world events in the Middle East from widely considered liberal sources, they
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The third and final soldier is a Jewish, topic expert and ex-Navy who had agreed to tell me his story through a series of texts and phone calls due to his insanely busy schedule.
When did you first start learning about Islam or the Middle East? And what was your feeling of America's part in it?
My earliest thoughts on the Middle East date back to when I was in kindergarten to fourth grade
They were not on Islam, but the Middle East in general. I attended Hebrew school twice a week, and we would have speakers come in and talk about the Israeli army, or living in Israel and the founding of Israel. The only thoughts that I really had were regurgitation that Israel was right and her neighbors were wrong.
I went to a Jewish sleep away camp, where the different units were labeled after regions of Israel, again there was almost no talk of Islam or the greater Middle East, just Zionism, and a love for Israel, and that she was right. My first conscious knowledge of Islam came during boarding school. I had a friend named Kadyrov. His uncle was a colonel and then general in the caucus region of Russia responsible for the killings of many innocents. I did not realize the Chechen rebellion was over religion.
I took a religion class in my freshman year of high school, with him, and started to understand the religion of Islam and its intertwining of the political regimes in the Middle East region. As far as America, I grew up what I considered politically aware. More left of center, however I always thought America made more right choices than wrong choices. I felt we should have played a stronger role in the East African skirmishes of the 90s. In college I studied and further understood the importance of Islam in the middle east. I felt at the time that a peaceful solution to the entire region should be simple and obvious if both sides would just stop the bloodshed. Afte rthe attacks on 9/11 I wanted to understand Islam and its role in the war on terror. UP until this point, I assumed that A majority of Muslims help their religion the way I held my agnostic Judiasm. I thought that the vicious attacks were simply the results of political desperation.
Did your opinion change while in the military? Regarding any of it.
Well, I didn't meet any Muslims until prior to my first deployment. I met an Afghan Marine named Alec while in a school called DMOC, he spoke Khandhari Poshtu and his mother was a psychologist from Kandahar who had fled the country as it fell to the Taliban. There are many pictures of a peaceful, communist, and secular Afghanistan. He felt that the US was in the right at this point, and we used to talk about how the US fermented radical Islam and encouraged the taliban to fight the soviets. THis was prior to all the information about Senator Charlie Wilson and his arming of the Taliban coming public. So at this point, I was pretty confidant.
I lived throughout southern Afghanistan and I made very good friends with another Marine named Walid. His mother was from Helmand province and his father was a Russian soldier. THey fell in love and fled to the US. He and I used to have countless conversations about his religion in the region. I was more sympathetic to the people than he was. He had become an atheist, and blamed a lot of the regions issues on Islam in general. He didn't feel that there was a way to truly believe in the relgion and ever embrace western values. That said, a few years later he went back to the religion. I think western cultures (at times) have pushed Muslims to be more radical so they would help fight our enemies on religious grounds. But after they win....well, nevermind.
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