DAR AL HARB - U.S.A.: WEST POINT CADETS VISIT MOSQUES & WAKE UP TO MUZZEINS CALLS TO JIHAD

Cadets learn Islam to 'win the peace'
Hal C. McKenzie Desk Editor
April 11, 2007

More than a dozen West Point cadets spent three days at a Jersey City, N.J. mosque being immersed in the religious and cultural life of Islam, the highlight of a semester-long course entitled "Winning the Peace."

The cadets, who slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the prayer room, awoke to the sounds of the muzzein issuing the call to prayer in Arabic as bearded men filed in, kneeled and then bowed to the floor to begin their morning prayers, Religion News Service reported Wednesday.

"The timing of the wake-up was about right," said Cadet Brian Hughes, a senior who will be commanding a tank platoon in a few months, perhaps in Iraq or Afghanistan. "Everything that happened after that was unlike anything I'd ever experienced."

In addition to meeeting Muslims at the mosque, they observed prayers at a Hindu temple and an African-American church and met leaders and youth from the city's Indian, Pakistani and Egyptian Coptic Christian communities. Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy talked to them about governing a city where 50 languages are spoken.

The cadets slept two nights in the prayer room at the Islamic Center, formerly a Masonic Temple. They listened to a detailed presentation of Islam emphasizing its similarities to Christianity and Judaism.

"What you see in a mosque is the same thing you seen in a church or a temple. Good human beings who believe what they believe," said Ahmed Shedeed, the president of the Islamic Center. "When you really think about it, our differences in our beliefs are but small ones here and there."

The visit also exposed the cadets to some of the criticism they would encounter in the Middle East. During a question-and-answer session, Imam Mohamed Alhayek, a native of Jordan, told them he believed the United States should leave Iraq and had destabilized the region by supporting non-Islamic regimes.

Cadet Chris Beeler of Albany, NY, said, "Looking at when we came in, we understood we were going to war. But waking up this morning, it made me realize this is a culture I'm going to really need to know — and my soldiers are going to need to know."

The course and field trip are part of the military's realization that field troops must win the trust of locals to defeat an enemy hiding among them. "While our technological superiority and professionalism make us the greatest Army the world has ever known, this does not necessarily translate into success in stability, security, transition, reconstruction or peace operations," the course syllabus reads. "This course aims to fill that gap."

The elective course was first offered in 2003 after a West Point instructor who had just returned from a humanitarian exercise in Haiti saw a vast cultural gap between the soldiers and the Haitians they were trying to help. Col. Cindy Jebb, deputy head of West Point's department of social sciences, said the Army to prepare future officers to lead troops into many kinds of battles.

"In the 1990s, we as an Army went through a kind of schizophrenia. Are we war fighters? Or are we peacekeepers?" Jebb said. "It's clear right now that we're both."

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Pertinent Links:

1) Cadets learn Islam to 'win the peace'