At the Navy Hospital in Bethesda yesterday, I couldn't believe my eyes--and not just because an opthamologist had dilated my pupils. A large poster at the bottom of an escalator near pharmacy read:

Pastoral Care Services invites you to celebrate

The Season of Hajj to Mecca

with a Luncheon

Monday, 30 November 2009

BRAL Journey Room

1200 to 1300

To make your reservation by Tuesday, 24 November 2009 at 1600,

please contact Pastoral Care Services at . . .

Accompanying the words was a large picture of bearded, white-robed men of Middle Eastern appearance, their hands raised in worship, against a background of mosques.

Hajj, according to Wikipedia, is "a pilgramage to Mecca" and is "the fifth pillar of Islam, a moral obligation....The Hajj is a demonstration of the solidarity of the Muslim people, and their submission to Allah."

My reaction to this poster was strong and, frankly, hostile, given what happened earlier this month at Ft. Hood, where the pastoral care staff has, I imagine, been occupied with comforting the wounded and the families of soldiers who were murdered by a fellow soldier who believed he was carrying out a moral obligation on behalf of Allah, and who believed that solidarity with fellow Muslims should be put ahead of loyalty to the country he volunteered, volunteered, to defend with his life.

Given what just happened at Ft. Hood, inviting U.S. soldiers to celebrate a Muslim religious obligation seems insensitive in the extreme. 

Since seeing the poster, I've been doing my best to analyze my reaction to it. I think that for the most part, I'm just angry at the political correctness that led to the Ft. Hood massacre. (See the Weekly Standard's in-depth piece, which reveals that Major Nidal Malik Hasan all but screamed "I'm going to kill the infidels!" and nobody did anything about it except worry about being viewed as a bigot. I'm angry because members of my own family might have been victimized by this lunatic--my husband was once stationed at Walter Reed, where Hasan worked for a number of years, and my children and I obtained our medical care there until we switched to the Navy Hospital a few years ago. I'm angry because who knows how many other Hasans there are out there, at U.S. bases all over the world, plotting slaughter while our leaders celebrate "diversity" in the military and shy away from making hard decisions.  And I'm angry at the fanatics who encourage others to murder for Allah's sake.

In the end, I suppose I'm angry that we live in a fallen world and must endure the consequences of that fallenness.

That poster seemed to suggest that nothing had changed--that we're all going to keep pretending that Islam is a religion of peace, and that anyone who thinks otherwise needs diversity training. Just for fun, can we balance the "celebrate Islam" posters with ones telling soldiers where to report soldiers of ANY faith who appear to interpret faithfulness to their god as an obligation to slaughter their fellow soldiers?