A Shocker at Ft. Bragg

[admin]

http://www.timesexa miner.com/ content/view/ 759/1/

Coming Home Written by Amos Hykes Jul 16, 2008 at 12:00 AM A Shocker at Ft. Bragg

The main entrance to the Ft. Bragg Mosque located in the Soldier Support Center.

You have just spent a year in Iraq and the day has come to pack your gear and go home. What you have seen and experienced during the past year can only be appreciated by your fellow soldiers. You know it will be virtually impossible to even try to explain what you experienced to your civilian family and friends. The constant heat, the blistering sand, the constant stress of looking and listening for the next shot or explosion and seeing your friends die. You spent a year in country trying to figure out the Muslims, their religion and trying to stay alive. Growing up a Christian was pretty easy You went to church on Sundays and sometimes on Wednesday evenings; you tithed and helped your fellow man. However, this past year has not only made you appreciate your Christian roots, but it also made you think about the religion of the people who were trying to kill you. On the surface, their religion seemed rather simple to understand. KILL THE INFIDEL! Unfortunately, you just happen to be the infidel they want to kill.
On the flight back to the states your thoughts turn to going home, seeing family and friends and reporting for duty at Fort Bragg.

The Ft. Bragg Mosque entrance for women. Only men may enter through the main entrance.

The reporting date comes too soon. You are instructed to report to the Soldier Support Center. Ÿhere is the SoldierSupport Center? you wonder. Finally, someone tells you: ŪtÃÔ in the old Womack Hospital. As you walk through the seemingly endless corridors of the Soldier Support Center you are startled by a doorway with a sign over it indicating it is a Mosque.
Ūs this a flashback? This is Ft. Bragg, not Baghdad, you think to yourself. Your first thoughts are that this must be some type of museum, because no one in the US Army would be stupid enough to allow a mosque in the US Army Soldier Support Center. This is the place where everyone reports in, where active duty personnel, retired, and dependents get their ID Cards, and register their vehicles.
You are informed that it really is an Islamic mosque. You just spent a year of your life battling the radical Islamic Muslims and the first day back at Ft. Bragg, you literally run into a mosque. What a cruel hoax. What a slap in the face.
What makes the entire absurd scenario more surreal is that the active duty types and civilians who work there are very reluctant to discuss the mosque with strangers. They fear that expressing their opinions about the mosque in the official US Army facility would be very detrimental to their careers. Most would like to see it removed from Ft. Bragg. If it canÃÕ be removed, as seems to be the case, then put it in another location on Fort Bragg.
How does a 19 year old soldier, who has spent a year watching his friends fight for their lives and some, killed by radical Muslims, justify in their minds their government locating a mosque in his Soldier Support Center at Ft. Bragg?