Accommodating Muslims at West Point

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point has just opened a worship hall for Muslim cadets, complete with a pulpit facing Mecca. The hall is large enough to contain dozens of people sticking their behinds in the air.

West Point Chaplain Col. John Cook said: “We live in a world where everyone is looking at the United States saying, ‘You’re anti-Islam.’ But here at West Point, that’s not what we do.” Isn’t that nice? The purpose of the West Point is not educate and train Army officers to defend America from its enemies, but to prove to the world that America is not prejudiced against its enemies.

The Academy also has its own Muslim cleric, Imam Asadullah, who told the AP: “We have cadets here who are going to be the future of tomorrow. If we treat them differently from other cadets or other faiths, that will be a cause for future confrontation.” Wrong. The cause of future confrontation is to allow a significant number of Muslims into America in the first place.

You may wonder how many Muslim cadets are at West Point. There are 32. As of 2001, there were two. Now, the U.S. Muslim population has not increased 16 fold in the last five years, has it? The U.S. Muslim community has not been suddenly seized by patriotic fervor to serve and defend America during the last five years, has it? So how could there be so many more Muslim cadets? Obviously the Bush administration has made a concerted effort to increase the number of Muslims at West Point, in order to prove to the world that the U.S. is not prejudiced against its enemies.

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Justin T., who serves in the military, writes:

You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the appointment process for military academy applicants. The president generally does not appoint applicants; it’s left up the Congressman and Senators. Each Congressman or Senator can have up to five cadets attending the academy at any one time that they appointed until the cadet graduates and is commissioned, at which point the Congressman or Senator can appoint another person to fill that slot. You can read more about the appointment process here.

This is a decision that is made by Congressmen and Senators, not the president; he has very little control of this.

LA replies:

Rest assured that I am aware that congressmen and senators appoint cadets to West point. I’m saying that this huge jump of Muslims in such a short time could not have occurred without the active urging of the president. He told congressmen and senators, “We’ve got to increase the number of Muslims there.”

I have no evidence to prove this. It is just a logical deduction from the situation.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 22, 2006 02:01 PM | Send