Should CF focus on recruiting Muslims?

Barbara Kay raises some interesting questions.

The Department of National Defence wants to sign up 15,000 new members by next spring. They are targeting cultural minorities to meet their diversity goals, especially Canada's fastest-growing minority, Muslims. The Canadian Forces (CF) is not an easy sell to those who came here partly to escape sectarian violence at home. Canada's peaceful pluralism is exactly what attracted many Muslims. Yet, for the foreseeable future, Canada's theatres of operations will be Muslim-dominated countries where the Forces will be fighting Islamofascism.

Muslims at present make up 2.3% of Canada's population, but represent less than 0.5% of the Canadian Forces. The DND is making a concerted effort to narrow that gap. But will they succeed in attracting Muslims to the regular forces? There are indications that those Muslim youths who do consider a military career find more appeal in the Reserves, where cadets can choose their missions -- or choose not to be deployed at all.

After a recruitment outreach program by the DND at the Ottawa Mosque on Aug. 25, for example, one Muslim cadet told a reporter, "To go to Afghanistan or Iraq .... I know many people who don't find that good, or right" (my translation from French). A second opined that the CF would have more success among Muslims "if they could choose not to participate in certain missions." A third from Valcartier military base said he would join only the Reserves because it allowed him "to choose his missions according to his personal and religious convictions."

Baker Siddiqi, president of the Ottawa Muslim Association, explains that fighting people of one's own religion and culture is a "delicate" matter, a problem for Christians as well as Muslims. That's not actually true, though. Our soldiers, mostly Christian or of Christian-heritage, are now fighting both for and against Muslims in Afghanistan, but fought no less bravely for and against Christians in the First and Second World Wars...

While it is true that Muslims are under-represented in the CF, so are members of other religions, such as Jews, Sikhs and Hindus, and their synagogues and temples have not been used for this purpose. Accepting an invitation to a mosque introduces a new -- and I think inappropriate -- identity category. It smacks of special treatment, and surely crosses church-state lines...

Good point about the other religions. And I'm not sure, for example, what particular use a Canadian-born muslim speaking English or French would be in fighting Jihadis in their own countries.