British Muslims and the Armed forces

The supposition that Muslims should support the armed forces is seemingly controversial. Another uncomfortable notion is the fact that there are elements of British society that question the loyalty of British Muslims. Thus, would it be correct to suggest that by not supporting the armed forces Muslims are inadvertently bolstering organisations such as the BNP?
 

Firstly, I am not suggesting that one should support the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Rather I believe, like a large part of the British populace, that the Iraq war was illegal and Tony Blair and his fellow New Labour cohorts duped the public into accepting its legality and necessity. Equally, the invasion of Afghanistan, which has been historically a quagmire for foreign powers including the mighty British Empire in the 19th, has been a debacle. Yet whatever political decisions were made at the onset of these two campaigns the armed forces are not at fault.

Rather we must applaud our forces for stepping up and persevering in these two disastrous wars even with a decided lack of equipment, resources and popular support. Even if one is fundamentally opposed to the wars, disrespecting the heroism of the deployed soldiers is deplorable. Whenever a soldier is killed, society is not bereft of just one person but a wider circle of friends and family lose someone who is irreplaceable. The flipside has been the death of an innumerable number of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is completely unforgivable and unjustifiable. Thus, if the wars were illegal, a folly, and the result has been death of British soldiers and Afghans and Iraqis; why should we support the armed forces?

Simply put we should respect the armed forces’ function and history. We should not forget that during the cataclysmic World Wars of the last century many soldiers from the subcontinent, many of whom were Muslims, were part of the armed forces. For example, do Muslims know that the first Indian to be awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest British Armed Forces award for valour, was awarded to a Muslim?

Khudadad Khan was born in 1887 in Dab, a small village which is now in the Jhelum district of Pakistani Punjab, into a family of Pashtuns. With the onset of hostilities of the First World War, Khudadad joined the army and was assigned to 129th Duke of Connaught's Own Baluchis Regiment, which was sent to France in October 1914. He was one of twenty thousand Indian soldiers sent to support the British Expeditionary Forces to prevent the Germans from capturing the strategic ports of Boulogne in France and Nieuwpoort in Belgium. If these two ports had been lost, the supply lines to the soldiers would have been cut and the Allies would have lost the war.

The inevitable German surge took place on the 30th of October 1914. The Germans, who outnumbered the Baluchis by a ratio of 5 to 1, routed them and only two defiant machine-gun teams, which included Khudadad Khan, remained. The other machine-gun was quickly shelled whilst Khudadad and the other gunners fought on until they were overwhelmed and only Khudadad remained. He kept on firing until he too was overwhelmed and left for dead. Thanks to the reckless bravery of the machine-gunners, the British line was not broken and the Germans were unable to capture the strategic ports. Khudadad despite severe injuries made it back to the British Line and was shipped to Britain where he recovered from his wounds. Within three months, he was awarded the Victoria Cross by King George V at Buckingham Palace.

This remarkable journey from a small Punjabi village to Buckingham Palace epitomises the bravery of Indian soldiers. Ashamedly, when some Muslims walk past the stalls selling poppies and look with disdain at the vendors, they are doing a disservice to the memory of all those who died, including many Muslims, defending their country. Therefore, the next time Remembrance Sunday occurs British Muslims should remember the sacrifice of the soldiers and their unparalleled bravery. The consequences of the actions of these soldiers will continue to be remembered by history and rightly so. As John Keats wrote, ‘the poetry of the earth is never dead’.