A prominent US Muslim civil rights and advocacy organisation on May 10 called on the Department of Defence (DoD) to dismiss the instructor who taught fellow officers that only a “total war” on Islam would protect America, that they should use “Hiroshima” tactics, target civilian populations, and abandon the Geneva Conventions. CAIR is asking that the officer who taught that course at the Defence Department’s Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Va., be dismissed from his position at the college.
“It is imperative that those who taught our future military leaders to wage a war not just on our terrorist enemy, but on the faith of Islam itself be held accountable,” wrote CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad in a letter to Secretary of Defence Leon Panetta. Awad also called for the retraining by credible scholars of all officers who took the course and offered to coordinate a meeting between Pentagon officials and national Muslim leaders. Awad said he agreed with FBI Director Robert Mueller who, when questioned about similar Islamophobic training of FBI agents, told the House Judiciary Committee, “It does us no good to have personnel who are trained with inadequate materials or misguided materials.”