Using Islamic Female Portrait As Target, US Military Causes Public Outrage

Recently, the well-known U.S. Navy SEALs switched their training targets to an Islamic woman’s upper body portrait — wearing a religious head scarf and a black robe — which has triggered widespread protests. The U.S. military, which has always been known as tough guys, had to take these targets down to quell public outrage.

A few days ago, the U.S. Navy at the Joint Fort Story base of Virginia Beach started to use a new range that was heavily invested and specially prepared for the training of the U.S.’ elite force: SEALs. Local media vigorously touted for the range’s huge investment and advanced equipment. A picture included in the report shows that the new range tried to use an Islamic woman’s portrait — wearing a religious head scarf over her head and a black robe — as a target. Though traditional Islamic women are famous for their soft beauty, the woman in the portrait held a gun and was combative. In addition, Quran verses appeared on the wall behind the Islamic-woman-target.

After the exposure of these obvious discriminatory photographs, American Muslims lodged a strong protest. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, one of the most influential Muslim organizations in the U.S., sent a letter to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and asked the Pentagon to the remove the targets. [Council on American-Islamic Relations spokesperson Ibrahim Hooper asked,] “Why would you use this particular image in training people how to kill?” Nihad Awad, the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said that “[u]sing a Muslim woman wearing a religious head scarf with [verses from the] Quran behind her as a target for our nation’s military personnel is offensive and sends a negative and counterproductive message to trainees and to the Muslim-majority nations to which they may be deployed.”

The U.S.’ Huffington Post reported that Panetta himself did not respond to this letter. But several hours after the Council’s protests, the naval authorities decided to stop using the controversial target image, as a spokesman of the SEALs later confirmed.

Although this incident has come to an end, many people have pointed out that [the U.S. military] using Islamic female as training targets to vent their anger and express their deep distrust of Muslims is only the tip of the iceberg. In fact, widespread prejudice and discrimination against Muslims exist in the U.S. military — showing that the U.S. military has done far from enough to conquer their “Islamophobia” and to better their relations with the Islamic world.