For the past five years, Qaseem A. Uqdah, a Marine Corps veteran, has been visiting military bases around the world in search of Muslim officers and enlistees who might make suitable chaplains. In his role as a recruiter, Mr. Uqdah is not employed by the military. Instead, he is an independent middleman who runs a group that is authorized by the Pentagon to nominate Muslim chaplain candidates. He said he is paid nothing for his efforts and is motivated by his belief in Islam. One of the clerics Mr. Uqdah recommended to the Pentagon — Capt. James J. Yee, a Chinese-American convert to Islam and a graduate of West Point — is now locked in a brig in South Carolina as government officials investigate whether he engaged in espionage while ministering to Muslim prisoners at the military camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. “I wholeheartedly believe in his innocence,” Mr. Uqdah said. “I would never abandon my chaplains, but if I believed Yee was guilty of something, then I would say something.” Full Story
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