NYPD Muslim Recruit Refuses to Salute the Flag

RAIR reports here on a recent refusal of a Muslim American to express support for the United States.

An NYPD recruit currently training at the police academy has reportedly requested a religious exemption from saluting the American flag—asserting that his Islamic beliefs prohibit him from doing so because he may only praise Allah.

According to retired NYPD Lieutenant John Macari Jr., an anonymous law-enforcement source confirmed that the recruit submitted a formal “reasonable accommodation” request seeking exemption from a mandatory requirement for uniformed officers. NYPD policy is explicit: saluting the American flag is a required civic act and a condition of service for all officers. It is not religious worship. It is not optional.

The request raises a fundamental issue for law enforcement in the United States: whether Islamic doctrine is now being allowed to override core symbols, standards, and obligations of American service.

This incident is not isolated. It is the latest manifestation of a long-running institutional shift within the NYPD, one that has steadily elevated Islamic visibility, religious accommodation, and identity-based programming inside a department once defined by secular authority and equal standards.

Over the past several years, the NYPD has hosted foreign national heritage events, promoted Islamic religious observances, and granted a growing list of Islamic-specific accommodations, all while memorializing 9/11 has become increasingly symbolic rather than substantive….

Saluting the flag is a simple sign of loyalty to the country, the United States, by those who are its citizens. It has no religious significance. Christians — that is, Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox — as well as Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Bahai, agnostics, and atheists have never had any trouble saluting the flag. Muslims are the only ones who have difficulty complying.

Should a Muslim who wants to become a policeman, and be an enforcer of the nation’s laws, including its supreme law, the Constitution, be exempt from this small sign of loyalty to the country to which, we assume, he intends to be loyal? Or is it a deeper problem, that we avoid talking about — the fact that for Muslims there can be no true loyalty to an Infidel polity, one created by people whom he has been taught “are the most vile of created beings” (Qur’an 98:6)? Is a Muslim’s only loyalty to fellow Muslims, as a reading of the Qur’an strongly suggests? Remember that Muslims are instructed in the Qur’an “not to take Christians and Jews as friends, for they are friends only with each other” (5:51)? And what of the Qur’anic command that when a Muslim meets an Unbeliever, he must “strike at his neck”? (47:4) That does not inspire confidence that Muslims in the United States are ready and able to take their place in the American democracy along with their fellow non-Muslims, and to defend the state against all enemies, domestic and foreign.

There are certain kinds of employment that demand, as a non-negotiable prerequisite, a declaration of loyalty to the country. It might not matter for a yoga instructor or a football coach to salute the flag. But for politicians, and the military, and the police, we have a right and a duty to demand that they are loyal to the United States, intent on upholding the Constitution, and the rights it provides to individuals. A nation that cannot even require that its police provide a simple, half-minute pledge of allegiance to the flag, and to the republic for which it stands, is in trouble. If this Muslim would-be police officer’s request that he be exempted from saluting the flag is granted, what then will follow? There will be dissension in the ranks, as news of his exemption travels. He will be treated with well-justified suspicion: why won’t he salute the flag? And other Muslims will then demand the same treatment, and instead of a unified republic, our divisions will only widen. What if Muslims in the police force then demand that they be excused from serving on a security detail guarding Jewish institutions, or churches? What if Muslim soldiers refuse to serve in operations “against fellow Muslims” because “that violates our religion”?

There is no end to this. Stop it at the starting gate, turn down this request, and let the disgruntled fellow find another line of work. CAIR, I’m sure, is hiring.