GI turns to Islam to find God

By Chip Johnson

San Francisco Chronicle

When U.S. Army Sgt. Matt Fernandes landed in the desert ahead of the invasion of Iraq, he knew little about the country and virtually nothing about Islam.But he grew intrigued by the hospitality and generosity of the Iraqi people and began to reconsider his beliefs about them and their faith. The more time the Oakland native spent in Iraq, first fighting his way north to Baghdad to seize the airport and later fighting insurgents, the more he questioned his own faith and theirs.When his time at war was over, Fernandes would eschew Catholicism and become a follower of Islam.World War II journalist Ernie Pyle wrote the famous axiom, "There are no atheists in foxholes.'' But even Pyle wouldn't have guessed that 50 years later there would, according to the Army, be nearly 1,700 soldiers of Islamic faith wearing the khaki, green and camouflage-brown uniforms of the U.S. military.It should come as no surprise that faith and salvation were on the minds of more than a few soldiers when Fernandes, who served in the 82nd Airborne Division, arrived in Saudi Arabia before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.At the desert base, a U.S. Army Ranger chaplain filled a bathtub with water and urged soldiers to be baptized as born-again Christians. More than a few did it.Fernandes, now 23, wasn't among them. Although it was a time of tension and uncertainty among the troops, he didn't feel faith embraced under fire was true faith."I felt it was wrong to become religious just because something bad might happen,'' he said. "I didn't want to be pushed into that."And so it was that Fernandes took his unrepentant soul into battle, seeing combat, often bloody, in at least half a dozen places from Ramadi to Baghdad. No one in his unit was ever hit or injured, but they did their share of killing.When his unit returned to Fort Bragg, N.C., in January 2004, Fernandes learned that his father, Jerry, a lifelong and devout Catholic, had converted to Islam 14 months before. The elder Fernandes had begun exploring the Islamic faith when the war began because what he heard on television and read in the papers about Muslims didn't jibe with his personal experience.The father's religious quest intrigued the son, who started spending weekends with his father in the tiny town of Lititz, Pa., learning about Islam. He accompanied his father to the mosque in nearby Lancaster, where he met other people of the Muslim faith.The more he learned, and the more people he met, the deeper his faith in Allah grew. By July 2004, the younger Fernandes had made the conversion. And the more he took to Islam, the more changes he saw in himself.He stopped going to the bars outside the base, and he bypassed the strip clubs as well. It's not that he ever drank heavily or visited the clubs frequently, but many soldiers do, and he wanted no part of it.Instead, he whiled away the hours in school, or volunteering at the animal shelter.As Fernandes delved further into the study of Islam, he started keeping a copy of the Quran and other books about Islam in his quarters. He also spent a lot of time with two other soldiers who had converted to Islam. His fellow soldiers soon grew suspicious.Fernandes never made a public announcement of his religious conversion, but the guys in his unit put "2+2 together pretty quickly,'' he said. While no one ever openly criticized him, his conversion did put some distance between Fernandes and the men in the squad he led."I never had the feeling that they wouldn't back me up, but they kinda looked at me like a traitor,'' Fernandes said.Before Fernandes left for his second deployment in December 2004, he told the U.S. Army of his change in faith. It prompted a visit from an army chaplain."He wasn't trying to bring me back to Jesus or anything like that, but he referred to me as a soldier of Islam,'' he recalled.Fernandez, who had earned an Army Commendation Medal after a fierce battle in the town of Samawa, didn't respond. He had always been spiritual, but the contradictions he saw in Christianity led him to seek the answers to his questions elsewhere. He found them in Islam."I do believe in God and I've always been a spiritual person, I just don't believe in the Christian version of God," he said.Faith is not a question of national loyalty, but a search for salvation. It's a journey everyone takes, and something everyone hopes to find. Fernandes found it in the most unlikely of places, at the most unlikely of times.