Muslims should be allowed to serve in the US military

=My case= Framework 1. As the one advocating a change in the status quo, the burden of proof falls upon my opponent. 2. People should be treated as individuals rather than as a collective to maximize military effectiveness. If there's compelling evidence that an individual is from a high-risk social group, the military rather than outright prohibiting that individual from serving instead ought to be evaluated on an individual basis. The military being more selective about the social beliefs and potential political extremism/ psychological states of potential recruits, especially before pushing them into high stress situations like battlefields. This has the added benefit of excluding non-Muslim terrorists/psychopaths. Contentions: A) Islam is irrelevant Social attitude and political values are far more indicative of whether one will be an anti-US zealot than their spiritual beliefs. This is why there are several well documented cases of far-right terrorism[1] and the infamous Oklahoma city bombing was perpetrated by a white atheist[2]. This tells us that if we want to ban from the military people holding the religious beliefs of terrorists we would have to ban pretty much everybody. My opponent needs to construct some kind of mechanism or comparison to determine if Muslims are The conflict we see today is not Islam vs. US, it's backlash to US intervention[3]. Banning Muslims from the military is a dumb policy because once the West leaves the middle east mostly alone Islamic terrorism will decrease. The important conflicts facing the world will not be fought in the Middle east, but rather naval conflicts around the South China Sea[4] as the US and China engage in hegemonic competition. DADT tells us how difficult it is to retract outdated military policies, and as Islamic terrorism is a result of US intervention, once the US shifts its power projections to other regions the policy banning Muslims will become even more useless and prevent the US from accessing a large subset of its population for military manpower. B) Backlash Anti-US sentimentThe perception Muslims have of the US is of a country prejudiced against them--and they hold this perception for good reason, Islam is by far the most negatively viewed religion in the US[5]. The US banning Islam in its armed forces will only increase this perception and confirm the anti-US beliefs many Muslims feel. This is no way to go about mending relations with the Middle East. Liberals in the US Banning Muslims from service would cause a huge backlash against the military from American liberals who believe in equality and acceptance. Since the democratic party holds the Senate and the White House along, with current trends indicating a demographic shift in their favor, harming the military in the eyes of liberals would obviously harm the effectiveness of the military. This backlash, combined with the growing libertarian wing of the Republican party, could perhaps help usher in a new era of the US refusing to intervene to secure its interests, making it lose its hegemony. C) Ineffective. Even if everything my opponent argues is true, Muslims intending to terrorize the US or the military would just get in by professing an abandonment of the faith, and pretending to become atheists or some other religion. There's no litmus test to determine whether an individual holds anti-American sentiment, or what their true religion is.=Opponents case= Who is the enemy?My opponent provides no warrant for the United States being enemies with Islam. The United States has enemies who are Muslim to be sure such as Russia's lapdog Iran and Al Qaeda, but the United States is engaged in a war on terrorism, not a war on Islam. If the US wanted to destroy Islam it would just turn the Middle East into a radioactive cesspool, not put boots on the ground and nation build. Con's comparison of Muslims in the military to communists in the military of yesteryear fails because communism is an ideology explicitly advocated by the enemy. A better comparison is disallowing extremists from joining the military because anti-US extremism is an ideology held and advocated by the enemy. Islam is a religion, not an ideology. The Quran is bad Cons scare tactics need to be ignored--no doubt the Quran contains violent verses, as does the Bible. Taken literally, God in the Bible orders his followers to commit genocide against the Canaanites and maintains that people who have never heard of Jesus are condemned to eternal conscious torment. Other religions have violent verses as well, it matters not what a holy book commands but rather what adherents actually do. One is not a good person because they profess to be a Christian, despite Jesus being a good person, and people are not bad for professing to be Muslims even if we grant that Islam is bad/violent. You should prefer my case as it provides a better mechanism for weeding out bad people of all religions. Muslim terrorists Four cases are ultimately irrelevant in deciding policy for an entire faith. I would also submit that the individuals who, by a wide margin, have hurt the US military the most recently were not Muslims but rather leakers such as Bradley Manning. Again my opponent needs to prove why all Muslims should be banned just because of a few members of its fringe elements. Recall that Christians too have committed acts of terrorism. It's anti-US sentiment, not Islam, that is the issue. Home grown terrorism My opponent provides an easily turnable argument that supports my counter proposal. Even if you assume this argument is completely sound, it doesn't justify banning Muslims from the military as a large chunk of Mosques do not feature any violent literature. Again, this is an argument for being more selective on who is allowed to join the military to prevent any anti-US zealots, not an argument for outright banning Muslims. I see no real need to dispute my opponents statistics--to be sure, I'm sure there are some methodological problems in the poll (what does "advocating violence" mean? Recall the violence in other Holy books)--but this simply fails on so many levels to justify keeping ALL Muslims from serving, even if they're patriotic Americans who go to a pro-US mosque. There is a distinct difference between not letting into the military enemies of the United States and not letting in Muslims.HistoryMy opponent argues that Islam is inherently violent because Muslims conquered a lot of territory in the Middle Ages. If we are to take this argument as valid, we need to disallow Christians from the armed forces due to the crusades and Native American genocide. He also bizarrely posits that Muslims are violent because African Pirates attacked US ships 200 years ago.My opponent requests that I answer some questions, so here they are:1. Indifferent since religion doesn't indicate anything, ideology does. 2. Again, ideology is a better bright line than religion is for peoples behavior. 3. No4. Jesus5. IndifferentVote Con. Sources:1. http://www.salon.com...2. http://en.wikipedia.org...3. http://www.cato.org...4. http://www.foreignpolicy.com...5. http://www.gallup.com...