LOS ANGELES: Col. Khalid Shabazz is the highest-ranking Muslim soldier in the US military, which has more than 5,000 Muslims.
Shabazz recently visited Saudi Arabia to perform Umrah.
“My impression of Saudi Arabia was almost hypnotic,” Shabazz told Arab News. “I loved everything about it. I felt at peace and like my life has been a purpose of getting here all my life. I took the trip to fulfill my destiny of getting closer to God.”
Practicing his faith is a key part of Shabazz’s job in the US military, where he is a chaplain providing support and religious counseling to thousands of US soldiers.
While most chaplains are from various Christian dominations, some are representatives of Judaism, Islam and other faiths.
Currently, there are six Muslim chaplains in the army, three in the air force, and one in the navy.
As representatives of their different faiths, chaplains wear insignia to denote their faith — and for Muslim chaplains, it is a crescent.
Yet, faith-based counseling is only a tiny part of what chaplains do when they put on a soldier’s uniform.
Shabazz’s work also involves providing emotional support to a wide range of soldiers from all faiths.
Given his rank and seniority, Shabazz is responsible for the spiritual needs of thousands of soldiers and also oversees many chaplains of lesser ranks.
Apart from performing in Makkah and visiting Madinah, Shabazz also conducted important meetings with counterparts in Saudi Arabia to enhance military-to-military cooperation between the two allies.
“The Saudis were professional, strategically aligned, and pragmatic on goals of ensuring they had the highest level of education for their imams to lead in the fight against intolerance and extremism,” he said.
It was not his first encounter with the Saudis. In late, December a delegation of Saudis visited Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
The group of seven Saudi military officers was led by Maj. Gen. Musfer Hassan M. Al-Qahtani, the assistant general director of the General Administration of Religious Affairs.
The visit served to build ties and discuss ways to counter extremism and build religious tolerance.
Shabazz was one of the American military officers who had met and welcomed the delegation and prayed with them.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s directorate general of religious affairs team is developing a program to combat and treat manifestations of extremism, terrorism, and instilling a culture of moderation within the Ministry of Defense, in cooperation with the Department of Defense and other defense entities,” said Maj. Joshua Levine, US Air Force Central Command in a media statement.
Shabazz’s path to becoming the highest-ranking Muslim in the US military is unlikely.
Raised as a Christian, he attended a Christian university in Texas. Despite being a promising basketball player he fell in with the wrong crowd.
One evening a violent altercation led him to be beaten with a shovel and shot in the back. After recovering, he was forced out of university, after which he joined the military.
In the 1990s, as a soldier, Shabazz took an interest in the ideas and life of African-American Islamic leader Malik El-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X.
He converted to Islam and took Shabazz as his last name in homage to his hero.
A chance encounter with a Christian chaplain guided him to reorientate his military career, and he began to focus on Islamic studies.
He completed a seminary program and studied Arabic in Jordan. His recent trip to Saudi Arabia also included a stopover in Jordan.
Shabazz is also a TikTok star with about 43,000 followers.
“After 26 years (of being a Muslim), I finally earned my Shabazz,” he said in his final post from Makkah, referring to Malcolm X.
Shabazz said that after seeing “all colors … from blue-eyed blonds to black-skinned Africans” performing the acts of pilgrimage together, he understood that problems of racial prejudice could be overcome through Islam.
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