Army chaplains hat badge offensive to Muslims, page-15

Funny story. A few years ago Mrs 9 lives youngest son joined the army. The application procedure was quite a process that took well over a year. In the meantime while he was waiting to get called up he became wide eyed and patriotic as young men tend to do. At one stage there, because of the problems in the world with extreme Islam, he got a little bit fascinated with the doctrines of the Australian Defense League. This horrified me and we had many debates about whether all Muslims were evil or not. But my stepson would make a good HC poster because he wasn't going to have a bar of my feel good, hand holding, Kumbaya singing philosophies......Fast forward to his induction day. All the inductees were taken in and given some briefing on their induction while we the family members went for coffee. When we all came back for the swearing in ceremony all the family members were gathered in an outside room and I noticed some darkish skinned women with head scarfs. "This will be interesting" I said to Mrs 9 Lives and her ex and I told them about our debates. When we went in not only was there a dark skinned Muslim in the 40 odd inductees but he was placed to stand right next to my step son. I stared at my stepson with a smug smirk on my face but like all the other new recruits he dared not look to the left or the right and stood bolt upright at attention. However when they went to swear in Mohammad (yes that was his name) my step son's eye's made an involuntary glance in my direction and he saw my smirk. Not sure if any army people noticed but I saw a hint of a smirk appear on his face. He knew what I was thinking. 3 months later when the day came for the passing out parade we went down to Wagga Wagga for the ceremony. Afterwards I asked him "How did you go with Mohammad". "Oh, it turns out he was a real good bloke" he replied.

Moral of the story: Fear is born out of ignorance.