Raised Catholic, soldier and wife convert to Islam

Raised Catholic, soldier and wife convert to Islam

(This story from 2011 to support our new brother
in Islam )
Some Muslim servicemembers struggle to balance
faith and service
Cristina Tarantino, who, along with her husband, a
sergeant in the U.S. Army, converted to Islam and
started a charity to send food to Somalia, stands
with her sons, Andrew and Kayden, outside their
home on Ben Franklin Village in Mannheim,
The Tarantinos say converting to Islam has given
them new purpose, meaning and guidance in their
lives. The adults have given up music and alcohol.

The children have given up the tooth fairy and
Santa. In their back yard, from left are Andrew and
Jayden, and their parents, Chris and Cristina.
They’d both been raised Roman Catholic, she in
Mannheim, Germany, he in Kissimmee, Fla.
But when Spc. Chris Tarantino deployed to Iraq in
2006, his wife began to ask questions about life
and death that led her to convert to Islam.
“I was really, really scared something was going to
happen to him,” said Cristina Tarantino.
She started to wonder what happened after death,
she said, and how to best live life on earth.
She was spending time with her older sister, who
had converted to Islam after marrying a
Palestinian, and she sought her sister’s guidance.
Her sister’s answers about Islam made sense to
Cristina and gave her some serenity, she said.
She discussed her spiritual progress with her
husband in frequent phone calls between Camp
Taji, Iraq, and Mannheim.
Even so, “I was kind of shocked when I heard her
say it — ‘I’ve accepted Islam,’” Chris, now a
sergeant, said.

His first question was whether she had begun
wearing a hijab. She wasn’t ready yet, she said.

But he didn’t ask her a lot, he said. “I asked for
guidance in my prayers.”
And by last year, the second time he deployed to
Iraq, the blond, blue-eyed soldier had also become
a Muslim. He decided not to hide it.
“I went to Kuwait and bought a prayer rug and
started praying right there,” he said. “I saw it
wasn’t the end of the world to say I was a
Muslim.”

During the past decade of fighting in Muslim
countries, some soldiers occasionally have to battle
perceptions that Muslims are hostile to the military
they serve.
Chris enlisted in the Army in 1998, before radical
Islamists attacked New York and Washington, D.C.,
and the U.S. went to war in two Muslim nations.
He said he’d never had any feelings, positive or
negative, about Muslims, even when heading to
Iraq.

“All I knew was we were going to combat
terrorism,” he said. “As a soldier, I just did what I
was told. They say ignorance is bliss. I guess I
was ignorant.”
Then, as his wife grew more religious and he was
drawn with her to a Sunni mosque in Mannheim, he
said the whole idea of radical, violent jihad against
the West seemed utterly wrong.
“I follow the teachings of the prophet Muhammad.

What the prophet Muhammad teaches does not
condone that,” Chris said. “I don’t associate myself
with radicalism whatsoever.”
But his situation is unusual: He’s the only U.S.
soldier at his German mosque, one of the few
Muslims in the Army and one of even fewer Muslim
soldiers who are not from a traditionally Muslim
family or African-American.
“I have to say that I’ve met zero that are of my
race,” he said. And although the couple’s
conversion is personal, not political, his views on
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and war in
general, have changed.
“As Muslims, we believe that if you kill one innocent
person, it’s as if you’ve killed the entire world. But
if you save one person, you save the entire world,”
said Chris, who is in the Signal Corps and works
on communications equipment. “I want to be on
the side that’s helping.”
As part of that idea, the couple helped start a non-
profit group to send food and medical supplies to
Somalia, a failed state undergoing the worst famine
in decades.

Since 2006, the country has faced an insurgency led
by al-Shabab, a militant Islamist group that
controls much of southern Somalia.
But the Tarantinos and others at Al-Faruq Omar
Mosque felt they had to do something.
Cristina was one of seven people from their mosque
who formed a group called IslamischerHuma
nitaererEntwicklungsdienst, or the Islamic
Humanitarian Development Service( www.IHED.de )
In just a few weeks, the charity had collected and
put onto pallets 135 tons of food and medical
supplies, Cristina said. Her husband provided some
of the muscle.
“I help when there’s a load to be carried,” he said.
It was all collected, organized and carried during
Ramadan, when Muslim adults don’t eat or drink
from sunrise to sunset. “You’re talking about some
guys who were completely kaput,” Chris said.

The food and supplies were picked up from a
warehouse near Cologne and shipped by sea late
last month. Cristina said the supplies would arrive
in northern Somalia in the beginning of November,
then be driven to the central region for distribution.
Another charity, Human Plus, found sponsors to
pay for transporting the supplies, which cost about
40,000 euros or $57,400.
At home, the Tarantinos continue to study their
new faith and seek to live it as fully as they can.

Cristina wears the hijab when she leaves the
house, as well as a long skirt and long sleeves. In
Germany, her clothes rarely raise an eyebrow. At
their mosque, for instance, “there are so many
German converts,” she said, mostly women. There
are also Moroccans, Bosnians, Poles and Russians.

The family lives on base, and when she goes to the
commissary, people stare at her. “I feel like an
astronaut,” she said. “Last time, when I went with
my sister, they asked her if she was there to work,”
she continued, explaining that some Turkish women
wearing hijabs clean the local schools.

“I tell my husband, ‘They probably think you
brought me from Iraq.’”

But her husband has never had a problem with
acceptance. Soldiers in his unit, the 72nd Signal
Battalion rear detachment, know he’s a Muslim.

“I’d stop for prayer. I’d talk to them about Islam
because it’s my chance to do a good deed,” he
said.

“At first, they were - “What?” “You are?” “Really?”’
he said. After, they’d say, “Sgt. Tarantino, it’s
prayer time.’ They were respectful,” he said.

Only once did he get a bad reaction. He greeted a
“brother,’’ another Muslim soldier, and an African-
American, by saying in Arabic, “Peace be upon
you.”

“And the other soldier said, “Shhh,’” Chris said.
He plans to get out of the Army within the next
year and move the family to the United States.

Cristina plans to continue working toward a
bachelor’s degree in communications, and her
husband plans to continue his studies at Embry-
Riddle Aeronautical University.
“The same stuff I’ve been trained to do. Just
without a gun,” he said.
The couple met on base in Mannheim more than a
decade ago. They’ve been married three times:
Once at city hall, once in church and the last time
at their mosque.

One of the hardest things about their conversion
had to do with their two young sons. “We were like,
‘What do we tell the kids?’’’ Cristina said. “So,
gradually there was no tooth fairy, no Santa
Claus. ... They took it very well.