ABOARD USS KITTY HAWK, 2 April 2003 — Everybody who works with Ali Kadi aboard this US Navy aircraft carrier knows he is a Muslim but none of them seem to care. “I don’t think borders exist, as far as this guy’s Muslim, this guy’s Catholic,” Kadi, 38, said.
Born the son of Yemeni immigrants in the industrial town of Youngstown, Ohio, Kadi says he has been a practicing Muslim all his life, including his almost 20 years spent in the US Navy. Kadi is a chief petty officer who supervises about 30 other sailors who control the flow of spare parts for the carrier’s warplanes. He says he is one of about 10 followers of Islam among the Kitty Hawk’s multicultural crew of more than 5,000.
Kitty Hawk’s attack fighters are bombing Iraq as part of the US-led war which has drawn strong criticism from Muslims around the world. They see it as being unfair to Muslims and Palestinians in particular.
Kadi does not see things that way, saying people in those countries “need to taste” freedom and democracy. “I don’t think religion has anything to do with it,” Kadi said.
Religion does not have much to do with navy work either. “I really don’t look at somebody as Catholic or Christian. I look at a sailor as blue,” Kadi said, referring to the color of their uniforms. “It works,” he said. “Everybody gets things done as a team.”
Asked whether he ever faced discrimination as he grew up, he said, “Anywhere you go, to say there’s no discrimination whatsoever, zero, would be a lie.”
After living in Yemen for about six years as a teenager he returned to the US and faced a choice after high school: join the family business or enlist in the navy.
Kadi said he joined the military partly to see the world but also “to do my duty” and to show “that even Muslims are patriotic.”
After serving elsewhere Kadi joined the Kitty Hawk in May two years ago in time for the ship’s support of operations in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Even then, Kadi said he never heard abusive comments about Muslims. “The only derogatory things I heard was from the media,” he said.
Tacked to the wall above his desk is a photo of his daughter, Sophia, five, wearing a Japanese kimono.
The Kitty Hawk is based in Yokosuka, Japan, where Kadi has lived intermittently for seven years between stints in the US and Guam. His wife is Japanese. They are thinking about living in Egypt and then Malaysia when he retires from the navy. “I just want to experience other cultures. We want to travel. We’re like Bedouins,” he said.
But for now there is a war to support, and Kadi says he is backing it all the way just like his fellow sailors, many of whom were raised in other countries. “Our backgrounds, even though they’re varied, deep down inside we support whatever the president says,” Kadi said.
