Aziboy
Banned
Raised Catholic, soldier and wife convert to Islam
MANNHEIM, Germany — They’d both been reared 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 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.”
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[saw]. 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.”
Allahu Akbar