Infidel

I’m sitting here in the student center common area, outside the cafeteria, waiting between classes and feel like commenting on something.
On the other side of the common area there is a Muslim woman I know slightly, we’ll call her Mrs. Hollings. Sitting here I note her head scarf, and am suddenly quite aware of my own head-dress, a baseball cap. The cap has been remade in the style of what soldiers and private-military-contractors call “don’t shoot me” caps, the hard button on top removed and replaced with a tab of Velcro for attaching an IR reflective marker, and with Velcro on the front and across the back for attaching other identifier, or morale, patches. Mine bears morale patches, as I have no need for identification as a ‘friendly”.
One of the morale patches I wear, mounted to the bill of my cap, says Infidel in large capital letters. Mrs. Hollings can’t see it from where she is sitting, but if she could I hope it wouldn’t offend her, but am resigned to the fact that if it did, it would be her problem and not mine. Simply, because, I am an infidel.

Infidel is in the common lexicon today as a word associate with extremist Islam and terrorism. Their justification for killing us is that we are infidels and wish to corrupt their pure and good society with out infidel ways (i.e. not stoning women to death for daring to be raped).
The word has a broader use than just in the context of Islam, but I think everyone’s idea, including my own, of it now is heavily involved with that context more-so than any other.
Context aside, the word means an unbeliever, someone who doubts or rejects the central tenants of a religion.

Now, I am not a man without belief, but I am most certainly a man without religion. I don’t have much use for it, and it separates me from my God more than it connects me. But, my infidelity is not to a religion, or even religion itself. My infidelity is thus:
If you are an enemy of Enlightenment, Spiritual and Intellectual Freedom, the Right of Personal Decision, an enemy of Science, and Medicine, I am your enemy. If you use religion to justify your hatred, and attempts to destroy, those things in which I believe, then I am your Infidel, and proud of it.
If you are not one of those people, if you are not a destroyer, a bonder of people to ideas and decisions not their own, a cruel hand of ancient tyrannies, then we are not enemies and I am not your Infidel. In all likelihood, we share ideals, beliefs, and common goals.

However, there are few things in this world that I am prouder of than being an Enemy, and Infidel, of the destroyers of education and freedom. I wear my marker with pride.