Soldier of Faith

As immigrant Muslims begin "to feel more and more that America is home for them, they come to understand the potential contribution of this profession to the Muslim community," says Abdullah Antepli, associate director of Hartford Seminary's Islamic chaplaincy program. This shift, he says, points to an emerging "American Islamic identity" and the inclusion of Muslims into the social fabric of American society and culture.

Shareda's introduction to American culture came in 1972, when she and her four younger siblings joined their parents in Boston. Three years earlier, Abidh and Ojeefan Hosein, Trinidadians of Indian descent, left their Caribbean island home, lured by educational opportunities for their children. Shareda's father, a cable splicer with the telephone company, raised his family in a Dorchester, Mass., triple-decker, where newly arrived Trinidadians were frequent dinner guests. "My father would bring strangers home because he knew what it was like to be a lonely immigrant without family," Shareda says. "Everybody loved him."

But with his children, the patriarch was old school: Stern discipline was how to instill good behavior. "Wanting the best for us, he came across in a fearful way: 'Don't do this. Do this, or else,'" Shareda recalls.

Because she was a girl, her parents were especially protective. Shareda couldn't have a part-time job after school. She had to ask permission to wear jeans. "I'm like, I want to be American. I want to blend in, fit in. I don't want people to make fun of me!" she recalls. "My friends were going out and doing things, and my only external activity was playing sports after school and coming home."

Her family also worshiped at the Islamic Center of New England in Quincy, Mass. But what Shareda heard in Sunday school did not always jibe with what she was experiencing in the rest of her life. It was "this ideal form of Islam, not looking at the culture that you're in and trying to find accommodations on how to live in this society," she explains. "At the same time, I wanted to be comfortable with being a Muslim in the mainstream society." The conflict sometimes made her feel "schizophrenic," she recalls.

The Army held out the promise of travel, a way to pay for college and, above all, a chance "to make my own choices and not have to ask permission," Shareda says. Barely a month after her 18th birthday, she enlisted, then matter-of-factly told her surprised parents.

Her father's response was curt: "Can you kill someone?"

Shareda did not reply but his pointed question hit home. "I thought, 'I have to kill somebody? That's not what the recruiter told me,'" she remembers thinking. "He never told me that I'd be learning to fight and kill."

After basic training, she was assigned to West Germany and then Panama. In 1981, she wed a fellow soldier. But it was a difficult match, and by the time they divorced, she was pregnant. She decided to leave the Army and returned to Boston. For a while she worked as a cashier at Au Bon Pain. In 1983, her daughter, Farhana, was born.

In the fall of 1984 she enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in Boston and also landed a job as head secretary in its biology department. While her mother helped care for Farhana, Shareda went to school year-round and graduated with a BA in business and marketing in 1987. She got a real estate license and started selling property.

During these years, she also reignited her relationship with the military. "I do things there that I would never ever do as a civilian," explains Shareda, who joined the Reserve. "And I like the sense of discipline. I like the sense of structure. You know when your next promotion is due. You know how you have to perform to get a good evaluation. It's set. There's no magic to it. And so I missed that."

In 1986, she took a semester off from school to attend the Army's Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Ga. It was around that time that her faith began to blossom.