“I did not know what I was getting into,” John recalled, as he stared down at his coffee cup. “But I knew that our country was attacked, and that I wanted to help defend it.” John did not attend college, and he was thrust into parenthood before he himself was a fully formed adult. He was a fighter, and had always been. The tattoos that he wore testified to that, but the scars hidden beneath them were an even stronger witness to the fights he had endured, including some that got the best of him.

Khaled A. Beydoun, The New Crusades_ Islamopho…, loc. 184