SEVERSON: Of the Muslim sailors and airmen we spoke with, some, like Petty Officer Umar Salaam, sought counsel from their chaplains, but none say they have qualms about going to war against terrorists, even Muslim terrorists.

PETTY OFFICER UMAR SALAAM: Right, because in the Koran, we believe in justice, no matter if you are a Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, and I believe in the same thing.

SEVERSON: This is Lieutenant Commander David Koch, a Muslim in the navy 14 years.

LT. COMMANDER DAVID KOCH (U. S. Navy): When you look at the acts that were committed -- terrorist acts -- and you have documented proof, there shouldn't be any qualms about going after those who were responsible.

SEVERSON: In some ways, chaplains have never faced a challenge like the one they face now. This isn't some far-off war. The stakes are higher. The questions are more complicated. Suddenly even those sailors, soldiers, and marines who've claimed no faith are searching. Everyone is.

CHAPLAIN MAGNESS: People are asking questions of their clergy, of their chaplains they never asked before. They are wondering about what will happen, what will happen to me, not only the service members, the family members too. They are wondering about the role of their religious beliefs in their life today.

SEVERSON: For Chaplain Magness, ministering to servicemen is a sacred mission. He remembers his painful search for answers in Vietnam.

CHAPLAIN MAGNESS: I'd realized that -- people so often do in a war -- warfare is man's greatest inhumanity to man on some level. I could look down at my own hands and say I'm a participant in this. I'm not an innocent bystander. I came to the conclusion there's only one thing that could hold my world together, in the midst of all the evil, all the inhumanity, and that was God.

SEVERSON: When the chaplain heard reports of harassment of Muslim sailors, he immediately ordered that all chaplains in the fleet become involved at the slightest hint of harassment. And that must have been comforting for Lieutenant Sana Savage.

LT. SANA SAVAGE (Naval Leader Training Center): We are all Americans, you know. Americans in the military took an oath to serve and they will do the services that they need to do. We're grieving just as everybody else.

SEVERSON: Lieutenant Savage is with the Naval Leader Training Unit. She is Muslim, and, she will tell you, she is an American.

LT. SAVAGE: I prayed about it. I joined the community in praying. I pray with my family. I pray every day for it. I pray for our leaders to guide them, give them wisdom so that we can do the right thing, and what's right for the nation.

SEVERSON: It is difficult to imagine the heavy responsibility that weighs on the shoulders of the commander of a warship or a naval flotilla.

Chaplain MAGNESS: I had a senior commander, a general officer not too long ago, in the last couple of weeks, tell me he wouldn't think about making a major decision that would affect lots of lives without first having a conference with his chaplain and praying with him.

SEVERSON: But the bottom line is always the young soldier, or sailor or marine or airman. And it is not just to help them make it through their mission or their enlistment, it's so they will come home spiritually whole.

CHAPLAIN MAGNESS: We've got to have people who think, people who have spiritual centers and foundations, who conduct themselves rightly and do the right things, so that they don't delve down into the evil they are trying to confront. There is a very thin line between the two.

SEVERSON: The questions and prayers may not be very different from those of all wars. But with this one, they're searching even before the battle begins.

PETTY OFFICER SHELTON RUSSELL (Navy Instructor): I feel that Allah will guide me there. I can't say what I will do, what I don't do; I trust in Allah, that Allah will guide us.

SEVERSON: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I'm Lucky Severson at the Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia.