RALEIGH, N.C. -- Sgt. 1st Class Naida Hosan is not a Muslim - she's a Catholic. But her name sounded Islamic to fellow U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and they would taunt her, calling her "Sgt. Hussein" and asking what God she prayed to.

So before deploying to Afghanistan last year for her second war tour, she legally changed her name - to Naida Christian Nova.

This did not solve her problems.

Instead, matters escalated. Nova complained to her superiors about constant anti-Muslim slurs and jokes. She says they responded with a series of reprisals intended to drive her out of the Army, leading her to consider suicide.

"My complaints fell on deaf ears every time," said Nova, 41, a member of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C. "Any time I would say something about it I was treated like I didn't know what I was talking about or that I'm an idiot or that I was a Muslim sympathizer. It was just a very lonely feeling."

Determined to remain in the service for at least eight years, until she is eligible for retirement, Nova recently re-enlisted. But she agreed to tell her story to The Associated Press because "I don't want this to happen to anyone else if I can help it. It's a horrible to feel like people are against you when you are supposed to be on the same team."

Fort Bragg spokeswoman Sheri L. Crowe said the Army would not comment on the case, and referred questions to the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina, assigned to defend the Army, also declined comment.

But her account is supported by an affidavit filed by an old friend, Sharon Deborah Sheetz, who said that Nova had confided in her about the harassment she had suffered, telling Sheetz that she was so unhappy that she no longer wanted to live.

A Farsi linguist who works in military intelligence, Nova's multicultural background exemplifies the kind of soldier Army recruiters prize - U.S. citizens with ethnic ties to a part of the world many Americans can't find on a map.

Nova's father, Roy Hosein, was born into a Muslim family on the Caribbean island of Trinidad, where his parents had emigrated from India. He converted to Christianity after meeting Nova's mother, a Catholic from the Philippines, and became a U.S. citizen shortly after his daughter was born in New York. He changed the spelling of his family name to Hosan in the hope his children would avoid discrimination.

"He Americanized it," his daughter explained. "He got Hosan from Hosanna. He kept hearing it in church."

She reported for basic training two months after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Before 9-11, my last name never raised an eyebrow," she said. "But after 9-11, I felt compelled to tell people I am a Christian and felt I had to prove I was loyal to the United States."

The jobs of the nation's citizen-soldiers are supposed to be safe while they are serving their country: Federal law does not allow employers to penalize service members because of their military duties.

Yet every year, thousands of National Guard and Reserve troops coming home from Afghanistan and elsewhere find they have been replaced, demoted, or denied benefits or seniority.

Government agencies are among the most frequent offenders, accounting for about a third of the more than 15,000 complaints filed with federal authorities since the end of September 2001, records show. Others named in the cases include some of the biggest names in American business, such as Wal-Mart and United Parcel Service.

With good jobs still scarce in many states, the illegal actions have contributed to historically high joblessness among returning National Guard and Reserve members -- as high as 50% in some California units -- and created a potential obstacle to serving.

"The whole point of the National Guard and reserves, how they save the country money, is they get paid only when they are serving," said Sam Wright, director of the Service Members Law Center at the Reserve Officers Assn. "It's a great deal for the country, but if we don't protect their civilian jobs ... they aren't going to volunteer and serve."

Veterans' advocates say that the heavy use of the nation's citizen-soldiers to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan placed a burden on employers in a tough economy. Even as 11 years of war wind down, Guard and Reserve members are being called up for peacekeeping and other duties around the world.

The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, a 1994 law that strengthened job protections for returning troops first introduced during World War II, requires that service members are reemployed in the type of position they would have attained if they had not been called to active duty.

Just how many service members are being denied jobs illegally is impossible to know. The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office estimated in 2005 that fewer than a third of service members with complaints seek help from the government. Many don't file lawsuits, either.