Our Constitution, as everyone should know, requires that there be a separation of church and state in our country. The founders of our nation, remembering all too well how oppressive an official religion can be, specifically wrote into our documents the following:
* "no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." (Article VI)
* "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ..." (Amendment I)
Some of our U.S. military leaders evidently do not take the Constitution of the United States, which is the supreme law of the land, seriously, nor do they bother following the codes of the military under which they serve.
One of those codes (from the US Central Command) specifically forbids "proselytizing of any religion, faith or practice." This is known as General Order Number One.
Al Qaeda has called the U.S. presence in the Middle East an insult to Islam and has urged a holy war to oppose that presence. Al Qaeda has warned the citizens of the Middle East that it is the desire of the Western countries to destroy Islam and impose their way of life (including their religion) on Muslims.
We've written before about the fact that the U.S. military has wrapped itself in evangelical (fundamentalist) christianism; that 2/3rd of the military chaplains now identify as christianist fundamentalists. The top chaplain is a Southern Baptist fundamentalist.
We have written before about how these fundamentalists demand the right to proselytize among our own troops.
Now they've really gone over the fence.
Jeremy Scahill at Rebel Reports (via Alternet) writes that "New video evidence has surfaced showing that U.S. military forces in Afghanistan have been instructed by the military's top chaplain in the country to 'hunt people for Jesus' as they spread Christianity to the majority Muslim population. Soldiers have also imported Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari, the two dominant languages of Afghanistan. What's more, the center of this evangelical operation is at the huge U.S. base at Bagram, one of the main sites used by the U.S. military to torture and indefinitely detain prisoners."
Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief poohbah of U.S. chappies in Afghanistan, is shown on the video as "telling [the] soldiers that as followers of Jeus Christ, they all have a responsibility 'to be witnesses for him.'"
This story has been picked up by Aljazeera and Aljazeera points out that the chaplains, good christianists they be, have figured out a way to get around General Order No. 1: You don't "proselytize," you give gifts. Like a Bible.
Not only is this kind of crap unconstitutional according to the U.S. Constitution and in violation of military regulations, it is illegal according to the Afghanistan constitution!
Secondly, this kind of crap gives credence to the extremist rant that the U.S. is engaged in a war on Islam, thereby undermining the military effort while strengthening Al Qaeda.
Every one of these miserable "soldiers for Christ," especially the chaplain nogoodniks should be courtmartialed and drummed out of the service.
This is another despicable example of christianist extremism based on the premise that when doing things for Jesus, the ends justify the means.
Read Scahill's article here.
4 comments:
This endangers our troops. Many locals who might have been behind us for hunting down terrorists, may not like the fact that we're trying to destroy their religion and culture. Basically what this implies is, that it's a crusade for Christianity. I'll let you take that to it's logical conclusion.
Here's that "great minds" thing again.
Jihad For Jebus.
Hardly.
http://christianfighterpilot.com/blog/?p=321
It has always amazed me and still does, to see people insist on promoting their religion over the listener’s own choice. The lack of understanding is enormous as is the rudeness to assume that one’s belief is superior to another’s. I think that if Judaism was good enough for Jesus, Mary and Joseph, plus all the early disciples, one would wonder why so many versions of Christianity are superior to all others. I think most of the world religions are basically the same. They are all an attempt to give order and answers to unanswerable questions. We cannot prove that God exists; we rely on faith and hope. We cannot prove that God does not exist either, which also takes a certain amount of faith and hope. We will learn the truth after we die, assuming there is life after death. If not, we will never know, will we? Doing good is its own reward and even atheists do good works, because they wish to do so. If one does it seeking rewards, then they are not good works, they are a bribe. Oh well, go forth and multiply on this hot summer day.
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