An Army of God

Religious fundamentalists bent on conversion. Hordes of Muslim horsemen and infantry marched on the Western world, conquering all of northern Africa into Spain within 70 years of the Prophet Mohammad’s death. For 400 years, Muslim conquests hammered the Europeans, pushing the Pope out of Rome for a while, planting soldiers in the Balkans on the doorstep of Vienna. The Crusades followed for 119 years until the Islamic world pushed the Christian marauders out of their lands. Muslims proselytized Islam, some believing in “conversion by the sword,” as they pressed forward; yet other Muslim leaders gave comfort to non-conforming Christian and hated Jews as violent Catholics sought to purge heresy from their nations. That was a long time ago.

When the American forces responded to the 9/11 attacks with wars in Afghanistan and then Iraq, President Bush referred to his “war on terror” as a “crusade.” Briefings by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were laced with Biblical references. It was hardly uncommon for American officers to use references to Christian dogma as justification for American soldiers to fight their new enemies. Newsweek (June 19^th): “[P]rominent military leaders such as Lt. Gen. William Boykin described the wars in evangelical terms, casting the U.S. military as the ‘army of God.’ [Arab news channel] Al-Jazeera broadcast clips filmed in 2008 showing stacks of Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari at the U.S. air base in Bagram and featuring the chief of U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, telling soldiers to ‘hunt people for Jesus.’

“In the aftermath of that report, the Pentagon responded that it had confiscated and destroyed the Bibles and said there was no effort to convert Afghans. But while the military dismissed the Bagram Bibles as an isolated incident, a civil-rights watchdog group, Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), says this is not the case. According to the group's president, Mikey Weinstein, a cadre of 40 U.S. chaplains took part in a 2003 project to distribute 2.4 million Arabic-language Bibles in Iraq. This would be a serious violation of U.S. military Central Command's General Order Number One forbidding active-duty troops from trying to convert people to any religion.”

The problem with introducing Christian doctrines to justify the moral basis for our military actions is not only a seeming violation of our own First Amendment ban on state-sanctioned religions but the fact that such efforts are used to rally support all over the 1.3+ billion person Muslim world against American interests. This was – in the eyes of the majority of the Muslim world – a self-admitted “crusade” (a clear reference to a religious war) pitting Christian values and attempts to convert against their view of the “true religion” – Islam.

The involvement of U.S. military chaplains in the dissemination of Bibles in Afghanistan and Iraq was simply confirming the Muslim’s world’s worst fears – that the U.S. efforts were a thinly disguised religious war. The humiliation of American captives by violating their Islamic restrictions added fuel to the fire and did huge damage as militants used this information mercilessly to recruit new soldiers, suicide bombers and fundamentalist believers. Nothing hardens a religious and pious person like a full frontal assault against his/her most personal and passionate beliefs.

As President Obama begins a process of pulling back the rhetoric of words that have become completely seared into the minds of so many Muslims – “war on terror,” “crusade,” Biblical references in mission statements and military briefings – the effort to pull religion out our defense of our country from attack is already generating positive results. Countries that were fearful that any attempt on their part to deal with fundamentalist militants in their own communities might be viewed as reinforcing the perceived war against Islam waged by the U.S. were now willing to confront local terrorist for local reasons. By letting the vast moderate majority of Muslims deal with the Islamist killers and bullies in their midst without feeling they are betraying Islam, the pressure on the U.S. and her allies to be global policemen – a very expensive mission – has most certainly relaxed.

I’m Peter Dekom, and I approve this message.