At first glance, the video seems damaging enough. American soldiers are shown discussing how to bring their brand of Christianity to the Muslim population of Afghanistan. Bibles in the local languages of Pashto and Dari are piled high, funded by churches back home and ready for distribution.
“These special forces guys — they hunt men basically,” an American military chaplain is heard saying. “We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down.”
The scene at Bagram Air Base was recorded a year ago by a former American soldier who is now a documentary filmmaker. It aired recently on the Arabic-language satellite station Al Jazeera, in a story that contained blistering accusations that the military is continuing to defy orders by allowing its members to proselytize. The accusations play directly into fears that Americans are in Afghanistan to convert local Muslims — an affront to the Islamic world and, not incidentally, to the U.S. Constitution.
It’s difficult to judge from afar the seriousness of these accusations. The military dismisses them outright, saying that the footage is old and out of context, and that the Bibles were never distributed. On the other side of this fraught debate, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, led by Mikey Weinstein, a Jewish former serviceman, contends this is another example of what he has called the “soul rape” of the military.
Afghanistan’s former prime minister has called for an investigation by the Pentagon, and while that might be posturing on his part, the underlying issue here is profound. The United States can scarcely afford to see its military effort undermined by those pursuing their own sectarian and unconstitutional agendas.
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Hannah Arendt observed that the brutality of fascism owed much to the domestication of habits and techniques of colonialism, applied not to distant peoples but to European populations by other Europeans. One wonders whether parts of the US armed forces will not one day turn their attention to what many of them consider the heathen at home. There are many reasons for the US to alter its imperial mentality and reduce the influence of its imperial institutions, and this may not be one of the least of them.
Islamic law requires that converts be terminated with prejudice...an old CIA term. Perhaps these gun toting Bible thumpers prefer that their success stories have shortened days in this world so thay may reap their reward all that much sooner in the next one. Way to create more Taliban? Way to go!
As long as fundamental islam shapes their lives, there is absolutely no hope for any part of the islamic world. A dose of Christianity, while not everyone's cup of tea, would be a step in the right direction for these backward and intolerant people.
As people employed in an ostensibly secular armed forces of a secular country open to all religions, they should not be openly proselytizing to Afghans. However, the fact that promoting a religion other than Islam is such an "affront"to Muslims in Muslim-majority areas illustrates an insecurity of handling competing ideas to "Allah's religion" and a lack of respect for dissenting thinking. One cannot convert out of Islam and expect to have his/her decision accepted by his/her neighbors peacefully. Death is proscribed for such individuals in Islamic sacred texts and many contemporary Muslims in the Muslim world fulfill this duty literally. Rather than say "don't advertise Christianity", the government if it wishes and local imams and other Muslim religious leaders should counter with their own campaigns to demonstrate the logic of Islam and why its provide meaning for their own lives. Or are they scared to convince the faithful through persuasion rather than physical threats or flimsy doctrinal arguments that say one must believe as such just because he/she was born into this faith, end of story?
FYI, Afghanistan once had a Buddhist majority and sizeable communities of Hindus and Sikhs. Today due to a variety of circumstances, this religious diversity no longer flowers. Islam itself has become more Saudized with the hard currency inflow of petrodollars for building radical mosques and spreading intolerant ideas, including for the 15% or so Shia Hazaras.