10 Ways the U.S. Military Has Shoved Christianity Down Muslims' Throats

By Chris Rodda, Talk To Action. Posted September 23, 2009.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation was founded in 2005 by Mikey Weinstein, a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and Reagan administration White House counsel, after the harassment his own sons faced as Jewish cadets at the academy led him to discover that the fundamentalist Christian takeover of the Air Force Academy was far from an isolated problem.

It was a militarywide issue that needed to be confronted head on. But it quickly became apparent that MRFF's initial mission of protecting the rights of our men and women in uniform was only addressing part of the problem.

The evangelizing and proselytizing of Iraqi and Afghan Muslims by private religious organizations and U.S. military personnel also had to be exposed and stopped -- particularly the materials and media available via the Internet and television that could be used by Islamic extremists as propaganda for recruiting purposes.

When MRFF began exposing some of what we were finding on the Internet, Weinstein was contacted by two Bush administration national security officials, one civilian and one military, who confirmed that the kind of stuff we were exposing was, in fact, being used as fodder for propaganda, and they urged him to not stop what MRFF was doing.

The most astounding thing, as you'll see in the list below, is that it's not the private religious organizations that are most at fault in spreading the crusader message, but the U.S. military.

Top Ten Ways to Convince the Muslims We're On a Crusade

10. Have top U.S. military officers, Defense Department officials and politicians say we're in a religious war.

As many will remember, we couldn't have gotten off to a better start on winning hearts and minds when Lt. Gen. William "Jerry" Boykin, on his speaking tour of churches in 2003, publicly and in uniform proclaimed that the so-called war on terror was really a fight between Satan and Christians.

He made comments like, "We in the Army of God, in the House of God, the Kingdom of God have been raised for such a time as this," saying that George W. Bush, who had ignorantly called the war a crusade, was "in the White House because God put him there," and referring to the capture of Somali warlord Osman Atto, said, "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

Speaking at a Rotary Club meeting in his hometown of Concord, N.C., in December 2006, one of Boykin's supporters, former Rep. Robin Hayes, R-N.C., pronounced that stability in Iraq ultimately depended on "spreading the message of Jesus Christ, the message of peace on earth, good will towards men. ... Everything depends on everyone learning about the birth of the savior."

While few are as overt in their comments as Boykin and Hayes, plenty of other representatives of our government have made it clear that they view the United States as a Christian nation and the war on terror as a spiritual battle, promoting the specious notion that victory in Iraq and Afghanistan is somehow necessary to preserve our own religious freedom here in America.

Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., in his remarks on the passage of H.R. 847, a 2007 resolution "recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith,'' said that "... American men and women in uniform are fighting a battle across the world so that all Americans might continue to freely exercise their faith ..."

The most recent Secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, in his commencement address at last year's West Point graduation, invoked the words of Thomas Jefferson, saying that Jefferson would understand the threat we face today -- tyranny in the name of religion. Geren quoted a few words from Jefferson's Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and then he said: "Two hundred years after Thomas Jefferson penned these words, your sons and daughters are fighting to protect our citizens and people around the world from zealots who would restrain, molest, burden and cause to suffer those who do not share their religious beliefs, deny us, whom they call infidels, our unalienable rights -- life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Neither Franks or Geren, nor anyone else who has suggested the war in Iraq is essential to the protection of the religious freedom of "our citizens," has offered any explanation of how the outcome of this war could possibly affect the free exercise of religion by Americans.

While none were as widely publicized as those of Boykin, all of these statements, and many others like them, can easily be found on the Internet. Hayes' Rotary Club meeting remarks, for example, after being published in a few North Carolina newspapers, were reported on the blog B, and quickly spread through the blogosphere, turning a speech at a local Rotary Club meeting into a national story.

Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rick Francona, when asked on MSNBC, "What's your reaction when you hear those words coming from a congressman," explained why comments like these were such a problem:

"Well, it's not helpful if this stuff gets back to the Iraqis, and of course in the days of the Internet and the blogosphere out there it's likely that it could. And you know our troops have enough problems over there just doing their jobs. Having to defend what a U.S. congressman might say, because you know, when you bring up the idea of proselytizing Christianity, to a lot of Muslims, that's very offensive. And if we can keep religion out of what we're trying to do over there, which is very difficult, it would be a lot easier for our troops. ... When you've got a congressman saying that the country -- they're not going to solve their problems until they follow the ways of the savior, it becomes very difficult for the troops to defend those remarks. ... If you're trying to be a unit trainer to, say, an Iraqi battalion, and the battalion religious adviser, the imam, would come in and say look what a congressman said, it just takes away from what we're trying to do." 

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For more of Chris Rodda's work, visit LiarsforJesus.com.

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