In reacting to the recent U.S. Army report on the tragedy at Ft. Hood, Time magazine asks why Islam was not specifically named. At GetReligion, Mollie Hemingway echoes that sentiment, arguing that religion is an important part of the story.
Both seem to miss the point of the Army’s report: that institutional failures allowed an unfit officer to advance through the ranks. The officer’s faith is irrelevant; there was a systematic breakdown in the way the Army treats problem soldiers. But religion is not only irrelevant; injecting it into the conversation about Fort Hood is counterproductive. As Middle East expert Marc Lynch argues, the way we frame our discussions can help Al Qaeda; to make everything the fault of Muslims risks radicalizing a population.
While Major Hasan’s religion seems important to some commentators, there’s a real problem with religion in the military that continues to receive scant attention. As reported by Jeff Sharlet (Jesus killed Muhammad) and others, Christianist elements in the military seek to proselytize fellow soldiers and view themselves as crusaders in a religious war.
Last week’s revelations that a supplier of gun scopes to the military has been inscribing New Testament verses onto its equipment is just one manifestation of religious fundamentalism in the military—not fundamentalist Islam, but fundamentalist Christianity.
One soldier says:
He was “ashamed” and “horrified” by the writings on the gunsights of weapons he used during deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“There are many other soldiers who feel as I do. Many are Protestant and Catholic and they fear reprisal just as much as I do for trying to stand up to the Christian bullies in uniform who outrank us,” he said in a letter dated January 14 and addressed to [Mikey] Weinstein and his [Military Religous Freedom] foundation [MRFF].
Another pens a lengthy letter to the MRFF about the scripture-inscribed sights. He writes:
Finally, the senior NCO said that the private’s rifle was also something else; that because of the biblical quote on the ACOG gunsight it had been “spiritually transformed into the Fire Arm of Jesus Christ” and that we would be expected to kill every “haji” we could find with it. He said that if we were to run out of ammo, then the rifle would become the “spiritually transformed club of Jesus Christ” and that we should “bust open the head of every haji we find with it.” He said that Uncle Sam had seen fit not to give us a “pussy ‘Jewzzi’ (combination of the word ‘Jew’ and Israeli-made weapon ‘Uzi’) but the “fire arm of Jesus Christ” and made specific mention of the biblical quotes on our gun sights. He said that the enemy no doubt had quotes from the Koran on their guns but that “our Lord is bigger than theirs because theirs is a fraud and an idol.”
After a public outcry, the supplier has agreed to remove the engravings from the gun sights. But more needs to be done. We in the United States are incredibly unsophisticated when it comes to talking about religion in the public sphere. But by focusing on the trees, we miss the forest. We are a country where religion is omnipresent, but cannot be discussed. If we are to address Islamism in the ranks, we also must address Christianism.
