From Democracy Now!:
In Iraq, residents of Fallujah are claiming US soldiers are handing out Bible-themed coins aimed at converting them to Christianity. According to the McClatchy Newspapers, the coins quote passages from the New Testament. Fallujah was the site of two bloody US assaults in 2004 that killed scores of Iraqis and left tens of thousands displaced. Sunni groups have called on the US military to crack down on soldiers handing out the coins.
May 29, 2008 at 11:29 am
Horrors! Why Muslims are so scared of words…can’t wrap my head around it.
May 29, 2008 at 11:33 am
Just what we didn’t need — for it will create in the eyes of the Iraqis that America exemplifies Christianity.
May 29, 2008 at 11:35 am
Christian “freedom” on the march…
I wonder which right-wing Evangelical or Catholic organization paid for the coins. Well, on second thought, it probably fell under those “faith-based initiatives” that our current government chooses to fund.
May 29, 2008 at 11:40 am
What a stupid waste, why not encourage them to be kind and talk with their existing Iraqi Christian neighbors, you know, the ones that have been there for over a THOUSAND years.
Not that the Armed Forces is painting itself as “Christian” and simultaneously bombing them, we are just making it harder to existing Iraqi Christians to have peace.
Also, if I lived in poverty and only have a couple hours of electricity a day I would sell those things to a scrap metal dealer the second I got my hands on them!
May 29, 2008 at 11:48 am
Not that the Armed Forces is painting itself as “Christian” and simultaneously bombing them,
No kidding…
May 29, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Why Muslims are so scared of words…
I suppose it’s convenient to whip out such a dreadfully reductionistic view of the Christian faith when it suits you.
May 29, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I’ve a funny feeling they are preaching dubious fundamentralim, which is only tangentially related to historic Christianity. Irenaeus notes they are being presented with words, which is exactly the problem: there is a huge void between “words” and the Word of God in the person of Jesus the Christ. And the way you manifest Christ is to act like Christ– let’s see the occupying forces try that for a change.
May 29, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Oh, and apparently the Muslims running Iran (you know, the country Barack Obama wants to be buddies with) are cracking down on people suspected of being Christian.
I guess they’re scared of words as well?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,359944,00.html
May 29, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I’ll say this again, hopefully it won’t be moderated this time…
Aren’t we called to spread the Word of God?
May 29, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Aren’t we called to spread the Word of God?
Yes. But delivery and witness are two criteria of spreading the Word faithfully.
May 29, 2008 at 4:08 pm
I would consider that helping people in need meets the witness portion. It’s really unfortunate to think that U.S. soldiers are not helping people in need over there.
May 29, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Preach the gospel, by words if necessary. St. Francis of Assisi.\
Faith is caught, not taught.
Act as if you have faith, and faith will come. St. Augustine.
Good intentions and delicate sensibilities are not moral arguments.
Once a fixed idea of duty gets inside a narrow mind, it can never get out.
This is worse than a crime; it is a blunder. Attributed to Tallyerand
The message gets across in inverse proportion to its being made conscious since the unspoken assumptions are what mold the audience. Alan Alda.
May 29, 2008 at 6:17 pm
“Aren’t we called to spread the Word of God?”
It all depends on what you mean by “we”. The church yes. The 1st Tank Battalion of the 1st Marine Division maybe not.
May 29, 2008 at 7:02 pm
Are they not Christians?
May 29, 2008 at 10:37 pm
As anyone familiar with military regulations could tell you, this is definitely not OK. The story didn’t say which platoon/unit is allegedly responsible for this, but if their CO finds out, *and it’s true,* they have stepped in it big time. The US armed forces is not interested at all in painting itself as Christian. Officers and enlisted in all branches include Jews, Muslims, Wiccans, Satanists, you name it, they’ve recruited it.
It sounds possibly like a mistake… well-meaning people on the homefront send alll kinds of things to the troops without reading the regulations on what is allowed. For instance, Catholics send rosaries, but they don’t realize that in the field, troops can’t carry anything that shows up, so they send white beads or blue beads or red beads when only brown or black or dark green will really work!
Probably the guys in this particular unit got the coins from home and handed them out like they do candy or pens, goodies for the kids, without peering at the tiny wriitng on them. I have a hard time believing that any soldier or marine would deliberately and consciously “evangelize” in this manner, especially if they are actually on patrol and would have to personally deal with the potential deadly consequences once the local religous authorities got a good look at the coins.
May 29, 2008 at 10:57 pm
It sounds possibly like a mistake…
It’s ALWAYS a “mistake,” right? Fallujah massacre? Just a “mistake”… There’s no way “our” boys would do anything wrong.
May 30, 2008 at 2:53 am
Michael,
No, what happened at Fallujah was a horrible crime. Our boys have committed much sin in Iraq – and done much good, too. Like you, I am disgusted by self proclaimed Patriotic Americans (TM) who view military personnel as sinless messiahs. At the same time the troops are not sitting around saying things like “unjust wars are my favorite kind!” or “how can we best act like arrogant imperialists today?” Half the time when things go wrong in the military, it’s not the result of somebody’s deliberate sin but the result of somebody’s oversight. Gross incompetance is the strongest term you could use.
Even if it was deliberate, the comparison to Fallujah doesn’t work at all. Purposely giving Muslims coins with inscriptions from the New Testament is not exactly depraved. Stupid and imprudent, maybe, but St. Peter is not going to greet them with, “You passed out a bit of metal with John 3:16 on it? Go below!” The massacre at Fallujah, on the other hand, involves serious sin.
And again I highly doubt, if this actually happened (the link calls it a “report,” and I haven’t seen this in any other MSM) I doubt the guys did it on purpose. Like I said, proselytizing is a major no-no in the United States armed forces, as any military chaplain would attest. Not to mention the soldiers and marines on patrol have no inclination, NONE, to purposely poke the hornets nest with a stick.
What it sounds like to me is some poor Lance Corporal got a care package from clueless loved ones – maybe even his pastor – and not thinking anything of it, decided to share the pretty play money. It’s not like they were minted by the Bush Administration and passed out to the platoons with secret instructions to use them to convert the Iraqis to Christianity.
May 30, 2008 at 8:13 am
Just when Iraq is about to turn into America’s Algeria (because the “surge” is actually FAILING in its objectives) some servicemen bozos go and pull a stupid stunt like this!
Wait until the Ayatollah Sistani (the man who, I predict, will precipitate American forces’ destruction in Iraq) finds out about this:
http://edouardalxandre.livejournal.com/517801.html
Apostasy is the greatest sin a Muslim can commit (whether we, in our different Western Christian value-system, like it or not), and these troops are, by Shiah Muslim standards, doing more damage to Iraq’s indigenous culture than even the bombing of Fallujah. This is a dreadful mistake, and prima facie evidence that America cannot presume to “fix Iraq.”
May 30, 2008 at 1:32 pm
If the soldiers were really there to preach the gospel, they would not have arrived in armed aircraft and they would not be driving around now in tanks, and carrying guns.
Truly, even a conservative war supporter should be able to understand this.
To pretend that U.S. soldiers are in any position to credibly preach the gospel, even as they attempt to carry out their duties within a state-funded army, is to insult the gospel — and even to insult the army. The army (at least theoretically) hasn’t descended to the level of the crusaders (actually is another matter). The gospel is desecrated when people try to spread it with the sword.
St. Francis, among other Christians, knew this.
May 30, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Don’t Al Qaeda and Al Sadr often refer to the Coalition troops as “Crusaders”? I’m thinking that a foreign military trying to convert the people of host nation is just plain a mistake…. especially when that military is still fighting parts of the population. And the history of the West vs Islam makes matters worse.
May 30, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Don’t Al Qaeda and Al Sadr often refer to the Coalition troops as “Crusaders”? I’m thinking that a foreign military trying to convert the people of host nation is just plain a mistake…. especially when that military is still fighting parts of the population. And the history of the West vs Islam makes matters worse.