“Jesus kill Mohammed!” chanted the interpreter. “Jesus kill Mohammed!”

[kpete]

.........................

The rest of that Easter was spent under siege. Insurgents held off Bravo Company, which was called in to rescue the men in the compound. Ammunition ran low. A helicopter tried to drop more but missed. As dusk fell, the men prepared four Bradley Fighting Vehicles for a “run and gun” to draw fire away from the compound. Humphrey headed down from the roof to get a briefing. He found his lieutenant, John D. DeGiulio, with a couple of sergeants. They were snickering like schoolboys. They had commissioned the Special Forces interpreter, an Iraqi from Texas, to paint a legend across their Bradley’s armor, in giant red Arabic script.

“What’s it mean?” asked Humphrey.

“Jesus killed Mohammed,” one of the men told him. The soldiers guffawed. JESUS KILLED MOHAMMED was about to cruise into the Iraqi night.

The Bradley, a tracked “tank killer” armed with a cannon and missiles—to most eyes, indistinguishable from a tank itself—rolled out. The Iraqi interpreter took to the roof, bullhorn in hand. The sun was setting. Humphrey heard the keen of the call to prayer, then the crackle of the bullhorn with the interpreter answering—in Arabic, then in English for the troops, insulting the prophet. Humphrey’s men loved it. “They were young guys, you know?” says Humphrey. “They were scared.” A Special Forces officer stood next to the interpreter—“a big, tall, blond, grinning type,” says Humphrey.

“Jesus kill Mohammed!” chanted the interpreter. “Jesus kill Mohammed!”

more:
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/0082488

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[no_hypocrisy]

2. And the military doesn't understand why they are being shot at and bombed . . . .

[SoCalDem]

10. Onward, Christian Soldiers

[mdmc]

3. hearts and minds

USA!

[RandomThoughts]

4. The article title says 'The crusade for a Christian military'

I think it is an attempt to falsely paint the words and teachings of Jesus, to defame Christians and try and hurt the teachings of the love of God.

What Christian values taught by Jesus are in that statement?

In my belief, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ came to save the world not to condemn it, and he taught us to love our enemy, to turn the other cheek. He taught us to help another culture that is suffering. And he taught us to love our Lord God and our neighbor.

It is appalling that Jesus Christ's name is used in such a way.

[Dogtown]

7. I do not understand

your comment that this exercise was intended to defame Christians. Are you saying these soldiers were all atheists, intent on doing damage to the Christian faith.

I find that a real stretch.

Instead, I see a bunch of young, impressionable men, poorly led, and force-fed some pathetic crusader-brand of Christianity by their Padres, using it as a provocation and weapon to terrorize Muslims.

This was caused by over-zealous misuse of Christianity to justify the subjugation of a people.

[RandomThoughts]

8. No, by no means am I making a blanket statement about any group

I am not saying US soldiers, nor Iraqi people have any one view.

I was saying that statement, has an effect of making my view of what Christianity is about, look like something else.

I was commenting on the one statement in the article, and the idea of a few people about calling the methods of war a crusade. I am not making a blanket statement about the soldiers in Iraq. I believe many think of Christianity like I do, some see it different, and some do not believe. Some are of different faiths, and some are atheist. And all of them, just like me, make mistakes some times, and some times get things right.

This was caused by over-zealous misuse of Christianity to justify the subjugation of a people.

And in doing that, I believe it makes Christianity look like something that it is not. It is not the way I understand Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ.

[Dogtown]

11. I believe I misread you.

Yes, this incident gives a very bad and unjustified impression of Christians in general ans American Christians in particular. I completely understand your objection now.

[greyl]

19. Christianity is as Christianity does. nt

[malaise]

9. Ding ding

You are correct

[ColbertWatcher]

12. Except, Harper's is not the one doing the mischaracterizing here.

Joel's Army is.

Here's Wikip*dia's snippet about them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latter_Rain_Movement#Joel.27s_Army

[anonymous171]

5. How can anyone claim to be a christian and yet kill people for living?

:shrug:

[ColbertWatcher]

13. Even the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. n/t

[BrotherBuzz]

16. Fact: America has become a biblically illiterate nation...

and the Fundies have spearheaded the movement to dumb the public down at every turn. Perhaps it could be argued the devil is actually a Fundy draped in the American flag.

[ColbertWatcher]

20. I don't subscribe to any of the superstitious nonsense.

I just like quotes.

[BrotherBuzz]

22. “How to Participate in a Political Party.”

"Rule the world for God."

"Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology."

"Hide your strength."

"Don’t flaunt your Christianity."

"Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership positions whenever possible, God willing."

- Memo distributed by Pat Robertson to the Iowa Republican County Caucus

[ColbertWatcher]

24. "Don’t flaunt your Christianity." That's an interesting quote. n/t

[Prophet 451]

23. Cultus Americanus

The religious right aren't actually Christian in the normal sense. What they believe pays lip service to Christianity but largely exists to provide a cover of divine approval to extreme-right political views. Witness that statement from Liberty U when they disbanded the Democratic Club. They said that the Democratic Party platform was opposed to Christianity and one of the things the listed was "socialism". The Bible says bugger all about socialism. In fact, you could interpret Jesus's words as proto-socialist (and many Christian socialists in the late-Victorian era did).

It's a religion that grew out of but is distinct from Christianity. One of the guys who helped found the religious right has come out with a book talking about how it quickly became an extension of the right-wing of the Republican party. David Brock says something similar in his autobiography. It's a concerted effort to combine right-wing politics with faith.

Incidently, I'm personally a Luciferian Satanist. We don't want the lunatics either.

[BrotherBuzz]

27. Dominionism

Perhaps you've read Katherine Yurica's seminal work:

The Despoiling of America

(How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State)



If you haven't, I would highly recommend you take a look. Well worth the time invested reading and bookmarking the essay.

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

[Prophet 451]

30. I haven't but I will

That picture on the first page creeps me out though.

Thanks for the link./

[MisterP]

31. I mean, technically, the fundies HAVE no theologians:

hence Dallas Theological Seminary's foundation as a place for boy prophets and Semple McPhersons to get some sort of certificate
combine this with the 50s Red Scare, Hippie-ish "Jesus Freaks," and the SoBaptists (founded originally to endorse slavery against Thoreau) and you get a fundie resurgence after a 20s-60s quietness
hence the reaction one often gets from theological students when one mentions some Orwellian fundie history: SPFLAARGH!
or, as Reagan said, "If you could add up all the power of prayer in this room, what would be the megatonnage?"

[progressoid]

15. That's easy, Ecclesiastes 3

1To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

[ColbertWatcher]

21. That would sound really cool as a song. n/t

[armyowalgreens]

29. A large portion of the bible promotes murder and slavery.

A book that teaches such violence is inevitably going to breed violent people.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

32. Jesus was not a nice guy. He advocated violence.

From the Book of Matthew, only a small sample of the violence in the New Testament:

# While insulting the Pharisees and Sadducees, John the Baptist calls an entire generation a "generation of vipers." 3: 7

# Those who bear bad fruit will be cut down and burned "with unquenchable fire." 3:10, 12

# Jesus says that most people will go to hell. 7:13-14

# Those who fail to bear "good fruit" will be "hewn down, and cast into the fire." 7:19

# "the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 8:12

# Jesus tells his disciples to keep away from the Gentiles and Samaritans, and go only to the Israelites. 10:5-6

# Cities that neither "receive" the disciples nor "hear" their words will be destroyed by God. It will be worse for them than for Sodom and Gomorrah. And you know what God supposedly did to those poor folks (see Gen.19:24). 10:14-15

# Families will be torn apart because of Jesus (this is one of the few "prophecies" in the Bible that has actually come true). "Brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death." 10:21

# "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." 10:33

# Jesus says that he has come to destroy families by making family members hate each other. He has "come not to send peace, but a sword." 10:34-36

# Jesus condemns entire cities to dreadful deaths and to the eternal torment of hell because they didn't care for his preaching. 11:20-24

# "He that is not with me is against me." 12:30

# "Whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him." 12:31-32

# Jesus often called people names. One of his favorites was to call his adversaries a "generation of vipers." 12:34

# Jesus will send his angels to gather up "all that offend" and they "shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth." 13:41-42, 50

# Jesus refuses to heal the Canaanite (Mk.7:26 says she was Greek) woman's possessed daughter, saying "it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to the dogs." 15:22-26

# The ever-so-kind Jesus calls the Pharisees "hypocrites, wicked, and adulterous." 15:2-3

# In the parable of the marriage feast, the king sends his servants to gather everyone they can find, both bad and good, to come to the wedding feast. One guest didn't have on his wedding garment, so the king tied him up and "cast him into the outer darkness" where "there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth." 22:12-13

# Jesus condemns the Jews for being "the children of them which killed the prophets." 23:31

# Jesus blames his the Jews (who were then living) for "all the righteous blood" from Abel to Zecharias, 23:35

# The servant who kept and returned his master's talent was cast into the "outer darkness" where there will be "weeping and gnashing of teeth." 25:30

# Jesus tells us what he has planned for those that he dislikes. They will be cast into an "everlasting fire." 25:41

# "His blood be on us, and on our children." This verse blames the Jews for the death of Jesus and has been used to justify their persecution for twenty centuries. 27:25

============


Religion of peace, uh-huh........ Whoever wrote this stuff down got some BAD mushrooms.......:eyes:

[MADem]

6. That's as silly as saying Saint Paul killed Saint Peter.

"Isa" (Jesus) is regarded as a prophet in Islam. He's revered because he too believed in the One God Of Ibrahim.

Moses gets props, too. The main prophet, Muhamad, who is the "One True Messenger" is "The Man," but aside from a problem with timeline (Jesus would have had to come back to earth to do the deed) it's just as goofy as "Spiderman killed Captain America." Makes no sense.

Things that make no sense can't offend--they just sound like the rantings of a disordered mind.

Plenty of people in the military who "fake" affiliation with a religion ("Oh, I'm a Catholic" or "Oh, I'm a Presbyterian" types), are, many of them, totally agnostic--haven't been inside a church in years, don't care about it, aren't involved, are very secular in their attitudes--a point that this article misses. People pretend to be affiliated with a religion because, at the higher ranks, it makes promotion easier. They're eager to point out the mainliners with evangelical tendencies in this article, but they don't mention the "Jack" Catholics, Protestants, Mormons and so forth--who make up a good percentage of the people "faking" religious affiliation. One of the things that I LIKED about the military is that you could shut people up who started in on that "religious shit" by simply telling them to cut it out:

As a whole, the military is actually slightly less religious than the general population: 20 percent of the roughly 1.4 million active-duty personnel checked off a box for a 2008 Department of Defense survey that says “no religious preference,” compared with the 16.1 percent of Americans who describe themselves as “unaffiliated.” These ambivalent soldiers should not be confused with the actively irreligious, though. Only half of one percent of the military accepts the label “atheist” or “agnostic.” (Jews are even scarcer, accounting for only one servicemember in three hundred; Muslims are just one in four hundred.) Around 22 percent, meanwhile, identify themselves as affiliated with evangelical or Pentecostal denominations. But that number is misleading. It leaves out those attached to the traditional mainline denominations—about 7 percent of the military—who describe themselves as evangelical; George W. Bush, for instance, is a Methodist. Among the 19 percent of military members who are Roman Catholics, meanwhile, there is a small but vocal subset who tend politically to affiliate with conservative evangelicals. And then there is the 20 percent of the military who describe themselves simply as “Christian,” a category that encompasses both those who give God little thought and the many evangelicals who reject denominational affiliation as divisive of the Body of Christ. “I don’t like ‘religion,’” a fundamentalist evangelical major told me. “That’s what put my savior on the cross. The Pharisees.”

That said, I do still think there's WAY too much "Jesus" in uniform.

[QueenOfCalifornia]

14. Okay....

where is Jack Bauer? Jack Bauer????? He would never let this happen. Imaginary character Jack Bauer would make it all stop.

Let's see, one mans imaginary friend kills another mans imaginary friend. This pisses off the other team because one brainless faction insults the other brainless faction. Ouch, my brain hurts.

[hootinholler]

17. WTG with the whole hearts and minds thingy. n/t

[Papa Boule]

18. So it's looking more like it was a right wing Christian-vs-Muslims religious war

Mounted by the religious right.

Either that or the religious right (including Bush, who got the Bible verse Sunday School covers on the war briefings) was exploited by calculating men to fight the war they wanted fought for whatever reasons they wanted it.

However it got started, a lot of right wing Christians are really enmeshed in it.

But in the defense of some of them, there are some on the right who oppose the war on the principle that men shouldn't be shedding blood trying to bring in a kingdom that they believe God is going to bring in Himself. They disparagingly call such warmongers "kingdom builders."

[Baclava]

25. Let them fight it out in a cage match - Jesus vs. Mohammed

Winner takes all the souls.

Winner supplies pizza and beer.

Everyone rejoices.

[madeline_con]

26. One flaw in the writing.

"Insurgents" held off Bravo Company, which was called in to rescue the men in the compound.

Should read: "Iraqi resistance fighters" held off Bravo Company, which was called in to rescue the men in the compound.

Calling them insurgents suggests they've come from elsewhere to join the fray. they are defending their homes from an occupying army.

spell edit

[Withywindle]

28. Meanwhile, up in Heaven...

Jesus and Mohammed are looking down on this mess, and both say in unison, "Holy shit!"

And they turn around and say to each other, "Yes, I'm afraid so."

Then Jesus says to Mohammed, "I am so sorry. Let me get you a drink."

Mohammed says, "I always thought drinking was wrong."

Jesus says, "Don't worry, no one's gonna blame you under these circumstances. Besides, it was water ten seconds ago."

Mohammed says, "Thanks, bro. You know, I can turn that POS fig tree into hash if you like. Hash is OK in my culture."

Jesus says, "Normally, I'd say no thanks, but these creeps are really stressing me out. Thanks, bro."