Saturday 9 May 2009

Creating Christians in Afghanistan

There is this very interesting Video on youtube about how the US troops in Afghanistan are busy converting people to Christianity. Have a look:




The U.S. military denied Monday it has allowed soldiers to try to convert Afghans to Christianity, after a television network showed pictures of soldiers with bibles translated into local languages.

General Order Number 1 from the U.S. military's Central Command forbids active duty troops -- including all those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan -- from trying to convert people to their religion, considered a crime in many Muslim countries.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed footage filmed last year of a church service at Bagram, the main U.S. base north of the Afghan capital Kabul, and a bible study class where soldiers had a stack of bibles in the local languages, Pashtu and Dari.

A military chaplain was shown delivering a sermon to other soldiers, saying: "The special forces guys -- they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down."

A U.S. military spokeswoman, Major Jennifer Willis, said the comments from the sermon were taken out of context and chaplains were told to make clear to soldiers that they could not proselytize while serving.

Former prime minister Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai told Reuters the footage appeared to show "that in a foreign military base inside our country, people work against our religion."

"We consider this act as a direct attack on our religion that will arouse Afghans' emotions to take actions against them."

Violence in Afghanistan this year has reached its highest level since the Islamist Taliban were ousted in 2001, despite increasing numbers of U.S. and other foreign troops.


The US military has now confiscated Bibles that Christian US soldiers in Afghanistan had apparently intended to give to local Muslims, a military spokesman has said.

Some of the soldiers who appeared in the video have also been reprimanded, US government and military officials told Al Jazeera's James Bays.

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