Well, now that we know that some genius put Bible quotes on gun sights, the whole misbegotten enterprise in Afghanistan is revealed as a Crusade after all — isn’t it?
Sure — if you already believed it was a Crusade.
Islamic jihadists have always been intent upon characterizing their opponents as Crusaders (or Zionists, or both, as in the indelible honorific Al-Qaeda’s Adam Gadahn once bestowed upon me: “Zionist Crusader”). Shortly before the beginning of the Iraq war, on November 8, 2002, Sheikh Bakr Abed Al-Razzaq Al-Samaraai preached in Baghdad’s Mother of All Battles mosque about “this difficult hour in which the Islamic nation [is] experiencing, an hour in which it faces the challenge of [forces] of disbelief of infidels, Jews, crusaders, Americans and Britons.”
Similarly, when Islamic jihadists bombed the U.S. Consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in December 2004, they explained that the attack was part of larger plan to strike back at “Crusaders:” “This operation comes as part of several operations that are organized and planned by al Qaeda as part of the battle against the crusaders and the Jews, as well as part of the plan to force the unbelievers to leave the Arabian Peninsula.” They said that jihad warriors “managed to enter one of the crusaders’ big castles in the Arabian Peninsula and managed to enter the American consulate in Jeddah, in which they control and run the country.”
And now come the gun sights. But a few Bible verses on gun sights doth not a Crusader make. Did American troops in Iraq or Afghanistan impose Christianity on the populace? They did not. (Neither did the real Crusaders, for that matter, but never mind that for now.) Did they even allow proselytizing? They did not. Did the Americans allow for the establishment of Sharia provisions in the Iraqi and Afghan Constitutions that relegated local non-Muslims to second-class status in both countries? Yes, they did.
The whole controversy over these Bible verses is a contrived exercise in moral equivalence, designed once again to distract attention away from the manifest reality that there is a worldwide religious group that is waging war against unbelievers in the name of religion. And the religion in question is not Christianity.
“Bible gun sights ‘inappropriate,'” by David Charter for Al Jazeera, January 21 (thanks to David):
Coded Bible references on gun sights used by a number of armies, including the US, have been called “inappropriate”.
New Zealand said on Thursday that its military would remove the citations from the sights, which were made in the US, as the messages were unsuitable given its involvement in operations in Muslim countries.
“The inscriptions … put us in a difficult situation,” Kristian Dunne, the New Zealand defence force spokesman, said.
“We were unaware of it and we’re unhappy that the manufacturer didn’t give us any indication that these were on there.”
New Zealand has instructed the defence contractor Trijicon, which is based in Wixon in Michigan, to remove the citations from their future orders of the weapon sights.
Dunne said that New Zealand has 260 such sights, first bought in 2004, which will continue to be used once the codes are removed as they are the best quality available.
US contracts
The US Marine Corps was said by ABC News, which broke the news of the inscriptions, to have a $660 million contract over multiple years with Trijicon for them to make 800,000 units of the product. Trijicon has other contracts to supply the US amy with the sights.
“We all know of the religious tensions around this issue and it’s unwise to do anything that could be seen to raise tensions in an unnecessary way”
“If determined to be true, this is clearly inappropriate and we are looking into possible remedies,” Commander Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesman, told the AFP news agency.
The sights are used on weapons used during the training of Afghan and Iraqi soldiers under contracts with the US army and Marine Corps.
The US-based Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) called on Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, to immediately withdraw the equipment from combat.
“Having Biblical references on military equipment violates the basic ideals and values our country was founded upon,” Haris Tarin, MPAC Washington director, said in a statement.
“Worse still, it provides propaganda ammo to extremists who claim there is a ‘Crusader war against Islam’ by the United States.”…