A controversial video being aired on Al Jazeera News shows a gathering of U.S. soldiers in Bagram a year ago with stacks of Pashto-language New Testaments apparently sent to one of them by his church for the purpose of distributing them to the people of Afghanistan. Military code prohibits personnel from proselytizing while on active duty, a point made by one of the soldiers in the video, referring to General Rule Number One. Another seems to counter that gifts are allowed.
But a military spokesperson now says the Bibles were never distributed.
"I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They were never distributed," spokeswoman Major Jennifer Willis said at Bagram air base, north of Kabul.
Military officials have said the bibles were sent through private mail to an evangelical Christian soldier by his church back home. The soldier brought them to the bible study class where they were filmed.
Writing at Huffington Post, Kamran Pasha argues that among other problems it represents, this story leaves Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq with unfortunate support for their perception that U.S. foreign policy is driven by a desire to promote Christianity at the expense of Islam, a perception that sadly maybe held by many church-goers here as well, according to Jeff Sharlet's article in the new Harper's Magazine, detailing the efforts of conservative congregations to preach Christianity in these areas of the world through U.S. soldiers stationed there.
