Afghanistan: U.S. Military burns Bibles for fear they'd be used to convert Muslims

(CNN) -- Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.

Such religious outreach can endanger American troops and civilians in the devoutly Muslim nation, Wright said.

"The decision was made that it was a 'force protection' measure to throw them away, because, if they did get out, it could be perceived by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying to convert Muslims," Wright told CNN on Tuesday.

Troops at posts in war zones are required to burn their trash, Wright said.

The Bibles were written in the languages Pashto and Dari.

This decision came to light recently, after the Al Jazeera English network aired video of a group prayer service and chapel sermon that a reporter said suggested U.S. troops were being encouraged to spread Christianity....

I personally am an athiest and know that there is no god, but why are muslim clerics so worried about bibles getting into the hands of the common folk in their own language? Probably because when they read the loving message in the bible they will say "why read a book in a language that I do not understand?" Then the clerics will have less influence in the mobs of ignorant muslims.

Pakistan PM calls on unicorn to fight jihadists

"Terrorists are perverting the teachings of Islam and scholars should speak with one voice against the militants, Gilani said yesterday." Indeed they should, if terrorists are perverting the teachings of Islam. Yet in all these years since 9/11 we have seen non-Muslims call again and again for the exponents of the true, peaceful, tolerant Islam to step forward and begin to battle the jihadists on Islamic grounds. We have been assured that they are doing so, even though no specifics are ever forthcoming. We have seen Muslims condemn terrorism in vague language that does nothing to refute the jihadists' explanations of the Islamic justification for their actions. Just today a "moderate Muslim" from Britain has been emailing me to say that my explanation of jihad is wrong, wrong, wrong -- yet he has consistently sidestepped my requests that he produce a statement from any generally recognized Islamic authority to the effect that Muslims should not wage war against unbelievers and try to impose Sharia upon them.

I repeat yet again: if anyone can produce evidence of any mainstream Islamic sect or school of Islamic jurisprudence that teaches that Muslims must coexist with non-Muslims as equals on an indefinite basis without trying to subjugate them under Sharia, send it to me at director@jihadwatch.org, and I will publicly retract my statements to the contrary. But I have made this request many times before, and despite the many people who will be reading this who are avid to discredit what I am saying and the jihad and Islamic supremacism, they have never produced this.

Anyway, all this means that Gilani is calling upon the great unicorn to help him against the Taliban. He is appealing to Santa Claus for intervention. Good luck with that.

"Pakistan Calls on Islamic Scholars to Help Combat Extremism," by Ed Johnson for Bloomberg, May 20 (thanks to Twostellas):

May 20 (Bloomberg) -- Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani called on Islamic scholars to help root out extremism, as security forces waged an urban offensive against Taliban militants in the northwestern Swat Valley.

Terrorists are perverting the teachings of Islam and scholars should speak with one voice against the militants, Gilani said yesterday.

“It is time that they stand united to protect the country from all challenges,” Gilani said at a religious affairs conference in the capital, Islamabad, the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

Pakistan’s government is trying to build support in the world’s second-most populous Muslim nation for its offensive against Taliban insurgents. The militants reneged on a peace accord and last month advanced on the capital, even after the government agreed to impose Islamic law in Swat and neighboring districts.

Religious schools, or madrassas, play a key role in radicalizing Pakistani youth and provide a pool of Taliban recruits who cross the border to attack western forces in Afghanistan, according to the United Nations and U.S. intelligence agencies....

US arms falling into hands of Taliban

KABUL — Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior American and Afghan forces.

Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents’ corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with American officers and arms dealers.

The presence of this ammunition among the dead in the Korangal Valley, an area of often fierce fighting near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, strongly suggests that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against American troops.

The scope of that diversion remains unknown, and the 30 magazines represented a single sampling of fewer than 1,000 cartridges. But military officials, arms analysts and dealers say it points to a worrisome possibility: With only spotty American and Afghan controls on the vast inventory of weapons and ammunition sent into Afghanistan during an eight-year conflict, poor discipline and outright corruption among Afghan forces may have helped insurgents stay supplied.

The United States has been criticized, as recently as February by the federal Government Accountability Office, for failing to account for thousands of rifles issued to Afghan security forces. Some of these weapons have been documented in insurgents’ hands, including weapons in a battle last year in which nine Americans died....

They have stinger missiles too. We gave the weapons to them to fight the Russians. Idiots.