U.S Army Burns Bibles in Afghanistan

TomMN:
I hope for the safe return of your son from the war zone he is in. It isn't easy being the parent of a child in the military.

I have several points I'd like to make:

1. The Bibles were sent. Giving the Bibles to a missionary organization makes it appear as though the US military is merely using a proxy to force Christianity on the locals at gunpoint. Considering that this (or a variation on this involving Judaism) is already in the sermons of the Wahabis, it seems that we might do better for our nation, our Muslim allies, and our faith to not play directly into their hands. Better that no soldier, sailor, airmen, or Marine breathes a word of the Gospel while deployed than that Afghan Muslims decide that Christians are forcibly converting them. Any Christian who thinks that Americans in Afghanistan should be spreading the Gospel should go to Afghanistan and spread it themselves. Those of us in the military have other (though not higher) sworn loyalties, and I'm not going to sacrifice the lives of my friends (particularly my non-Christian friends) for the sake of (probably ineffectual) theological showboating. Distributing Bibles and tracts is, I think, the lazy man's method of evangelism anyway.

2. Given that there was such a large store of Bibles which had to be disposed of, I think that burning them is the most respectful way of disposing of them -- leaving nothing left to be disrespected. That is why we burn flags rather than throwing them in the trash.

3. Many regulations prohibiting things Muslims would find offensive are based on fundamentalist Christian/uneducated American conceptions of what is offensive to a religious person. Most Muslim countries are shame-based, not guilt-based, so your average, say, Iraqi Muslim sees nothing wrong in spending his day watching pornography -- as long as he doesn't get caught by someone who might disapprove. Like Derek said, things that won't make a Muslim look twice (an infidel looking at pornography, drinking himself into a stupor, or reading the Bible) cause a fundamentalist Christian to go into a moral panic because he, personally, is offended by anyone doing these things, whether or not they are of his faith. (Witness the priority many American Christians place on banning gay marriage over spreading the Gospel.)

4. While I do not believe that the American presence in Afghanistan is unjust, I do believe that we are in someone else's country and, thus, some deference is due to their native cultures and beliefs. Here's the key -- no one will die because those Bibles were burned. But if the Qur'an is burned, someone will die. There are enough Muslims in the world who are absolute savages (which is not to say all or even most Muslims) that any disrespect towards Islam, real or perceived, is guaranteed to be met with violence. So, yes, we defer a little more to Islam (and, more specifically, to the most fanatical of its adherents) than to Christianity for the same reason that we defer a little more to a crazed gunman than an average businessman: self-preservation. Most Westerners need the Gospel as desperately as do most Afghans, so sacrificing them for the Gospel is hardly a moral victory.

I say let the servicemen die for freedom, let the missionaries die for God, and let neither die because Afghan Muslims couldn't tell the difference.