As he has with every public controversy in the US military, perennial religious freedom critic Michael Weinstein claims Christians are to blame for the burning of Qurans at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

[The Koran burning] once again reveals a noxious undercurrent of fundamentalist Christian supremacist exceptionalism…This culture of religious bigotry is fueled by militant, unchecked Christian fundamentalism.

Weinstein pontificates for another thousand words (most of them adjectives, as is his tradition) without really saying anything more of substance.  He does make some fairly ridiculous comments, however:

Christian fundamentalism[‘s] attendant Islamophobic racism is carefully coddled and nurtured…

Weinstein may need to re-check the definition of “race.”

From Iraq to Afghanistan, the militant, fundamentalist Islamists’ propaganda narrative has been one of “Crusader Occupation.”

Actually, that’s patently false.  An overview of diatribes by Osama bin Laden and others, for example, demonstrated it was America’s support for Israel and the presence of US troops in Islamic ‘holy lands’ that was the “narrative” upon which extremists relied.  Of course, that narrative doesn’t help Weinstein, so he apparently has to make one up.  Thus, if there’s a narrative of “Christian crusading,” it’s the product of Michael Weinstein, not anyone else.

The Pentagon must launch a profound and comprehensive investigation of these extremely grievous offenses and swiftly court-martial those responsible.

Guess what Weinstein demanded when he found out Bibles had been burned at the same Afghan location a few years ago?  Nothing, though he did use the related scandal as a fundraiser for his cause.

Later in the article Weinstein equivocates on whether the Koran burning was accidental.  So even though he doesn’t know if the Korans were burned on purpose, and even though he doesn’t cite any law or policy violated by the burning of Korans, and even though no investigation has been made public, Michael Weinstein — a former JAG who knows better — still makes the baseless call for court-martial.  That’s sensationalist and moronic.

The fact of the matter is that nothing in the Koran burning incident is related to Weinstein’s normal memes — but its the top-rated headline right now.  By inserting himself into the scandal, Weinstein doesn’t support “religious freedom” in the US military (in fact, he attacks it), but he can generate publicity and revenue — which is all that matters to him.