Michael “Mikey” Weinstein has frequently claimed that the public acknowledgement of Christians in the US military — as when a group of US Marines was baptized on a California beach — has provided propaganda and motivation for America’s extremist Islamic adversaries. As has been noted before, Weinstein’s claim has no basis in fact; Osama bin Laden railed against America’s support for Israel far more than he did any presence of Christianity in the US military.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, was recently able to release a “rambling manifesto” (available here) that mentions many things, which might have given him the opportunity to indicate the motivation behind his alleged personal planning of the attack on 9/11. While the document is addressed to the “crusaders of the military commissions” and Mohammed once refers to “crusader Soldiers,” as before, this word does not seem to be a religious attribution. In fact, Mohammed seems to claim the opposite: The evil of the Western world is its atheism and immorality: 

Day by day, under the power and authority of the secularist governments, the Fire of Atheism is spreading among the Western communities…

If God said no adultery or sexual contact without a marriage…the Westerner’s God says men and women are free to do whatever they want to do. A mother can even lie with her son and they can issue a marriage certificate for them if the majority…agrees to such a thing.

Or a man can marry a man or a woman can marry a woman, but by God’s laws, these acts are considered social crimes…

While a large section of the document is a rebuttal of Christianity, Mohammed indicates the West’s failing is its rejection of religion. Mohammed would have the world believe his fight has been motivated by the West’s atheism and moral degradation, not a crusading faith — despite Mikey Weinstein’s use of that claim to justify restricting Christianity in the US military. This is consistent with the general Islamic philosophy that Christians may be “misled,” but they are still People of the Book and might be reconciled to faith. Atheists, though, they hold no quarter for.

Once again, the first hand accounts of those who have attacked the United States and its allies indicate their motivations have nothing to do with Christianity or allegations of “crusading” Americans. It is but one or two American citizens who have popularized those claims to bolster their personal attacks on religious freedom in the US military.

Via the Stars and Stripes, Channel 4, and the Huffington Post.

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