According to the Associated Press, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that has lambasted the Air Force for allegedly supporting evangelical Christianity, is being invited to the AF Academy to present its view of Islam.  This follows the previous panel on terrorism, which had three panelists that the MRFF criticized for being Christian and unqualified.  (See previous posts, 1 & 2.)

Two invitees are members of the MRFF board.  Joseph Wilson was a Clinton era consultant on African affairs and acting ambassador to Iraq.  Reza Aslan is an academic teacher and writer on Islam.  Aslan recently went on the record (on a CNN blog) criticizing the Academy for hosting “fundamentalist Christians” during the last panel.

The third and final invitee is Weinstein himself, a Reagan era lawyer and founder of the MRFF. It is unclear what his qualifications are to speak as an “expert on Islam.”

Just as the MRFF accused the three “former terrorists” of ulterior motives, it seems unlikely that the MRFF–which has expressed no interest in Islamic issues–would be a legitimate source of “balance” for a previous panel on Islamic terrorism.  The MRFF has a political agenda centered on evangelical Christianity.  According to a San Diego news site (which implied that the MRFF was getting “equal time”), Weinstein has indicated that “deprogramming” may be a part of their upcoming panel–even though no accusations of religious impropriety occurred after the previous panel.

What is clear is that non-Islamic religious issues will be a focus of Weinstein’s visit.

As reported on the ADF and Religion Clause.