{"id":161,"date":"2008-02-29T21:21:58","date_gmt":"2008-03-01T01:21:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=161"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:16:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:16:59","slug":"weinstein-invited-to-usaf-academy-as-islamic-expert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/29\/weinstein-invited-to-usaf-academy-as-islamic-expert\/","title":{"rendered":"Weinstein Invited to USAF Academy as Islamic Expert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pr-inside.com\/us-air-force-academy-plans-new-r464392.htm\">Associated Press<\/a>, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that has lambasted the Air Force for allegedly supporting\u00a0evangelical Christianity, is being invited to the AF Academy to present its view of Islam.\u00a0 This follows the previous panel on terrorism, which had three panelists that the MRFF criticized for being Christian and unqualified.\u00a0 (See previous posts, <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=155\">1<\/a> &#038; <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=156\">2<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>Two invitees are members of the MRFF board.\u00a0 Joseph Wilson was a\u00a0Clinton era\u00a0consultant on African affairs and acting\u00a0ambassador to Iraq.\u00a0 Reza Aslan\u00a0is an academic teacher and writer on Islam.\u00a0 Aslan recently went on the record (on a CNN <a href=\"http:\/\/ac360.blogs.cnn.com\/2008\/02\/27\/apparently-terrorism-pays-it-pays-very-well\/\">blog<\/a>) criticizing the Academy for hosting &#8220;fundamentalist Christians&#8221; during the last panel.<\/p>\n<p>The third and final invitee is Weinstein himself, a Reagan era lawyer and founder of the MRFF.\u00a0It is unclear what his qualifications are to speak as an\u00a0&#8220;expert on Islam.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Just as the MRFF accused the three &#8220;former terrorists&#8221; of ulterior motives, it seems unlikely that the MRFF&#8211;which has expressed no interest in Islamic issues&#8211;would be a legitimate source of &#8220;balance&#8221; for a previous panel on Islamic terrorism.\u00a0 The MRFF has a political agenda centered on evangelical Christianity.\u00a0 According to a San Diego news <a href=\"http:\/\/www.signonsandiego.com\/news\/military\/20080228-1513-wst-academy-islam.html\">site<\/a>\u00a0(which implied that the MRFF was getting &#8220;equal time&#8221;),\u00a0Weinstein has indicated that &#8220;deprogramming&#8221; may be a part of\u00a0their upcoming panel&#8211;even though no accusations of religious impropriety occurred after the previous panel.<\/p>\n<p>What is clear is that non-Islamic religious issues will be a focus of Weinstein&#8217;s visit.<\/p>\n<p><font size=\"1\">As reported on the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.alliancealert.org\/2008\/02\/29\/caving-to-leftist-and-islamic-groups-air-force-academy-plans-new-panel\/\">ADF<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/religionclause.blogspot.com\/2008\/02\/air-force-academy-invites-new-speakers.html\">Religion Clause<\/a>.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to the Associated Press, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that has lambasted the Air Force for allegedly supporting\u00a0evangelical Christianity, is being invited to the AF Academy to present its view of Islam.\u00a0 This follows the previous panel on terrorism, which had three panelists that the MRFF criticized for being Christian and unqualified.\u00a0 (See previous posts, 1 &#038; [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[44,2,5218,7,10],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-academies","tag-islam","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mrff","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}