{"id":339,"date":"2009-06-09T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-09T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=339"},"modified":"2009-11-21T21:31:54","modified_gmt":"2009-11-22T05:31:54","slug":"us-military-chaplain-distributes-bibles-to-iraqis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/09\/us-military-chaplain-distributes-bibles-to-iraqis\/","title":{"rendered":"US Military Chaplain Distributes “Bibles” to Iraqis"},"content":{"rendered":"

US military Chaplains serve all<\/em>.\u00a0 They serve regardless of faith or lack thereof.\u00a0 They provide counsel and\u00a0reassurance independent of affiliation.\u00a0 While staying true to their own religious tenets, they aggressively support all<\/em> personnel with whatever they require to meet their spiritual and religious needs.<\/p>\n

That’s why it is not surprising that a US military Chaplain recently handed out religious texts<\/a> to local Iraqis.\u00a0 They were Arabic and English Korans, the “Bible” of Islam (and its not the first time the US military has provided locals with Islamic religious texts<\/a>).\u00a0 By showing respect for the Iraqis and demonstrating the importance of faith to the American military, the Chaplain made a significant contribution to the goodwill between US and Iraqis in the area.\u00a0 That goodwill will go a long way in securing a mutual peace that will help stabilize Iraq and allow American forces to come home.<\/p>\n

The response of the Iraqis, too, was not unexpected.\u00a0 They displayed no offense\u00a0that they were given a Koran by an American soldier wearing a Christian cross.\u00a0 In fact, one Iraqi read from the text a Surah “extolling” Christians in response. They gave no indication of offense at receiving a Koran with an English translation, even though to Muslims the Koran can only be in Arabic (if it is not, it is not the Koran).<\/p>\n

Contrary to common stereotype,\u00a0Muslims in the Middle East do not inherently bear hostility toward Christianity.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, the opposite is often true.\u00a0 In populations dominated by Islam, some have never even met a Christian, but the importance of religion in their culture makes them naturally curious about the Christian faith so often ascribed to Western nations.<\/p>\n

The Chaplain wasn’t trying to convert the Iraqis, even though he couldn’t be certain if they were necessarily Muslim or had a practicing faith.\u00a0 But the cultural importance of faith, and the respect with which the Chaplain approached them, made the experience positive for all concerned.<\/p>\n

Had the conversation progressed along religious lines, perhaps on the topic of the Abrahamic similarities of both Islam and Christianity, it is not unfathomable that the Iraqis would have received a Christian Bible the same way, if he made it available along with the Koran.\u00a0 The irony, of course, is that given current political sensitivities<\/a>, it is unlikely he would have had any Arabic Bibles to give, even if the Iraqis had asked<\/em> for them.<\/p>\n

While no one will complain about giving Korans to Iraqis, the distribution of Bibles would have been widely derided; any public knowledge of Arabic Bibles, after all, would bring about cries of proselytism.\u00a0 The result is that Arabic Korans are available to Iraqis, but Arabic Bibles likely aren’t…even if they are Iraqi Christians<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

US military Chaplains serve all.\u00a0 They serve regardless of faith or lack thereof.\u00a0 They provide counsel and\u00a0reassurance independent of affiliation.\u00a0 While staying true to their own religious tenets, they aggressively support all personnel with whatever they require to meet their spiritual and religious needs. That’s why it is not surprising that a US military Chaplain recently handed out religious texts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,3],"tags":[23,4,52,2,10],"class_list":["post-339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","category-culture","tag-bible","tag-churchandstate","tag-iraq","tag-military","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339","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=339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}