Mikey Weinstein's Speech Makes Me Ask Questions

On Nov. 5, 2009, Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim American was accused of going on a shooting spree at Fort Hood. According to AP articles, Mr. Hasan had complained of harassment over his religion and had contacted an attorney. It was reported that he had started verbally questioning the war on terror and whether it was a “war on Islam”.

When I read and heard these bits of information, I started thinking about what I had heard when Mikey Weinstein has spoken at RIT in October. Mr. Weinstein who is the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and author of the book “God on our Side”, emphasized that the greatest threat to our national security was the Dominionist Fundamentalist Evangelical Christian take over of our military. He reported that his foundation represents 15,000 members of the armed services and numerous ROTC units. 96% are believers in Jesus Christ, but have been told by their military command structure that they are not Christian enough. Weinstein states he is “talking about a combination of a fanatical religious dogma that has the long tactical name of Premellinial Dispensational Reconstructionist Dominionist Fundamentalist Evangelical Christianity”. This specific Christian denomination makes up about 12.6 percent of our American public. “This is a combination of this fanaticism that is fervently homophobic, misogynistic, Islamaphobic, anti-Semitic and a tremendous hatred of the constitution. Their view is the constitution needs to be subordinated to the pristine weaponization of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the mixture of this fanatical religiosity with the complete and total access to access to weapons of mass destruction”. He describes this as the spiritual rape of our own member of the US military. On March 5, 2008, a lawsuit was filed and names Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Major Freddy J. Welborn as specific defendants with MRFF and Hall as the plaintiffs. MRFF President and Founder, Mikey Weinstein stated in announcing today's filing of the new litigation, "It is beyond despicable, indeed wholly unlawful, that the United States Army is actively attempting to destroy the professional career of one of its decorated young fighting soldiers, with 2 completed combat tours in Iraq, simply because he had the rare courage to stand up for his Constitutional rights and guarantees of separation of church and state against a superior officer who was forcefully attempting to intimidate him into accepting fundamentalist Christianity." In a AFP article titled “US Army committed to religious tolerance” In the article, an army spokesman General Kevin Bergner told reporters “We always have a deep and enduring concern that everybody be treated with dignity and respect.” With all the pictures, videos, stories, and all the lawsuits filed against the military, this statement does not seem too accurate. This reporter wonders if this had an effect on the shooter’s psyche and was one of the catalysts to the shooting.

Mr. Weinstein also spoke about the proselytizing that goes on within the military, not just amongst the US military personnel, but also in the countries that the US now occupies. Mr. Weinstein stated and that American Fundamentalists Christians had been embedded with the US solders and that they had distributed over 1.8 million of their bibles while in Iraq and Afghanistan. On Tuesday, July 12, 2005 on the front page of the NY Times, Us Air Force announces it will now reserve its right to evangelize anyone it determines to be unchurched. The 523rd F16 Fighter Squadron who call themselves the Crusaders and whose emblem consists of a sword, four crosses and a medieval knight’s helmet. Check them out at globalsecurity.org, which reports that the payload on the F-16s they fly consists of “a wide variety of conventional, precision guided and nuclear weapons. With behavior like this how is it not to be construed that this is a holy war, another crusade.

Mikey spoke of Melinda Morton, who was an air force Navigator at the Air force Academy. She confirmed to Mr. Weinstein the rumors that had been coming out of the Air Force Academy. Within 100 days, Ms. Morton was sent to Okinawa and from there, she was to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. I thought of this story when I heard that Major Hana after complaining of harassment and was to be deployed to Afghanistan. Was he being deployed because of complaining? I don’t know, but the question is worth asking.

Upon hearing about the shooting at Fort Hood, this information made me question the motives of Major Hasan. By no means am I condoning the actions, but by questioning and looking for answers, future events like this might be avoided.

Mikey Weinstein pointed out very explicitly that we are being threatened by the military takeover by the Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians. This is not a new phenomenon. It has been going on since Vietnam. One Vietnam veteran I spoke with told me that if you did not pray, you did not get promoted and that was 45 years ago. When you have high ranking military officers like, Gen Jack Catton, who places God above all things, including family and country, you need to question what is going on in our military. Since starting his advocacy work, Mikey has had his windows shot out of his home, animals slaughtered and put on his front porch, swastika and crosses written on his house, feces and beer bottles thrown at his house and he receives 8-12 death threats a week. While in town, during the time of him having supper, he received 3 death treats alone. It was announced to the audience when he was speaking that he had been nominated for the Noble Peace Prize. This is one person that truly deserves it. He fights for the civil rights of our soldiers and fights to reestablish the constitution as the law. I hope you take the time to watch the video of Mr. Weinstein’s speech and look at the Military Religious Freedom Foundations website. I hope the video and website motivate you to ask some questions that need to be asked and hopefully take some action to stop this threat to this country and to countries and people all over the world.