Author: AFP
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 19, 2008
URL: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Fundamentalism_in_US_military/articleshow/2793470.cms
Since his last combat deployment in Iraq,
Jeremy Hall has had a rough time, getting shoved and threatened by his fellow
soldiers. The trouble started there when he would not pray in the mess hall.
"A senior ranking staff sergeant told
me to leave and sit somewhere else because I refused to pray," Hall,
a 23-year-old US army specialist, told.
Later, Hall was confronted by a major for
holding an authorized meeting of "atheists and freethinkers" on
his base. The officer threatened to discipline him and block his re-enlistment.
"He said: 'You guys are being a problem and problems can be removed',"
Hall said. "He was yelling at us and stuff and at the very end he says,
'I really love you guys, I want you to see the light'."
Now Hall is suing the major and secretary
of defense Robert Gates, accusing them of breaching his constitutional rights.
A campaign group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, is waiting for
the Pentagon to respond to a lawsuit filed in a Kansas federal court on Hall's
behalf.
It alleges a "pernicious pattern and
practice" of infringement of religious liberties in the military.
The group's founder, former air force lawyer
Mikey Weinstein, said he has documented 6,800 testimonies by military personnel
- nearly all of them Christians - of attempts to make them accept a fundamentalist
evangelical interpretation of Christianity.
"I am at war with those people who would
create a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in the technologically most lethal
organization ever created by our species, which is the US armed forces,"
he said. He plans to add extra charges this month. "It violates title
seven of the US code for an employer to push their Biblical world view on
an employee," he said.
