Religious Fundamentalists Taking Over World's Armies?

I have expressed concerns previously about the influence of evangelical Christians in the U. S. Military who seek to impose their beliefs on others in the ranks. The Air Force Academy has been particularly racked with problems of this nature. The phenomenon is not unique to the USA, however, as a Washington Post column notes. The development is worrisome since the combination of military power and religious fanaticism is a very dangerous one indeed. One need only look to Iran to see how dangerous unrestrained religious extremism becomes when combined with military power. It literally can threaten the entire world. Here in the USA, every effort needs to be made to discharge from the military those who put religious fanaticism ahead of the U. S. Constitution and the civil rights it guarantees to all citizens, nut just Christianists. Here are some column highlights:

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Thanks to the peculiar combination of Samuel Huntington's clash of civilizations theory and Al-Qaeda's televisual terrorism, we've grown accustomed to thinking of holy wars as battles fought between shadowy non-state actors representing different 'civilizations'. But a recent string of articles indicates a far more complex and dangerous relationship between religion and state-based security forces.

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Consider a recent New York Times commentary regarding Israel. "The officer corps of the elite Golani Brigade is now heavily populated by religious right-wing graduates of the preparatory academies," noted Moshe Halbertal, a Jewish philosophy professor who co-wrote the military code of ethics and who is himself religiously observant but politically liberal. "The religious right is trying to have an impact on Israeli society through the army."

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And one, published five days later, about Pakistan. "The Taliban's widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan's military intelligence agency ... new details reveal that the spy agency is aiding a broader array of militant networks with more diverse types of support than was previously known -- even months after Pakistani officials said that the days of the ISI's playing a "double game" had ended."

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Closer to home, there have been reports of a disturbingly close relationship between some right-wing Christian groups and U.S. Armed Forces: "(In the summer of 2007) the Pentagon abruptly announced that it would not be delivering 'freedom packages' to our soldiers in Iraq, as it had originally intended. What were the packages to contain? Not body armor or home-baked cookies. Rather, they held Bibles, proselytizing material in English and Arabic and the apocalyptic computer game "Left Behind: Eternal Forces" (derived from the series of post-Rapture novels), in which "soldiers for Christ" hunt down enemies who look suspiciously like U.N. peacekeepers."

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To make matters worse, religious nationalism in security forces has the potential not only to inflame conflicts between nations, but also within nations and regions. One of the biggest destabilizing influences in Northern Ireland was the presence of a largely Protestant police force patrolling Catholic neighborhoods. A recent New York Times piece confirms that one of the main complaints by Sunni Muslims in Iraq is feeling blocked by the Shia dominated Iraqi government from jobs in the Iraqi security forces.

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There's a lot on the line here, folks. Will battles over land and power get framed as clashes between civilizations? Will the religious right increase their influence over nuclear weapons by rising to the top of the military hierarchy - in Pakistan, Israel, America? Will police forces become instruments of chaos rather than stability in diverse societies?

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Here's what's clear: the forces of religious nationalism are no longer content to dress in rags and move in the shadows. Some are seeking uniforms, and a place in the halls of power.

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It should be noted that in every instance cited, the fundamentalist religious groups involved are all consistently anti-gay and favor the marginalization of LGBT citizens or worse.