Both are Muslims. Both are chaplains. Both are in the military. But one is French and one is American. That alone ensured there would be enough to talk about when Mohamed-Ali Bouharb and Abu- hena Saifulislam met in Paris to discuss their work with chaplains and academics from the United States.

(Photo: Bouharb (l) and Saifulislam with CIEE’s Hannah Taieb. Note the Islamic crescents on Bouharb’s cap and Saifulislam’s sleeves, 7 June 2009/Tom Heneghan)

Muslim chaplaincies are relatively new additions to the armed forces in Europe and North America. Establishing their place alongside the traditional Catholic, Protestant and Jewish offices of religious services has not always been easy, even though both imams reported the top brass in their countries strongly supported the effort. While they tend to the spiritual needs of their co-religionists in the ranks, as other chaplains do, these imams also spend much time explaining their religion and its practices to their non-Muslim superiors.

Both spoke of the obvious issues such as getting halal food or having time and space for Muslim prayers. Both had encountered questions from both within the forces and outside in the Muslim community asking why they had agreed to work as imams in the military. Their presentations were part of a seminar entitled “Religious Diversity in Everyday Life in France” organised by the U.S.-based Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) and the Institute for the Study of Islam and the Societies of the Muslim World in Paris.

Bouharb, 32, is a French-born Muslim with Tunisian roots who studied Islam at a private Muslim institute in Paris and graduated from a special training course for imams at the Catholic Institute here. He is chaplain to the National Gendarmerie, which comes under the Defence Ministry. France only launched its Muslim chaplain corps in 2005 and it is still finding its way. “I first got a two-year contract. It’s just been extended by four years. Nothing is certain. We’ll see the results in 20 years,” he told the meeting on Sunday. Bouhard stressed how tricky the issues he faces can be as he discussed the delicate bridge function he has to play with the example of five French Muslim soldiers who refused to go to Afghanistan:

“If a Muslim soldier doesn’t want to go to Afghanistan for religious reasons, that’s his right. My role is not to convince him. But if he doesn’t want to go, he shouldn’t be in the army. That’s not a religious opinion. Sometimes the Muslim chaplain has to put aside his religious role and deconstruct what is religious and what is not. What I do is go see the soldier and ask him about his vision of Islam. I can help him to understand things better, but not to make a decision… If a soldier’s not clear in his mind (about shooting at Taliban), he might hesitate for a moment. That could endanger the troops around him…

“To the commanders, I say I’m not the representative of a Muslim soldiers’ trade union. When those five refused to go, people said the Muslim chaplains weren’t doing their jobs. It was all over the media. But the chaplain’s duty is not to ensure the cohesion of the troops. (The doubting soldier) could endanger others. My religious duty is not to put those others in danger… We Muslim chaplains asked for a right to reply to the media but the Defence Ministry press office said it was not worth the effort… They were right. A few weeks later, all was forgotten.”

Another issue was whether Muslim soldiers due for commando training had to fast if the session occurred during Ramadan. “They get up at 3 a.m. and march for 25 kms with backpacks weighing 25 kilos. It’s very difficult to fast,” he said. Muslim soldiers asked him what to do. “I told them that, if you signed up to do this training, you have to respect that contract. You can stop your fast and catch up on those days after Ramadan is over.” Ten Qatari soldiers in France for advanced training could not understand why the session was not rescheduled, as it would be in their majority Muslim society, but Bouharb said it could not be and the Muslim soldiers had to adjust. “There is only one Islam, but there are many ways of expressing it,” he said.

Saifulislam, who emigrated to the U.S. from Bangladesh in 1989 and became a U.S. Navy imam 10 years later, had a slightly different approach. “If there is special training during Ramadan, I ask the commander if it can be moved to another date,” he said, stressing he was giving his personal opinion and not speaking in an official capacity. “I tell the Muslims that they’re away from home while on training so they can not fast and make it up later. It’s his or her call. I provide the counsel.”

(Photo: Bouharb and Saifulislam, 7 June 2009/Tom Heneghan)

He said there were about a dozen imams in the U.S. armed forces, which appointed their first Muslim chaplain in 1993. That compares to over 800 Christian and Jewish chaplains in the Navy alone, he said. “They don’t necessarily need us for the number of Muslim soldiers but to advise them on religious inclusiveness, like about how Islamic practices can affect a mission, before they deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan. They get training in cultural sensitivity.”

Possibly because imams have served in the U.S. military for longer than in the French, the American Muslim chaplains seemed more integrated into the overall chaplain corps. Saifulislam said:

“Ninety-nine percent of the people who come to me for counselling are from another faith. They come to you with issues, it could be about family, stress or violence. People can get more religious in boot camp, also in prison. I’ve also been trained in suicide prevention, PTSD recognition and crisis management. We also do grief counselling, regardless of the religion. Of course, we don’t perform services for other religions. You’re not going to see me baptise a baby! But we facilitate things. If someone comes to me as a Wiccan and asks for a place to pray, I help them. The Department of Defense recognises over 290 different religions and denominations. If a Muslim asks one of the other chaplains to help him get a copy of the Koran, he has to help him.”

U.S. President Barack Obama may face a new minefield on the battlefields of Afghanistan — one that combines a potent mix of religion and culture.

Explosive allegations have emerged that U.S. soldiers have been attempting to convert Afghanis to Christianity, a scenario sure to stir passions and even anger in the overwhelming Islamic country. You can see our story on the issue here by my colleague Peter Graff in Kabul.

The U.S. military denied Monday it has allowed soldiers to try to convert Afghans to Christianity, after a television network showed pictures of soldiers with bibles translated into local languages.

Qatar-based Al Jazeera television showed footage of a church service at Bagram, the main U.S. base north of the Afghan capital Kabul, in which soldiers had a stack of Bibles in the local languages, Pashtu and Dari.

A military chaplain was shown delivering a sermon to other soldiers, saying: “The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down.”

Critics have long contended that parts of the U.S. military have been unduly influenced by a powerful evangelical Christian wing which has pressured men and women in uniform to convert or conform.

Many U.S. military events often feature public prayers which some also say blur the line they say should be drawn between church and state. We have blogged on this issue before.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation has for years tried to raise public awareness about this issue and has in the past accused the military of sanctioning missionary activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Headed by former U.S. air force judge advocate Mikey Weinstein, it said on Monday that: “His (Weinstein’s) calls for action have been met with a full assault of denials, baseless and anti-Semitic accusations, and most recently imprecatory prayers against him and his family. But now there is VIDEO PROOF that Mikey has been right all along.”

The U.S. military has said that the comments from the sermon shown in the video were taken out of context and that it firmly prohibits soldiers from proseltyzing while on duty.

Whether this is true or not, there is no question that at least some damage has been done.

Here’s the Al Jazeera video:

(Photo: U.S. Marines bow their heads in prayer before the arrival of President Barack Obama at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, February 27, 2009. REUTERS/Jim Young (UNITED STATES))

There are many things that will test a person’s religious faith and war is among the strongest. “Faith Under Fire: An Army Chaplain’s Memoir”, which will be published this week, is Roger Benimoff’s moving account of his battle with the demons of war that almost cost him his faith and his family. He did two tours in Iraq and you can read my interview with him here.

The Iraq war of course remains fraught with religious overtones. Former U.S. President George W. Bush saw many of his policies as driven by his Christian faith (and aimed at his conservative evangelical base); Iraq itself has been riven by religious and sectarian conflict; and many people of faith question the morality of the U.S.-led war there, now six years old.

When I asked Benimoff if the Iraq war has been worth all of the sacrifice, he became very emotional and found that it was a question he is still wrestling with. As he describes in his book, asking such hard questions lead him to question his own faith and made him angry at times with God (while he also battled with post-tramautic stress disorder or PTSD).

The war will no doubt continue to be a religious battlefield — and one that, like many other armed conflicts, also tests the faith of those caught up in it.

(Photo: Courtesy of Randam House)

Thousands of Shi’ite Muslims in southern Iraq are wrestling with a choice of religion or democracy before a pilgrimage which may prevent them from voting in elections to provincial councils on Saturday.

Pilgrims from the southern city of Basra are setting out on an arduous walk hundreds of km (miles) long to the holy Shi’ite city of Kerbala, far from the election centres where they are registered to vote. The pilgrimage for Arbain, or 40 days of mourning for the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Imam Hussein slain in battle at Kerbala in the 7th century, culminates in mid-February.

(Photo: Pilgrims in Kerbala for Arbain, 27 Feb 2008/Mohammed Ameen)

“Kerbala is more important than voting, and so far I haven’t seen any candidate that deserves my confidence. I still have no job after the last election,” said Mohammed Ali, one of a group of pilgrims at a roadside tent.

Read here the full story from Mohammed Abbas in Basra. Missy Ryan in our Baghdad bureau reported last week that Iraq’s religious parties could face a backlash at the polls because voters have tired of too much religion in politics.

Missy Ryan in our Baghdad bureau sees a possible drop in support for religious parties in Iraq:

BAGHDAD - When Iraqis last voted in 2005, some in Washington feared the mainly Muslim nation would veer in the direction of Iran, an Islamic theocracy, instead of becoming the moderate democracy they envisioned for post-Saddam Iraq.

The question when Iraqis elect new provincial leaders on January 31 will be whether the religious parties that have dominated politics since then can hang on to power despite a bitterness felt by voters starved of services and security.

“Religious parties didn’t keep their promises. They exploited our problems,” said Safaa Kadhim, a teacher in Basra, reflecting anger voiced across Iraq toward the major parties, mostly founded along sectarian lines and seen by many as corrupt and self-serving…

In an opinion poll by the government’s National Media Center in November, 68 percent of those questioned rejected the use of religious appeals in the campaign and 42 percent said they favored secular parties, while 31 percent supported religious parties.

Read the full story here.

(Photo: Election campaign posters in Baghdad’s Sadr City, 13 Jan, 2009/Kahtan al-Mesiary)

A lawsuit alleging religious bias, including mandatory participation in Christian prayers, against the U.S. Department of Defense was expanded  this week, the latest twist in a story that probably won’t go away in 2009.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation’s (MRFF) expanded lawsuit said the U.S. military was sanctioning Christian missionary activity with Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan — a highly sensitive issue in two predominantly Muslim countries where the United States is waging war.

We’ve blogged on this before  – in September the MRFF said a non-religious Kansas soldier is suing U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the grounds that his constitutional rights were violated when he was forced to attend military events where “fundamentalist Christian prayers” were recited.

Specialist Dustin Chalker’s cause was the second such case up by the MRFF.

 In a statement this week the group said it was expanding its lawsuit “to include two additions regarding unsuccessful attempts by service members to resolve their complaints (about religious bias) through military channels.”

It further stated that it had added: “five new categories of examples showing the ‘pattern and practice”‘of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religion by the military.”

These included: “military-sanctioned missionary proselytizing of Iraqi and Afghan citizens, an official USAF sponsored evangelical motocross team ministry … and the unbridled Christian supremacy espoused in a U.S. Army suicide prevention program.” 

Prayer and military events often coincide in the United States: for example prayers are often said at homecoming ceremonies when soldiers return from overseas tours.

Some activist groups such as the MRFF say evangelical Christianity is being promoted in the U.S. military through peer pressure, calls to prayer and other means.

Critics say this violates the separation of Church and state and creates a potential diplomatic minefield with U.S. forces waging wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Department of Defense spokesperson Eileen Lainez said the department did not comment on pending lawsuits.

But the department says the following: “The Department of Defense does not endorse any one religion or religious organization, and provides free access of religion for all members of the military services … There are systems in place to provide a means to address and resolve any perceived unfair treatment on the basis of race, national origin, color, gender, and/or religious affiliation, or sexual harassment.”

 With President George W. Bush, conservative U.S. evangelicals have had a friend and ally in the White House for almost eight years. It will be interesting to see how the administration of president-elect Barack Obama handles these kinds of issues after he assumes office in January.

(Photo credit: U.S. soldiers pause for a short prayer during a Christmas ceremony in Baghdad’s Sadr City December 25, 2008. REUTERS/Erik de Castro  (IRAQ)P

At least 1,500 Christian families have fled the northern Iraqi city of Mosul this month to escape violent attacks against them. About 12 Christians have been reported killed in that period. Protests have come in from the United Nations, the Vatican and other places around the globe. There clearly seems to be a campaign against them, but finding out who is behind it is not that easy, as correspondent Missy Ryan reports from Mosul.

The commander of U.S. forces in Mosul has blamed Sunni Islamist militants. “Others, including many Christians, quietly point a finger at Mosul’s powerful Kurdish minority, which controls the provincial council and makes up a majority in the local army. Kurds, some say, want to show that Mosul cannot be controlled without them,” she writes.

Check out Ryan’s latest reports from Mosul — Mystery shrouds attacks on Iraq’s Christians and Iraq’s Christians “sacrificial lambs” as attacks mount.

Other recent reports include Vatican demands more protection for Iraq Christians and Christians flee Mosul after threats, attacks: UNHCR.

A non-religious Kansas soldier is suing U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the grounds that his constitutional rights were violated when he was forced to attend military events where “fundamentalist Christian prayers” were recited.

Specialist Dustin Chalker’s cause has been taken up by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which is joining him in the suit.

The MRFF said in a statement that Chalker, a decorated Iraq war veteran stationed at Fort Riley in Kansas, “was forced to attend three events in late 2007 and in 2008  at which the battalion chaplain …  delivered  sectarian Christian prayers”.

“Being nonreligious, Chalker objected  … and asked to be  excused from the events.  The requests to be excused were denied.   After the denials, Chalker was forced to attend other events with  sectarian Christian prayers.”

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Kansas last week, seeks an injunction to prevent such  sectarian prayers from being delivered at mandatory military events.

It is the second such suit filed by MRFF and the other is still pending in a federal court. A spokesman at the Department of Justice, which is expected to defend the Department of Defence, said it had not been served with the papers yet.

Prayer and military events often coincide in the United States. Prayers are often evoked at homecoming ceremonies when soldiers return from overseas tours; off base, civilian events such as rodeos often feature marching soldiers and prayers.

Some activist groups such as the MRFF say evangelical Christianity is being promoted in the U.S. military through peer pressure, calls to prayer and other means.

Critics say this violates the separation of Church and state and creates a potential diplomatic minefield with U.S. forces waging wars in two Muslim countries, Iraq and Afghanistan.  

The Department of Defense’s watchdog has in the  past taken action on the issue, for example when it chastised a U.S. army general a few years ago for making speeches in which  he described the “war on terror” as a Christian battle against Satan.

Egyptian cleric Yusef Al-Qaradawi has provoked a storm of criticism with comments this month attacking Shi’ites for alleged attempts to proselytize in Sunni Arab societies. It’s a debate which has been bubbling since 2003 when the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein — which the Sunni Arab governments didn’t like but know how to live with — was removed by the American-led invasion and ultimately replaced by a Shi’ite government reflecting the demographic superiority of Shi’ites in Iraq today.

Free to contact work with fellow Shi’ites in neighbouring Iran and develop links with the powerful Shi’ites of Lebanon and even with the more precariously-placed Shi’ites in the Gulf Arab coutnries, the rise of the Shi’ites in Iraq has been nothig less than a seismic shift in the region’s potical landscape. Numerous Arab leaders have shown their concern with comments suggesting a crescent of Shi’ite power was developing across the region from Lebanon to Iran (as Jordan’s King Abdullah has said) or that Arab Shi’ites real loyalties are to Iran (according to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak).

Qaradawi’s intervention is of equal import. He is one of the most influential of Sunni religious figures, a former Muslim Brotherhood sheikh in Egypt who settled in Qatar where Al-Jazeera television gave him a weekly television show. His opinions generally reflect the mainstream of Islamist thinking, veering neither into the rigid obsessions of Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabism nor appearing to compromise principles for the sake of a modernity that suits the West.

In an interview with the Egyptian paper Al-Masry Al-Youm (in Arabic) on Sept. 9, he was asked which was more worrisome, Wahhabism or Shi’ism. He offered a brief, yet tart, crticism of Saudi Islam, then launched into the “danger of Shi’ism” discourse, which has centred mainly on unsubstantiated claims of Shi’ism’s spread in Syria. “They are Muslims but they have innovated (new ideas into Islam) and their danger is their attempt to invade Sunni society, and they are ready for it since they have billions in wealth and cadres trained to proselytize Shi’ism in Sunni countries,” he said. “Unfortunately, I have recently found Egyptian Shi’ites. Ten years ago they wouldn’t have succeeded in getting one. … Now they are in the newspapers, on television and come out openly with their Shi’ite beliefs. Shi’ites hide their beliefs and that’s what we have to watch out for. We have to protect Sunni societies from the Shi’ite invasion.”

UPDATE: Here’s a Qaradawi interview in English on Shi’ites from Asharq Al-Alawsat.

Governments are worried about Shi’ism for political reasons, because Iran and Hizbollah are championing resistance to Western hegemony, while the Sunni Arab governments have been about accommodating Western power ever since Egypt signed the Camp David accords and since Saudi Arabia came into existence. Shi’ism has a certain revolutionary chic that is attractive to many Arabs today. Shi’ism’s central principle of venerating the family of the Prophet has an innocent-sounding air to most as well, although in points of theology it involves some radical breaks with Sunni thinking.

Saudi Shi’ite clerics were furious about Qaradawi’s comments since they instantly bring alive an argument they have been trying desperately to counter in order to ensure a better place for themselves as a persecuted minority in Saudi Arabia (here’s one cleric responding in Arabic on the Saudi Shi’ite website Rasid.com). Interestingly, though, Saudi media have for once been sympathetic to them, even highlighting Sheikh Hassan al-Saffar’s response on the front page of al-Watan on Saudi National Day, Sept. 23. “Saffar differs with Qaradawi and rejects criticising his status,” the headline read.

The Al-Riyadh newspaper carried a frontpage article apologising to Shi’ites for having publicising Qaradawi’s comments, which fly in the face of King Abdullah’s policy of promoting dialogue among Islamic sects and moderation. “Sectarian Islam, or the Islam of one faith?” al-Riyadh asked in a frontpage editorial on Sept. 24, also marking National Day.

One could not conclude, however, that the Saudi leadership is trying to distance itself from Sunni radicalism while Egypt encourages it. The calculations are too complicated. Saudi Arabia has led the regional mobilisation against Iran and Shi’ism of recent years, taking Egypt along with it. It has also sought to improve its Shi’ite minority’s status. Both are strategies that aim to secure the stability of the country from external enemies, like Iran, or friends, like the United States after 9/11, who occasionally entertain the idea of reordering the polities of the Arabian peninsula.

Thank you, Clark Hoyt. The public editor (ombudsman) of the New York Times has torn apart Edward Luttwak’s op-ed piece on Barack Obama supposedly being a Muslim apostate, right in the Grey Lady’s pages. In his Public Editor column on Sunday, Hoyt called it “a single, extreme point of view” and said the NYT should not simply publish opinion pieces based on patently false facts. We blogged about this last week when a leading Muslim scholar refuted Luttwak’s article. Luttwak is a military historian and  conservative analyst of strategic issues who has advised the U.S. military, National Security Council and State Department. He lists his fields of expertise as “geoeconomics, strategy and national strategies and military policies” but not Islam.

“The Times Op-Ed page, quite properly, is home to a lot of provocative opinions,” Hoyt wrote. “But all are supposed to be grounded on the bedrock of fact. Op-Ed writers are entitled to emphasize facts that support their arguments and minimize others that don’t. But they are not entitled to get the facts wrong or to so mangle them that they present a false picture.”

Hoyt said he consulted five Islamic scholars at U.S. universities and “all of them said that Luttwak’s interpretation of Islamic law was wrong.” When the Times asked Luttwak to defend his view, he sent them an analysis of it by an unnamed scholar of Muslim law. He disagreed with Luttwak so strongly that he wrote to him: “You seem to be describing some anarcho-utopian version of Islamic legalism, which has never existed, and after the birth of the modern nation state will never exist.”

The public editor also noted that the Muslim world, far from being “horrified” by Obama’s supposed apostasy as Luttwak predicted, has shown no interest in this argument. That jibes with what we found. After Luttwak’s article appeared, Reuters correspondents looked around for public reactions in the Arabic-language media and found nothing. We decided not to actively seek out responses from experts there because that would only highlight an opinion we thought was wrong anyway.

One other point stood out. When Hoyt told him what the five different Muslim scholars had said, Luttwak retorted by accusing them of presenting a “gross misrepresentation” of Islam. Doesn’t this sound like the way the neo-cons disputed pre-Iraq war intelligence reports, dismissed U.N. inspectors (like Hans Blix at left) who found no weapons of mass destruction and argued the war would be a push-over? It turned out that was mostly opinion not based on facts too — and the Times had to issue what Slate’s media critic Jack Shafer called its “mini-culpa” for presenting some of these WMD opinions as fact in its news reporting.

As Hoyt concluded, “with a subject this charged, readers would have been far better served with more than a single, extreme point of view. When writers purport to educate readers about complex matters, and they are arguably wrong, I think The Times cannot label it opinion and let it go at that.”

We got some comments to our original post on this issue that defended Luttwak’s point of view. One said that an article challenging his thesis was “completely off base, misses the point entirely and is a waste of time to read.” Any rethinking going on out there after reading Hoyt’s critique?