Gates of Vienna: Lackland AFB Prepares for the Mahdi
Excerpt:
On August 7, 2011, at an as-yet undisclosed location on Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas, the U.S. government officially became a sponsor of the Mahdi. No, not Barack Hussein Obama, but a much more serious and overt candidate: Adnan Oktar, a.k.a. “Harun Yahya,” the Turkish Creationist whose followers consider him the “rightly-guided one” of Islamic tradition, expected to come before the end of time to make the entire world Muslim. Mahdism was my original area of academic specialization within Islamic history (about which I wrote my doctoral dissertation, first book and numerous articles); I interviewed Oktar in Istanbul a few years ago; and, finally, I spent time in the military as both enlisted and commissioned, the latter training to be a chaplain. So I have some familiarity with all aspects of this troubling story, which came to my attention early on 14 August 2011 via photos posted to my Facebook page by contacts within Oktar’s organization:
Here an unidentified Oktar
da’i (“missionary”) gives a class in what is obviously a mosque. The accompanying information says that this is ON Lackland Air Force Base. ...
These photos, and the accompanying information, pose some very disturbing questions:
Why was Islamic instruction being given to non-Muslim Air Force personnel? For according to Harun Yayha members “American and
non-Muslim soldiers [sic] listened to the lecture with admiration.” If this was not simply gloating hyperbole, does it not run afoul of official military strictures, echoing the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, forbidding any governmental authority from “mandating a religion” and ensuring that “participation in religious activities is voluntary?” (These mandates are taken from Army Regulation 165-1, “Army Chaplain Corps Activities,” 3 December 2009. No analogous Air Force manual can be found online, but there should be no difference between the two branches in this regard.)
Why is an outside group (based in Istanbul, no less) being brought in to teach a decidedly sectarian (and some would say heretical) view of Islamic issues? If the purpose was to instruct Air Force basic trainees in the rudiments of Islam, why were they being given classes on “The Collapse of Darwinism and the Fact of Creation,” as well as on “Miracles in the Qur’an?” Shouldn’t a simple cultural familiarity course deal with less politicized and controversial topics, and have been taught by a base chaplain (whose stated duties include serving as the unit religious expert) — especially considering that, as of six months ago, Lackland was home to one of the two Muslim chaplains in the entire Air Force ...
[If that had been a Catholic priest, it would have been on every major news station in the world.]
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