The U.S. military is confirming that it has destroyed some Bibles belonging to an American soldier serving in Afghanistan.
Reuters News
says the Bibles were confiscated and destroyed after Qatar-based Al
Jazeer television showed soldiers at a Bible class on a base with a
stack of Bibles translated into the local Pashto and Dari
languages. The U.S. military forbids its members on active duty —
including those based in places like Afghanistan — from trying to
convert people to another religion.
Reuters
quotes Maj. Jennifer Willis at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul, who
said "I can now confirm that the Bibles shown on Al Jazeera's clip
were, in fact, collected by the chaplains and later destroyed. They
were never distributed."
According
to the military officials, the Bibles were sent through private mail to
an evangelical Christian soldier by his church back home. Reuters says the soldier brought them to the Bible study class where they were filmed.
The
Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, told a
Pentagon briefing Monday that the military's position is that it will
never "push any specific religion."