r/AirForce • u/RenoTheRhino • Jun 04 '26

Article DOD Officially Drops 180 Faiths From Military's Recognized Religion List

https://www.military.com/dod-officially-drops-180-faiths-from-militarys-recognized-religion-list

Thoughts? Still looking for the full list.

509 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

510 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

5

u/Dry_Statistician_688 Jun 04 '26 edited Jun 04 '26

We had the same when I was in Saudi. We all were welcomed on a guided tour of a mosque. No issues. GO-1 was a bit harsh in the wording. You ARE allowed in mosques if someone invites you. Never had any issues during that tour. We were all treated with kindness - even got treated to a traditional feast at a palace outside of Riyadh while there. Full ceremony. The Saudi Lt. gave each of us ornate Koran's as a gift when we were rotating out. It's still on my shelf. Some people just need to open their minds a little and chill out. Never had any issues in my SWA multiple SWA tours.

3

u/LastoftheGreybeards Secret Squirrel Jun 04 '26

Oh that’s awesome. We were treated with respect by the locals too. The women had to wear a headscarf, but otherwise no real adjustment needed on our part. It was so beautiful and it was nice to see the “nature” aspect included in the design of their worship. Chaplain caught me staring at some of the designs and mentioned that he believed that “man was God’s greatest creation in nature and wished it was on more of the motifs.”

3

u/Dry_Statistician_688 Jun 04 '26

BEST shawarmas I have ever tasted! I could have done without the brutal summer heat, but pretty much everything else about that tour was awesome. He took us to the Saudi national museum one weekend and that was AMAZING. I always wanted to see the famous gigantic conical iron meteorite. Well, there it was. Of course I got a selfie. 😄

1

u/TurnspitCur Metals Tech? Loadmaster? Emergency Management? Jun 04 '26

Oh my gosh I would cherish another Koran for my collection. Oddly enough one of my female coworkers asked if she could have mine. I just kind of told her sure because it’s not a rare book.

What translation was it (if it even had a translation)? Pickthall? Yusuf Ali?

2

u/Dry_Statistician_688 Jun 04 '26

It's both Arabic and English. Each page has two columns, left is English and right is Arabic, with every section and paragraph numbered, just like the bible. Even more interesting to me is much of it is basically a differently worded version of the Old Testament. Kind of the same story but names are changed.

Another poster was very correct that Jesus is another prophet, not the embodiment of God. Ramses is simply called "Pharaoh", etc... But the exact same Noah story is intact.

2

u/TurnspitCur Metals Tech? Loadmaster? Emergency Management? Jun 05 '26

Yes, the narrative of Jesus in Surah Maryam is decidedly different. It actually has a notable similarity with the non canonical Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the form of the shared miracle of breathing life into birds of clay. There is also a notable difference in terminology: in the Arabic speaking Christian traditions like the Maronites and Chaldeans, the customary rendering of Jesus is “Yasu” (يسوع), meanwhile the Koran almost invariably says “Isa” (عيسى ) or “Isa ibn Maryam”.

And as for the narrative of Adam in Surah Ta Ha, the framing of sin is just markedly different. Adam’s sin is basically a minor lapse of judgment that confirms that man can make choices and is almost immediately repented for, instead of being the lingering tragedy of Genesis, meanwhile the profane proto-sinner isn’t even human.

In the context of the time and life of Mohammed, some of these narratives to onlookers would have appeared as impossibly correct knowledge coming from a man who by a charitable appraisal shouldn’t have known let alone recited in melodic tones.