Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options

Michael Peppard, recently graduated from Yale Divinity School and assuming his post as a professor of theology at Fordham, has a must-read article in the current issue of Commonweal magazine. Back in December, Peppard wrote an article about reports of religious abuse at Guantanamo Bay. Now, with the release of a heavily redacted Senate report on Guantanamo, Peppard has written about the findings. And those findings are frightening.

Peppard notes that some readers questioned the veracity of the charges, noting that terrorists are trained to lie as well as to kill. He admits that, "If you asked me when I wrote the article which of the abuse claims I thought was most likely to have been fabricated by the detainees, I would have said it was the stories of forced prostration before a makeshift shrine to a false god. It seemed too outrageous. What could contradict America’s commitment to religious freedom more than coerced apostasy?"

Of course, the Senate report confirms this outrageous practice did occur. Detainees were also prevented from praying, had their heads and beards shaved forcibly in contradiction of Islamic norms, made to wear a burqa, and exposed to "grotesque forms of sexual harassment."

This abuse of another’s religion is frightening and religious leaders must be at the forefront of both denouncing these practices and ensuring that they are never, ever perpetrated again. They offend the most distinctive human quality, the capacity to worship our Creator.

The government, too, must ensure that such abominations never again occur. On January 5, 1941, in his State of the Union Address, Franklin Delano Roosevelt listed the four essential freedoms upon which the security of the world must be built. The first was freedom of speech and expression. "The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world," Roosevelt said.

Roosevelt linked these values to world security, and so does Peppard in his article which concludes: "Nothing threatens America’s national security more than the perception that we are at war with Islam. We are not. But to change the false perception we must first change a disgraceful policy." Amen.

 

 

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

Right there at the cross, in Jesus, our humanity doesn’t fall beyond its edges. Even there, even then, he continues to love. And even in that dense darkness—or loneliness—that he experiences as a human being, he doesn’t let himself forget that he is loved too.
Andriy ZelinskyyMarch 29, 2024
The 12 women whose feet were washed by Pope Francis included women from Italy, Bulgaria, Nigeria, Ukraine, Russia, Peru, Venezuela and Bosnia-Herzegovina.
"We, the members of the Society of Jesus, continue to be lifted up in prayer, in lament, in protest at the death and destruction that continue to reign in Gaza and other territories in Israel/Palestine, spilling over into the surrounding countries of the Middle East."
The Society of JesusMarch 28, 2024
A child wounded in an I.D.F. bombardment is brought to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, on March 25. (AP Photo/Ismael abu dayyah)
While some children have been evacuated from conflict, more than 1.1 million children in Gaza and 3.7 million in Haiti have been left behind to face the rampaging adult world around them.
Kevin ClarkeMarch 28, 2024