Reuters wrote:The religious overtones in President Bush's speeches increasingly grate on many ears in Europe, where leaders invoking God in times of war are widely suspect of misusing faith for political purposes.
No less than the German president, French prime minister and Belgian foreign minister have joined religious leaders in expressing concern about Bush's beliefs and the place of religion in U.S. politics.
Media commentators, especially in northern European countries with Protestant heritages, have branded Bush's evangelical views as Christian fundamentalism, with some even comparing them to the Islamic fundamentalism of Osama bin Laden
CAMP BUSHMASTER, Iraq - In this dry desert world near Najaf, where the Army V Corps combat support system sprawls across miles of scabrous dust, there's an oasis of sorts: a 500-gallon pool of pristine, cool water.
It belongs to Army chaplain Josh Llano of Houston, who sees the water shortage, which has kept thousands of filthy soldiers from bathing for weeks, as an opportunity.
''It's simple. They want water. I have it, as long as they agree to get baptized,'' he said. ...
''You have to be aggressive to help people find themselves in God,'' he said.
He calls himself a ''Southern Baptist evangelist,'' and justifies the war and killing with a verse from the Gospel of Matthew, which he often recites: ``Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.
Guardian wrote:It could only happen with an American invasion. Poised behind the troops, waiting for a signal that Iraq is safe enough for them to operate in, are the evangelical Christians - carrying food in one hand and the Bible in the other.
All the groups, generously funded by American churchgoers, are likely to do a magnificent job in offering water, food, medical help and comfort to a traumatised population. But they are causing alarm among Muslims, who fear vulnerable Iraqis will be cajoled into conversion, and Christians, some of whom warn that the missionaries will be prime targets in an unpacified Iraq.
Muslim worries have been heightened because the man leading the charge into Iraq is the Rev Franklin Graham, who delivered the invocation at President Bush's inauguration, the son of Billy Graham and a fierce critic of Islam. He is on record as calling it a "wicked, violent" religion, with a God different from that of Christianity. "The two are different as lightness and darkness," he wrote.
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Ibrahim Hooper, of the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations was unimpressed, saying the groups involved were "despicable and deceitful". Of Mr Graham, he said: "This guy has repeatedly stated that Islam is intentionally cruel. I fail to see how such a person can be a positive influence in a Muslim country. Humanitarian relief is just a cover. Their basic motivation is conversion. These groups train workers to go in under the guise of relief to convert people away from their faith. "I know this because I've been on their training courses. There's a technique known as contextualisation. You never say directly you're Christian. You take chairs out of the church to make it look like a mosque. You grow a beard. You dress your wife in Islamic attire. They know they're not welcome."
