Pastor: Muslims in military a ‘recipe for disaster’

Allowing military service for those with “different beliefs and different religious structure” is a “recipe for disaster,” a West Des Moines pastor told controversial Christian radio host Steve Deace Friday.

Deace was discussing the shootings at the Ft. Hood military base in Texas with Bob Deever, pastor at Grace West Church in West Des Moines. Deever said because alleged gunman Major Nadal Hasaan was a Muslim he did not have the proper foundation to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces.

“He didn’t have the same foundation as we have, which is the Constitution anchored in the gospel of Jesus Christ that protects us no matter what,” Deever said. “So here we have a person or people that are allowed in to our military branch that is supposed to protect the Constitution that don’t even agree with the Constitution we’re fighting for. So to me, the foundation is cracked. It’s broken.”

Deace discussed the Ft. Hood shootings repeatedly last week, first on his drive-time radio program and later on his blog. He doesn’t believe Islam is a religion, rather an ideology, and feels Muslims should not be allowed to serve in the military because they have “sworn a public loyalty to the ideology that brave men and women are fighting against.”

During his Friday discussion with Deever, Deace once again brought up a quote from Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey who said he’s worried that rumors and speculation surrounding Hasan’s motives could result in a backlash against Muslim soldiers. He also worried that the backlash could have a negative impact on the military’s diversity.

“Diversity is destructive in some aspects, because the Constitution is not diverse,” Deever said. “The Gospel is not diverse. We as a people group should not be diverse.”

Political pressure is what drives the push towards greater diversity, and it is putting Americans at risk, Deever said.

“It just saddens me to think that we should have any diversity whatsoever in any form that would cause harm to our people like that,” he said. “I think that’s just sad that we would even consider that.”

Earlier in his Friday show, Deace interviewed Dave Gaubatz, author of “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America.” Gaubatz has drawn criticism for his book and for publically calling for a “professional and legal backlash against the Muslim community and their leaders.”

Islam is a violent ideology, Deace said, but Americans have constructed an alternative reality regarding what Muslims truly believe in order to find common ground.

“Have we constructed magical thinking and then sort of backtracked our strategy from that desired conclusion because we don’t want to accept the alternative that we may have to live a long, protracted confrontation like what the Israelis have had to go through?” Deace said.

Gaubatz agreed that there is a lot of violence within the Islamic ideology. Instead of fighting wars oversees he said it is time America began trying to protect itself from an attack within. America is being infiltrated by Islamic organizations, and it’s time people realized it.

“We can’t even protect our own borders and we’ve got thousands of troops sitting in Afghanistan,” Gaubatz said. “We need to protect from within first. Then we can worry about setting up in Afghanistan or Iraq.”