{"id":521826,"date":"2010-04-08T23:57:55","date_gmt":"2010-04-09T03:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reuters.com\/afghanistan\/?p=1445"},"modified":"2010-04-08T23:57:55","modified_gmt":"2010-04-09T03:57:55","slug":"british-army-shoots-itself-in-row-over-afghan-%e2%80%9cmosque%e2%80%9d-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/521826","title":{"rendered":"British army shoots itself in row over Afghan \u201cmosque\u201d models ?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Members<\/p>\n

Members of the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland at the Black Watch Memorial at Aberfeldy in Scotland following the end of their deployment in Afghanistan. By Russell Cheyne<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The British Ministry of Defence has apologised after Muslims\u00a0complained that it was using replicas of mosques at a firing range\u00a0 in northern England to train soldiers ahead of deployment in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n

Relations between Muslims and the military are already fragile, so what’s the point of\u00a0 testing them even more by\u00a0suggesting that mosques were places of danger, the Bradford Council of Mosques said,\u00a0according to The Independent<\/a>. The green-domed structures\u00a0erected at the end of the firing range in north Yorkshire must be taken down,\u00a0the council said.<\/p>\n

A British military source told Reuters <\/a>that the\u00a0one-dimensional hardboard structures are not used as direct targets \u00a0but are intended to provide a more “realistic” background for soldiers training ahead of deployment in Afghanistan.\u00a0 Other “generic eastern silhouettes” used include palm trees and irrigation ditches to recreate the Afghan setting soldiers would face there.\u00a0\u00a0 It was never the intention for the structures to look like or replicate mosques, the Defence Ministry said,\u00a0 offering an apology if any offence had been caused. It said it had sought a meeting with the representatives of the community to find a way forward.<\/p>\n

It’s not like they recreated a whole Afghan village with a mosque in it\u00a0to familiarise soldiers,\u00a0 says Ishtiaq Ahmed, a spokesman for the Bradford Council of Mosques.\u00a0 “If they had a replica of a street or a village in Afghanistan with a mosque as a kind of location point we would understand that, but these are simply six or seven structures in the direct shooting line which anyone looking at would come to the obvious conclusion that they are mosques.”\u00a0 Community leaders are even more angry because the provocation comes just when they were trying to help the army recruit more Muslims, the BBC <\/a> said.<\/p>\n

Is it really the\u00a0best way to win Afghan hearts and minds for soldiers starting their tour of duty\u00a0?\u00a0Or a\u00a0staggering own goal ?<\/p>\n

Some people think its a bit of an\u00a0over-reaction and even misleading. Douglas Murray, writing in The Telegraph blog<\/a>, said the fact is that British, and U.S. troops for that matter, are\u00a0forbidden to\u00a0fire at mosques or other places of worship under the rules of engagement.\u00a0 But that will be forgotten in\u00a0the current uproar, he says and instead the idea that soldiers are trained to shoot at mosques will get embedded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Members of the Black Watch, 3rd Battalion the Royal Regiment of Scotland at the Black Watch Memorial at Aberfeldy in Scotland following the end of their deployment in Afghanistan. By Russell Cheyne The British Ministry of Defence has apologised after Muslims\u00a0complained that it was using replicas of mosques at a firing range\u00a0 in northern England […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5007,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-521826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5007"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521826\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}