Aren’t “Holy Wars” Waged Only by Muslims? So, Why Is Hegseth Quoting the Bible to Justify the War on Iran? 

For an entire generation of Muslim children born after 9/11 in the West, claiming and taking pride in their Islamic identity had become a risky endeavor. Defending the word ‘Jihad,’ especially its new, corrupted definition popularized worldwide by the West, was particularly challenging. What was meant to inspire Muslims to “struggle against their own weaknesses” had been twisted and framed as a violent call to arms against non-Muslims, all thanks to the efforts of the “civilized” Western world.

The imagery accompanying this disinformation campaign had been vivid and powerful. Scrawny, bearded men with wild eyes and hooked noses, brandishing scimitars and threatening to wage a holy war, became the stereotypical narrative sold by movies, billboards, TV shows, comic strips, political manifestos, and even speeches from religious pulpits.

America was playing to its strengths. This time-tested strategy had always proven highly effective. Painting groups that America disliked as sub-human, to be feared or mocked depending on the moment’s political narrative, became a fine art. Historical examples abound. Russians were depicted as “commies” who grunted rather than spoke like normal humans; they were all KGB spies trained to kill. Likewise, Vietnamese were reduced to half-naked, shanty-dwelling “gooks” and “tunnel rats.” America’s own Black population had faced a myriad of derogatory labels. The purpose of such dehumanization was straightforward: to make entire ethnicities appear worthy of destruction under the guise of a favor to the world, masking what it truly was, a massacre of innocents to further America’s political and economic agenda.

The distortion of the word ‘jihad‘ fits into this category of American disinformation. By portraying Muslims as backward, desert-dwelling freaks lacking human traits and prone to violence at the slightest provocation, America’s interests were served well. Jihad, deliberately mistranslated as “holy war,” became America’s ‘smoking gun‘ to demonstrate how wild and unpredictable Muslims supposedly were. Billions of dollars were invested in promoting this lie to the most gullible audience. The immediate results were striking: attention shifted from America’s brutality towards Muslims in the post-9/11 world to shocked reactions dressed up as moral outrage: “Holy wars in the 20th century? Who are these Muslims? Why are they so primitive? Can America civilize these people for the sake of world safety? And if not, can America, the strong and unflinching defender of Western values, please step in and exterminate the threat once and for all?“

America readily accommodated this narrative, confident in the world’s gullibility. After all, they had been executing this strategy for 250 years, and it rarely failed. It was akin to trading a worthless glass bead to a Native American in exchange for a thousand acres of land and a river teeming with fish. Mission accomplished!

But there was one issue America couldn’t control: the arrival of Trump and his MAGA movement. Elected on a right-wing Christian platform and buoyed by theocrats of every sort, the new president began using language that Americans had been conditioned to view as evidence of the socio-cultural primitivism of Muslims. The tables had turned. Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran further highlighted the hypocrisy intrinsic to American rhetoric. While Iran framed its response as a defense of its 5,000-year-old civilizational pride, Trump and America resorted to using religion to rationalize their actions—precisely what they had accused the Muslim world of doing for years.

Things would soon become even more bizarre and blasphemous. When Trump’s team struggled to find authentic biblical verses to justify a “Holy War,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed a Pentagon prayer service by reading out a fabricated Bible verse from Quentin Tarantino’s 1994 film ‘Pulp Fiction’. Hegseth introduced the prayer as CSAR 2517, which is actually Ezekiel 25:17—the fictional passage recited by Samuel L. Jackson’s character Jules Winnfield.

The prayer included Hegseth’s own modifications, swapping out movie dialogues for military references. This incident sparked widespread ridicule from legal experts and lawmakers, with critics condemning Hegseth’s weaponization of Christianity to justify warfare.

Media reviewers David Wippman and Glenn C. Altschuler, writing for a leading American news portal, argue that moments involving Hegseth set a troubling precedent by the Trump administration. They stated, “The Trump administration’s threats to attack Iran’s energy infrastructure and destroy its civilization in the name of Jesus have prompted sharp rebukes from religious leaders, including Pope Leo, who quoted the Prophet Isaiah, saying that God ‘does not listen’ to leaders with ‘hands full of blood.’

They further stated that Trump’s use of profanity and support for a Christian crusade are causing significant damage. In a nation where only 62 percent of citizens identify as Christians, the president’s rationale for his war of choice is eroding public trust, intensifying political polarization, and fostering an environment where nearly half of Americans view members of the opposing party as ‘downright evil.’

Does this remind us of something? It should, because this mirrors the tactics America has traditionally used to portray Islam and all Muslims as inherently evil. Now, those same tactics are being directed at fellow Americans.

As Trump divides the nation while claiming divine appointment to lead, his rhetoric and actions clearly indicate that America has lost more than just its past glory; it has lost its credibility on the global stage. This is a loss that may be irreparable, especially given the rapid changes in the current world order.

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