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IN MEMORIAM
Glen Doherty,
Dedicated MRFF Advisory Board Member and former Navy SEAL, Killed in Libya Consulate Attack
Former Navy SEAL and hardened combat veteran Glen Doherty, 42, was killed in an armed Salafi-Jihadist assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Glen was one of the first MRFF Advisory Board members and was a passionate core contributor to the fight to prevent a fundamentalist Christian coup within the United States Armed Forces.
Glen lived and died believing in the righteous cause of religious tolerance and dialogue among all peoples and faiths around the globe.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation offers its most sincere condolences to Glen Doherty's family.
STATEMENT BY MRFF FOUNDER & PRESIDENT, MIKEY WEINSTEIN
Glen Doherty: "...a brother, a dear family friend, and a trusted colleague of inestimable worth."
Thursday, September 13, 2012
With enormous sadness, it is our regrettable duty to report the loss of active MRFF Advisory Board Member Glen Doherty, a victim of the terrible September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya. The attack also claimed the life of U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens. As a highly decorated former Navy SEAL and veteran of innumerable fierce battles, Glen’s love of life was only outscaled by his fearlessness, his indomitable willpower, and his unbending sense of duty. For Glen Doherty, combating the unconstitutional religious proselytizing within the U.S. military was simply a matter of fulfilling his sworn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. In his capacity as one of the longest-serving core contributors to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, Glen initiated and fulfilled his tasks with enormous verve and unflagging enthusiasm. With great interest and a near-clairvoyant ability to forecast threats, challenges, and trends, Glen helped steer the foundation towards some of its most sterling triumphs.
Indeed, Glen was a brother, a dear family friend, and a trusted colleague of inestimable worth. All who knew him were positively affected by his larger-than-life charisma and dynamism. His tragic absence is already being sorely felt, but the radiance he exuded will ensure that our memory of his deeds will never dim. Indeed, Glen’s indelible contributions to our shared cause will long outlive his tragically shortened life.
Michael L. "Mikey" Weinstein, Esq.
Founder and President,
Military Religious Freedom Foundation
MRFF FEATURED
BY
THE
HUFFINGTON POST
Glen Doherty, Security Officer Killed In Libya Attack, Fought Religious Proselytizing In Military
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Selected Article Excerpts:
- One of the security guards killed during an attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that may have been related to an incendiary anti-Muslim video was active in a group that fights religious proselytizing in the U.S. military.
- Although U.S. officials now suspect the attack may have been a planned terrorist operation and not a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Islamic video -- itself now thought to be the work of a Coptic Christian in California -- Doherty himself had a history of opposing religious intolerance.
Doherty was an "extremely active" member of the advisory board of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), an advocacy group that fights inappropriate religious proselytizing inside the armed forces, said founder Mikey Weinstein, a retired Air Force lawyer.
- "He confirmed for me how deeply entrenched fundamentalist Christianity is in the DoD Spec Ops [Department of Defense Special Operations] world of the SEALs, Green Berets, Delta Force, Army Rangers USAF ... and DoD security contractors like the former Blackwater," Weinstein said in an email to The Huffington Post. Doherty "helped me on many MRFF client cases behind the scenes to facilitate assistance to armed forces members abused horribly by fundamentalist Christian proselytizing."
- Weinstein said his "irreplaceable" friend was passionate about maintaining the wall of separation between the military and religion.
"Glen told me he took criticism from both current and former SEALs for being a part of MRFF [but] also received much support for doing so from other former and current SEALs," Weinstein said. "He was also a close friend to me and my family. He will be sorely missed by us all. No dry eyes out here."
MRFF FEATURED
BY
CNN
Ex-SEAL, online gaming maven among Benghazi dead
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Selected Article Excerpts:
- Details began to emerge Thursday about some of the three Americans who died in the U.S. consulate in Benghazi with Ambassador Chris Stevens, among them an avid gamer with an extensive online following and a former Navy SEAL who opposed religious fundamentalism in the military.
- A diplomatic source told CNN that Doherty was in Libya on a mission to search for shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles. The United States stepped up efforts to track down those weapons after the revolt that toppled former Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.
Outside Doherty's family home in Woburn, Massachusetts, near Boston, his sister remembered him as "our American hero."
"Glen lived his life to the fullest," Katie Quigley told reporters. "He was my brother, but if you ask his friends, he was their brother as well."
- After college in Arizona and stints as a "ski bum" and raft guide in Utah, Doherty joined the Navy and became a member of the elite SEAL commandos in 1995, his family said in a statement. He had planned to leave the service after knee surgery in 2001, but after the al Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington, he "was not allowed to to leave and didn't want to," his family said.
- He also joined the advisory board of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a group that has battled religious intolerance in the U.S. armed forces. Its president, former Air Force officer Michael "Mikey" Weinstein, said he was "in a state of shock" after learning of Doherty's death.
"He was one of our most active advisory board members," Weinstein said. "I was surprised he was willing to come on and lend the gravitas that comes with being a Navy SEAL to our cause." Doherty's involvement "made it easier for others to come to us," Weinstein added.
He said Doherty believed the kind of violent jihadists American troops faced were "a very small percentage of the overall mosaic of the Muslim faith," and saw anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States and in the ranks as something that hurt U.S. national security.
"He went back to the Middle East because he cared deeply about the Muslim people, and because he cared about bringing freedom and democracy and human rights to the Middle East," Weinstein said. Doherty "was a kind and caring person, and I'm sure that he gave every last bit of his courage and strength" to defend the consulate and Stevens, he added.
"All this is going to do is light a further fire under us in Glen's name and memory to continue to fight for religious freedom and respect and tolerance."
MRFF FEATURED
BY
NEW YORK TIMES
For Slain Contractor, a Life of Risks Overseas
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Selected Article Excerpts:
- For Glen A. Doherty, being assigned to a high-stakes security detail in Libya was just one of over a decade’s worth of adventurous overseas missions he had participated in as a security contractor and a member of the Navy SEALs.
“He’s been overseas many, many times, defending this country,” said Mr. Doherty’s younger sister, Kate Quigley. “He was highly trained and really good.”
- “He has one brother, but if you asked, there’s probably 15 guys who would call him their brother,” Ms. Quigley said. “Glen’s family is his friends, and he’s got hundreds of them.”
One of them, Chad Haskell, who grew up next door to the Doherty family, remembered how friends from all walks of Mr. Doherty’s life gathered at his 40th birthday party two years ago. To them, Mr. Haskell said, Mr. Doherty was a hero long before his death on Tuesday.
“He was a hero when he was in the Navy, to his family, to his nephews, to his sister, and brother and parents.”
Mr. Doherty was an advisory board member for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which seeks to prevent religious intolerance and proselytizing in the military. “He’s going to be irreplaceable,” said Mikey Weinstein, the organization’s president. “He saw that religious intolerance anywhere leads to violence and blood.”
TRUTHOUT FEATURES MIKEY WEINSTEIN OP-ED ON ISLAMOPHOBIA,
LIBYA/EGYPT ATTACKS
Prescient message written prior to news that
Glen Doherty was one of the 4 slain Americans
"Values" Voter Summit:
Of Train Wrecks and Frankenstein's Monsters
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Selected Article Excerpt:
- ...Boykin rounds out the Family Research Council's relentless Islamophobic witch-hunt with his own John Rambo-esque war against domestic Muslims, whom he feels are intent to "destroy us as a Christian Army." It's no exaggeration to say that an evangelical fundamentalist Christian zeal that mirrors Al Qaeda's Salafist-Jihadi fanaticism quite positively possesses Boykin...
- The sickness wrought by the Islamophobia espoused by Boykin, Saleem, and that viper's nest of high-octane bigotry known as the Family Research Council has manifested itself in hideous incidents such as March's brutal murder in Southern California of Iraqi mother of five Shaima Alawadi, and August's mass-shooting at a Sikh Temple in Wisconsin.
- NOTE: As this Op-Ed goes to press, the world has been shaken by news that on Tuesday, September 11, 2012, U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens was killed in Benghazi along with three American staffers in a Salafist-led attack on the U.S. Embassy. Salafist demonstrators also attacked the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, whereupon the U.S. flag was torn down, burned, and replaced by the black Al Qaeda flag . While details on the motivations behind the attack are still emerging, it appears that a horrendous hate-speech film allegedly launched by Israeli-American Sam Bacile and promoted by Qu'ran-burning fundamentalist Pastor Terry Jones sparked the attacks. The film is a mocking and inciting depiction of the life of the Prophet Mohammad that torturously, deceptively, and ignominiously attempts to tie the origins of Islam to themes of homosexuality and pedophilia, and a call to arms for Christian-Zionist proponents of an apocalyptic "Clash of Civilizations." Some have even suggested that the film was produced by a shady circle of exclusively evangelical Christians, hell-bent on intentionally feeding the flames of sectarian madness in the region.
We at MRFF absolutely condemn this provocation by Bacile and Jones, and have in the past directly confronted the hate-mongering Pastor by communicating with the Afghan National Army (ANA) and offering to donate a new Qu'ran to replace every copy of the Muslim holy book that Jones burned . The repellant film and ensuing mayhem in North Africa make absolutely clear the fact that, in the words of retired ambassador Chas W. Freeman, "It turns out that all that is required to be hated is to do hateful things. Ironically, as we 'search abroad for monsters to destroy,' we are creating them – transforming our foreign detractors into terrorists, multiplying their numbers, intensifying their militancy, and fortifying their hatred of us." All Americans should condemn the fully-fledged national security threat that this vile strain of Islamophobic stupidity represents. Radical, fundamentalist Islam is a clear and present danger that must be fought and defeated in the name of basic human rights. However, its adherents are a distinct minority within the broader mosaic that constitutes Islam. It is of the utmost importance that we assiduously look inward and examine our nation's own actions vis-a-vis the venerable Muslim faith and its nearly 2 billion followers as a means to ensure that we are not purposefully or inadvertently creating and amplifying the Frankenstein's monsters who are assailing us.
MRFF FEATURED
BY
COLORADO SPRINGS INDEPENDENT
MRFF member killed
in embassy slaying
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Selected Article Excerpt:
- Glen Doherty, a former Navy SEAL and member of the Advisory Board for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, was one of the three Americans killed in an assault on the American Embassy in Libya on Tuesday, which also claimed the life of U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.
The MRFF was formed in 2005 by Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 graduate of the Air Force Academy, after his son reported cadets using pejorative language against Jews, and faculty and staff advocating for fundamentalist Christianity. Weinstein is Jewish.
"Glen was a true American hero," Weinstein says in an interview. "I know that he took some flak from current and former SEALS for joining our advisory board years ago. But he didn't view the value of a human being based on what religion they are. "He was the first one to remind me not to be tepid in this fight," he says.
"He was the first one that made me realize that the closest you get to drawing blood in the military, the closer you get to combat, the higher the infiltration of fundamentalist Christianity. He didn't care when he suffered derision from other SEALs by coming on board with us, because it was the right thing to do."
MRFF FEATURED
BY
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
MRFF member killed
in embassy slaying
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Selected Article Excerpt:
- He fought against religious zealots in the U.S. military and wound up dying at the hands of religious fanatics in Libya.
Former Navy Seal Glen Doherty, one of the four Americans killed by terrorists Tuesday, was an active member of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group that opposes religious proselytizing in the military.
"He understood this was not a left or right issue, but a constitutional right and wrong issue," grieving group leader Mikey Weinstein said Thursday. "He believed nobody in the military should be forced to adhere a certain religion."
- "He was not against religion; 96% of our clients are Christians," said Weinstein, a retired Air Force lawyer and registered Republican who worked in the Reagan White House for three years. "He just believed that there should be a strict separation of church and state in the most technologically lethal organization ever created by man."
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