Gen. says he didn't mean to malign Islam (Boykin)

[Rose Siding]

WASHINGTON -- The three-star U.S. general who made church speeches casting the war on terrorism in religious terms said Wednesday he did not mean to denigrate Islam.

"I'm not anti-Islam, I'm not anti-Allah," Lt. Gen. William Boykin said in an interview broadcast on CBS' "60 Minutes."

Boykin, a senior intelligence official, stirred controversy with speeches he made at evangelical Christian churches. He said that America's enemy was Satan, that God had put President Bush in the White House and that one Muslim Somali warlord was an idol-worshipper.
...
Boykin told CBS he had been misunderstood for saying of a Somali warlord he interrogated in 1993, "I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." The general said the Somali warlord was "not a good Muslim."

"He's a man who worshipped graft, corruption, power and money," Boykin said. "My reference to his God being an idol was not to Allah. My reference was to his worship of corruption, of power, of money."

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