WASHINGTON: Muslim groups reacted angrily yesterday after it emerged that the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan were using rifle sights inscribed with coded Biblical references.

The company producing the sights, which are also used to train Afghan and Iraqi soldiers under contracts with the US Army and the Marine Corps, said it has inscribed references to the New Testament on the metal casings for over two decades.

The British Ministry of Defence meanwhile announced it had placed an order for 400 of the gunsights with Trijicon but added it had not been aware of the significance of the inscriptions, in a decision criticised by the opposition Liberal Democrat party.

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) called on US Defence Secretary Robert Gates to immediately withdraw from combat use equipment found to have inscriptions of Biblical references after it emerged that Trijicon has contracts to supply over 800,000 of the sights to the US military.

The Pentagon sought to defuse the brewing controversy, saying it was “disturbed” by the reports.

“If determined to be true, this is clearly inappropriate and we are looking into possible remedies,” Commander Darryn James, a Pentagon spokesman, told AFP.

The codes were used as “part of our faith and our belief in service to our country,” Trijicon said.

“As long as we have men and women in danger, we will continue to do everything we can to provide them with both state-of-the-art technology and the never-ending support and prayers of a grateful nation,” a company spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

The move appeared to be a direct violation of a US Central Command general order issued after the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that strictly prohibits “proselytizing of any religion, faith or practice.” A whistleblower group that first alerted ABC News to the issue this week warned the practice was putting troops in harm’s way by raising fears of Christian proselytizing in Muslim-majority nations home to militants resentful of US military presence.

“This is the worst type of emboldenment of the enemy that you can imagine,” Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder and president Michael “Mikey” Weinstein said in an interview.

Weinstein, a former White House legal counsel in Ronald Reagan’s administration, said his group would submit a filing in US federal court in Kansas City, Missouri by February 4 in a related case.

“Having Biblical references on military equipment violates the basic ideals and values our country was founded upon,” MPAC Washington director Haris Tarin said in a statement. “Worse still, it provides propaganda ammo to extremists who claim there is a ‘Crusader war against Islam’ by the United States,” he added.