More than a year after he was forced to disown his Chicago pastor, President Obama has begun to attend services led by a Christian chaplain who views Islam as a violent faith.

Mr Obama has been an irregular church attender since becoming President, but has expressed a fondness for Carey Cash, the navy chaplain at the Camp David presidential retreat who has been criticised for proselytising in the military and his mistrust of Islam.

The White House insists that the Rev Cash, the great-nephew of the singer Johnny Cash, has not become Mr Obama’s new pastor, but it appears that the President has heard more sermons by him than any other minister since taking office.

The emergence of Mr Cash, 39, who was profiled on the front page of The Washington Post yesterday, will pose some tough questions for the White House — and for President Obama, whose father was Muslim. In a 2004 book describing his deployment to Iraq the year before, Mr Cash calls Islam violent, a faith that “from its very birth has used the edge of the sword as a means to convert or conquer those with different religious convictions”.

Mr Cash, a chaplain in one of the first units to reach Baghdad, believes that a “wall of angels” protected his troops when they fought their way to the Iraqi capital in March 2003. During his deployment he baptised more than 50 servicemen. In his book, A Table in the Presence: The Dramatic Account of How a US Marine Battalion Experienced God’s Presence Amidst the Chaos of the War in Iraq, Mr Cash said of the mission: “Yes, our men were lost and separated. But our God was not confused. Just as He had from the very beginning of the war, He was providentially working all things together for the good of a cause that was just and true.”

He added: “Sadly, grace is often absent in Islam, which is based upon binding religious law, requiring strenuous adherence to every tenet of the ‘Five Pillars of Allah’.

“A religion that emerges from the soil of strict adherence to law as a means of gaining God’s favour will always tend toward extreme selfsacrifice.”

Since Mr Obama, who opposed the war in Iraq, disowned the Rev Jeremiah Wright for his incendiary sermons during the presidential campaign last year, he has been hesitant about choosing a new pastor and has declined to pick a church to attend regularly.

He likes Mr Cash and the Evergreen Chapel at Camp David, which is 70 miles (113km) from Washington and closed to the public and press. He told reporters this summer that Mr Cash “delivers as powerful a sermon as I’ve heard in a while. I really think he’s excellent”.

According to the report in The Washington Post, the White House has instructed Mr Cash and his family not to talk to the newspaper.

Mr Cash has been criticised by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog that monitors proselytising in the military, for his work with Campus Crusade for Christ’s Military Ministry.

According to the watchdog, the group’s goal is to transform the US military into a force of “government-paid missionaries for Christ”.

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