Terrorism in the name of God -- Leonard Pitts Jr.

[Bozita]

http://freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100409/OPINION05/4090320/1320/Terrorism-in-Gods-name&template=fullarticle

POSTED: APRIL 9, 2010
LEONARD PITTS JR.
Terrorism in the name of God
BY LEONARD PITTS JR.
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS


A few words about Christian terrorism:

The term will seem jarring to those who've grown comfortable regarding terrorism as something exclusive to Islam.

That this is a self-deluding fallacy should have since been apparent to anyone who has been paying attention. From Eric Rudolph's bombing of the Atlanta Olympics, a gay nightclub and two abortion clinics to the so-called Phineas Priests who bombed banks, a newspaper and a Planned Parenthood Office in Spokane, from Matt Hale soliciting the murder of a federal judge in Chicago to Scott Roeder's assassination of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, from brothers Matthew and Tyler Williams murdering a gay couple near Redding, Calif., to Timothy McVeigh destroying a federal building and 168 lives in Oklahoma City, we have seen no shortage of "Christians" who believe Jesus requires -- or at least allows -- them to commit murder.

If federal officials are correct, we now have one more name to add to the dishonor roll. That name would be Hutaree, a self-styled Christian militia in Michigan, nine members of which have been accused of plotting to kill police officers in hopes of sparking an anti-government uprising.

Many of us would doubtless resist referring to plots like this as Christian terrorism, feeling it unfair to tar the great body of Christendom with the actions of its fringe radicals. And here we will pause for Muslim readers to clear their throats loudly.

While they do, let the rest of us note that there is a larger moral to this story, and it has less to do with terminologies than similarities.

We are conditioned to think of terror wrought by Islamic fundamentalists as something strange and alien. It is the violence of men with long beards who jabber in weird languages and kill for mysterious reasons while worshiping God in ways that seem outlandish to middle-American sensibilities. And whatever quirk of nature or deficiency of humanity it is that allows them to do what they do is, we think, unique.

Then you consider Hutaree and its alleged plan to kill in the name of God, and the idea of some innate, saving difference between us and those bearded others in other places begins to feel like a fiction we conjured to help us sleep at night.

more...

[Kerrytravelers]

1. Let the delusional denials from the RW nutters begin.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. K&R

[sinkingfeeling]

3. Excellent, concise writing.

[Mika]

4. Too bad Pitts won't write similarly regarding Miami's hard line exile terrorists.

A short list of their US MSM blacked-out handywork in a couple of posts in this DU thread....

-Metro Dade County, Organized Crime Bureau (OCB) File on Terrorism-
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x33093

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[dmallind]

5. Far too many people - some of whom are way too intelligent to not know this is indefensible

- have internalized the silly idea that people who do such things are not "real" Christians.

[troubledamerican]

6. American TEAliban