Leonard Pitts Jr.: Muslim vs. Christian terrorism : News-Record.com : Greensboro & the Triad's most trusted source for local news and analysis

A few words about Christian terrorism.

And I suppose the first words should be about those words: "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 long since been apparent to anyone who's 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 arrested and 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 worshipping 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. There is, we are pleased to believe, a hard, immutable line between us and them.

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.

"Preparing for the end time battles to keep the testimony of Jesus Christ alive," it says on Hutaree's Web site. And you wonder: Who is this Jesus they worship and in what Bible is he found? Why does he bear so little resemblance to the Jesus others find in their Bibles, the one who said that if someone hits you on your right cheek, offer him your left, the one who said if someone forces you to go one mile with him, go two, the one who said love your enemies.

Why does their Jesus need the help of men in camo fatigues with guns and bombs? In this, he is much like the Allah for whom certain Muslims blow up marketplaces and crowded buses. Muslim and American terrorists, it seems, both apparently serve a puny and impotent God who can't do anything without their help.

Sometimes, I think the only thing that keeps us from becoming, say, Afghanistan, is a strong central government and a diverse population with a robust tradition of free speech. The idea that there is something more is a conceit that blows apart like confetti every time there is, as there is now, a sense of cultural dislocation and economic uncertainty. That combination unfailingly moves people out to the fringes where they seek out scapegoats and embrace that feeble God. And watching, you can't help but realize the troubling truth about that line between "us" and "them."

It's thinner than you think.

Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. Send e-mail to him at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

universalgenius

April 7, 2010 - 8:00 am EDT

The village idiot is at it again.No doubt the NSA is watching him very closely though and considers him a threat to America and especially after trying to equalize Christianity with pagan Islamic terorrism. He wont be able to fly soon and probably has terrorist connections like the five American radicals in Pakistan arrested by authorities who were laughably rejected by the Taliban and almost beheaded but will be in jail over there a very long time and may be executed.

Christianity aka "white man religion" has over a third of the worlds population. We celebrate the great European Crusaders year milliniem anniversary who took 200 yrs to destroy the pagan Islamic Muslim enemy and retake the Holy Land initiated by white Latinos in Rome where the headquarters are still located after 1700 years.

We know the western hemisphere was founded by the European white Latinos/Anglo Saxons who conquered millions of pagan red mongoloids with very small armys of only a few hundred soldiers and divine intervention cleaning out the west and spreading the Word as they were instructed. We know a few very lucky African slaves were brought to these western shores also and have thrived a million times better than their their counterparts in Africa. Their desendants need to fal on their knees and thank the white elite for bringing them here in spire of the fact that slavery was not needed and a catastropic mistake as we know. All of Europe was built and maintained for 1000s of yrs without a single African slave. Ungrateful slimewad Pitts better consider himself one of the luckiest people on earth.

In the same token the misfits and oddball pagan radical liberal scum like Pitts will be purged in coming times so they cannot continue to foul the same oxygen breathed by other decent humanity on sacred ground like America and the western world. He is abhorred by both the good Christian saviors and the bad Muslims terrorists yet continues to spew his lies hate and snake oil brain poison. What a joke. He needs to become a comedian.

Good Grief

April 7, 2010 - 8:28 am EDT

Wow.

General Greensboro

April 7, 2010 - 8:32 am EDT

Impressed? Don't be. UG writes pretty much the same rant below every Pitts column.

That said, Pitts' critics claim he writes pretty much the same column every few days.

Panacea

April 7, 2010 - 8:39 am EDT

He does stick to stock themes, doesn't he.

But then again, he writes coherently, sticks to his guns, and doesn't twist one point to talk about another topic that has nothing to do wtih the first (unlike Will and Sowell these days).

And universial"genius" (who is anything but) must simply copy and paste every post.

April 8, 2010 - 9:19 am EDT

Definitely NOT impressed.
I was "dumb-struck".

2fer

April 7, 2010 - 1:13 pm EDT

Old Testament Eloh(im) = Muslim Allah. Eloh didn't become any less a pagan god when he changed his name to Yahweh, and was only marginally more civilized by the time he was allegedly to have sired a demigod.
The Crusaders were ignorant, bloodthirsty fanatics by any standard, even the standards of their own day. They butchered Christian, pagan, and Muslim alike, and the only consolation for humanity is that most of them died in their efforts, a good example of natural selection ridding the gene pool of substandard combinations with more testosterone than good sense.

dcolin

April 7, 2010 - 7:54 pm EDT

"misfits and oddball pagan radical liberal scum"
This seems redundant.

Would "misfits" not cover all.

Kit9

To universalgenius....perhaps you should change your moniker to universal denial. Anyone who has information plainly displayed in frornt of him that suggest a 100% correlation to a message and still chooses to deny it is an idiot. Anyone can look at the fear mongering of Rush and Beck, see the salivation from their chomping jaws and realize they are hungry to feed sheeple FEAR. There are hundreds of places on the web where you can see so called CHRISTIANS advertising their bile and hate. These people refuse to honor the words of Christ and promote death and destruction. For you to call out the author of this editorial just shows you are on of the people in denial and terrified that someone will call you and your hate out. You should be afraid. People like you who scream FEAR and yet keep their eyes tightly shut to avoid seeing the light and therefore living in a self imposed blindness of ignorance are the worst kind of people. Spreading fear and lies is not beneficial. Seeing the truth and dealing with it is a much more mature and responsible approach!!! Grow up!

demarisinyamouth

April 7, 2010 - 9:55 am EDT

I agree Kit9. Anybody with an ounce of sense can see that these Christian Terrorists have been around far longer and have caused more havoc than Islamic terrorists. Chris Rock said it best when he said "I'm not looking over my shoulder for Al Quaida, I'm looking out for Al Cracker!"

worker ant

April 7, 2010 - 12:39 pm EDT

Oh, I misunderstood Chris. I thought he said "Al Blacker". Sorry, just a joke. Honestly, we are being divided by our own ignorant egos. None of us have perfect knowledge or wisdom. Egos drive war and division and we are being sucked right into it. When you kill somebodies children, and they come over and kill your children, are you then going to stand up with so much pride and say,"Yeah, but I was right"? I think we're all being played.

April 7, 2010 - 1:03 pm EDT

It is interesting to me that Pitts here makes no mention whatsoever of race, as is the case in many of his writings, though he might well have. Maybe that's why the usual gang of bigoted losers, with the one obvious exception, have made no complaint about this commentary. We Americans are fortunate that our fundamentalist loonies are well diluted with more rational folks or have separated themselves out of everyday society. Like the rods that limit fission in nuclear reactors, our civilized elements keep the energy level of fundamentalism under control most of the time, which makes the exceptions more noticeable and interesting. We might note, however, that hearing a god's voice is a valid defense against standard punishments for heinous crimes in more than half of our states, and, in others, juries are often swayed by such appeals.

lilbean

April 7, 2010 - 6:30 pm EDT

mr. pitts, take a look at this page:
http://baltimorecrime.blogspot.com/
mainly the right column with the names and ages. sad isn't it leonard? and this is just one city in one state. no mr.pitts, its not the christians that you should concern yourself with, its the godless children of a godless society. enjoy your day.

April 7, 2010 - 8:39 pm EDT

And it is amazing how many crooks become born again Christians, or Muslim when locked up, but go right back to the Church of Me as soon as they are released.

Mr. Pitts point still stands: the actions of many so called Christians is no better than the Muslim boogeyman we've been sold on for the past 10 years and more.

April 8, 2010 - 2:02 am EDT

Twin towers downed. Pentagon hit. All passengers on 4 flights and thousands more slaughtered. Films of innocents being decapitated. Shoe bomber. Crotch bomber. Fort Hood terrorist murderer. Muslim DC snipers. First WTC attacks. Muslim militants training in NC. Films of women being forced to kneel before being shot in the head. 12 yr. old filmed performing beheading as initation. All this in the last 8.5 yrs. Don't blame this on Bush. This is Islamic Fundamentalism. Coming soon to your neighborhood, courtesy of The Appeaser. Roll out the Welcome mat, Panacea. Christians are no better.

April 8, 2010 - 7:47 am EDT

Timothy McVeigh and the OK city bombing, Terry Nichols, KKK, Aryan Nation, Child molesting Catholic priests, Christian militias plotting to kill police, bombings at abortion clinics.......

Debbie_Williams

April 12, 2010 - 10:59 pm EDT

Dear Mr. Pitts: I'm not going to read all the comments that went before. I stumbled on a few of them while trying to sign onto this rather difficult website and saw some were not so savory, which appear to support your points. However, I did want to let you know that I've read your editorials for some years now and find them very well thought out and intelligent. This one in particular, however, really hit the mark. How are militant Christians any different than militant Muslims? Not by far, it would appear. I'm sure your points will be well taken by people who are thoughtful and not so ideologically driven. Thank you for your well written article. Let's hope it provokes more thought, and with that, reason.

Debbie Williams
Millfield, Ohio

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