‘Christian terrorist’? Norway case strikes debate?
During the first reports that someone had detonated a car bomb and then opened fire at a youth camp in Norway, many assumptions clicked into place.
The massacre was actually committed, police say, by a blond Norwegian whose photo would not seem out of place in an American college directory. As Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto emerged, calling for violence to rid Europe of non-Christians and those he deemed traitors to Christian Europe, some seized on the religious aspect of his delusions.
Mark Juergensmeyer, editor of the book “Global Religions: An Introduction” and a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote an essay likening Breivik to Timothy McVeigh, the American who killed 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. It was the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil until 9/11.
McVeigh and Breivik were both “good-looking young Caucasians, self-enlisted soldiers in an imagined cosmic war to save Christendom … and both were Christian terrorists,” Juergensmeyer wrote.
In a column for Salon.com, Alex Pareene said Breivik is not an American-style evangelical, but he listed other connections to Christianity. “All of this says ‘Christian terrorist,’” Pareene wrote.
Such claims drew strong resistance. “Breivik is not a Christian. That’s impossible. No one believing in Jesus commits mass murder,” Bill O’Reilly said on his Fox News show.
That makes sense to Joyce Dubensky, CEO of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. She said it also makes sense that “millions of Muslims say Osama bin Laden is not a Muslim, that no one who believes in the prophet Muhammad commits mass murder.”
For Christians who think of their faith as preaching peace, how to explain the faith-sanctioned killing of the Crusades? For Muslims, what about the thousands of jihadists now following violent interpretations of Islam?
Or consider the Ku Klux Klan’s burning crosses. If those were the actions of a misguided minority, shouldn’t the same be said of the 19 men who hijacked airliners on 9/11?
What do you think about this????
I agree. People need to shut up and stop scapegoating groups of people. I could use men like Wiener to make all Liberals look like greedy sexting pigs.
there are so many people out there who deserver being called and treated like terrorists, but it seems that in this excedingly ignorant and hateful world, the term ‘terrorist’ is reserved for all muslims, and even people who look like they come from muslim nations.
You get 1 so-called Christian pull stuff off like this once a decade or so, and magically all Christians are held at the same suspicion as Radial Muslims who number in the millions. Its just a way for Government to regulate churches and take more freedoms from the people. “Oh No those Radical Christians are coming to get us! Oh no! We got get rid of them” They did this same thing in Hitler’s Germany history repeating itself. Oh I have been to Muslim Countries and have seen The evil’s of Islam first hand. Don’t fool yourself reading the Mecca Chronicles Read the Medina Chronicles, Islam is not a Religion of peace, Non of the Abrahamic Religions are.
I think that even you believe Breivik and McVeigh were Bible-thumping, wild-eyed evangelicals (which they weren’t … not by a long shot), that gives you … uhhh … let’s see now … TWO incidents of this “Christian terrorism” in how many years?
The next arrow in your quiver is the Crusades.
Muslims are blowing up markets full of innocents every day, but were admonished not to paint with too wide a brush.
I’ll you this right now.
If a bomb goes off somewhere tomorrow, my first inclination will likely be “Muslim”. Uncomfortable or not, the odds are WAY in my favor.
Breivik is not a practicing christian and he did not kill in the name of god.
he was not screaming god is great when he murdered children. like some do.
he was an aberration.
a psychopath/sociopath.
a killer.
The Crusades occurred when the rulers of nations being invaded by Muslim hordes asked European nations for help.
You know, if the Muslims can protest cartoons, threaten decapitation of their creators’, stage worldwide protest because some tiny backwoods church in Florida might burn a Koran, they can show that same passion against their fringe nuts, too. They don’t.
Where are the Christian terrorists? We’re waiting and have been waiting for years. Why is it they’re given such attention when they don’t exist? Muslim terrorists have bombed for 20 years, globally, fanatics or not.
I think it’s disgusting that the one faith that is doing so much to try and help others in the world, free food, medicine and education for so many third-world nations (and so many in poor areas of our own nation), is perpetually maligned. And for what? To be labeled terrorists.
I think a lot of us would like to claim to morally superior but in your debate all the people involved save the terrorists believe they are innocent. No one is innocent anymore as we have all been tarred by the same brush and in the terrorist’s view they are acting out of humility to the truth or the fact that you can’t claim to be muslim or christian when you judge another man for his beliefs to name a few grievances. The terrorist cells believe that the real world is full of evil and who can say that it isn’t. For this purpose the great task and feat of dishing out justice will have to come through any means that is accordingly based with every religious text I have studied. But not to confuse church and state again I will simply put forth that the world is going to end some day and it’s people like you who keep holding on to the past and to things that are naturally made to die that hold back our future’s greatest hope and that is for our rebirth.
I don’t care if you are talking about crusaders, McVeigh or Breivik, anyone who thinks they are killing for the sake of Christ and Christanity is dead wrong. The New Tesiment is very clear that faith is something you die for NOT kill for. The first generations of Christians were true to this idea. They suffered death and deprivations without lifting a hand to defend themselves. It wasn’t until nearly three centuries after Christ that the culture of the Roman Empire invaded much of the church and those who claimed to be christians saw no problen with not only killing to defend against thost that would attack the faith, but would themsevles use force and violence to orce pewople to convert to this false brand of christianity.
I only know what I know of Islam from history, but even in Mohammeds own lifetime violence and warfare was used to spread Islam, first to the holy city of mecca, then to as much territory as they could comquer for the sake of Mecca.
That makes sense to Joyce Dubensky, CEO of the Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding. She said it also makes sense that “millions of Muslims say Osama bin Laden is not a Muslim, that no one who believes in the prophet Muhammad commits mass murder.”
AGREED!!!!
So if you don’t go to church your not a Christian??????
Get real
No one can tell who is a christian or not since it is a personal thing between you and GOD.
If he said he was one. Then he is.
Terrorism is the unlawful use of violence with the intention of intimidating or coercing society.
It is against all Christian teaching to use violence against anyone or anything for the purpose of intimidation or coercion.
So-called “Christian” terrorists like Breivik or those who blow up abortion clinics are not really Christians.
In the same way, mainstream Islam declares that so-called “Muslim” terrorists are not really Muslims.
With love in Christ.
How can you tell if someone is a Christian before he murders a bunch of ppl??
You can’t
I don’t knock the press for reporting the news
Wow crazy
A Christian who kills innocent people is no Christian at all. Throughout the Bible hatred and murder are condemned in both testaments.