Fatal Stabbing In Portland - White Supremacy And Islamaphobia

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justjess

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Last Friday, Larry McQuilliams was shot and killed by police after unleashing a campaign of violence in Austin, Texas, firing more than 100 rounds in the downtown area before making a failed attempt to burn down the Mexican Consulate. The only casualty was McQuilliams himself, who was felled by officers when he entered police headquarters, but the death toll could have been far greater: McQuilliams, who was called a “terrorist” by Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, had several weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, and a map pinpointing 34 other buildings as possible targets — including several churches.

While the impetus for McQuilliams’ onslaught remains unclear, local authorities recently announced that he may have been motivated by religion — but not the one you might think. According to the Associated Press, police officers who searched McQuilliams’ van found a copy of “Vigilantes of Christendom,” a book connected with the Phineas Priesthood, an American white supremacist movement that claims Christian inspiration and opposes interracial intercourse, racial integration, homosexuality, and abortion. Phineas priests take their name from the biblical figure Phinehas in the book of Numbers, who is described as brutally murdering an Israelite man for having sex with a foreign woman, who he also kills. Members of the Phineas Priesthood — which people “join” simply by adopting the views of the movement — are notoriously violent, and some adherents have been convicted of bank robberies, bombing abortion clinics, and planning to blow up government buildings. Although McQuilliams didn’t leave a letter explaining the reason for his attack, a handwritten note inside the book described him as a “priest in the fight against anti-God people.”

McQuilliams’ possible ties to the Phineas Priesthood may sound strange, but it’s actually unsettlingly common. In fact, his association with the hateful religious group highlights a very real — but often under-reported — issue: terrorism enacted in the name of Christ.

To be sure, violent extremism carried out by people claiming to be Muslim has garnered heaps of media attention in recent years, with conservative pundits such as Greta Van Susteren of Fox News often insisting that Muslim leaders publicly condemn any acts of violence perpetrated in the name of Islam (even though many already have).

But there is a long history of terrorist attacks resembling McQuilliams’ rampage across Austin — where violence is carried out in the name of Christianity — in the United States and abroad. In America, the Ku Klux Klan is well-known for over a century of gruesome crimes against African Americans, Catholics, Jews, and others — all while ascribing to what they say is a Christian theology. But recent decades have also given rise to several “Christian Identity” groups, loose organizations united by a hateful understanding of faith whose members spout scripture while engaging in horrifying acts of violence. For example, various members of The Order, a militant group of largely professed Mormons whose motto was a verse from the book of Jeremiah, were convicted for murdering Jewish talk show host Alan Berg in 1984; the “Army of God”, which justifies their actions using the Bible, is responsible for bombings at several abortion clinics, attacks on gay and lesbian nightclubs, and the explosion at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia; and Scott Roeder cited the Christian faith as his motivation for killing George Tiller — a doctor who performed late-term abortions — in 2009, shooting the physician in the head at point-blank range while he was ushering at church.

These incidents have been bolstered by a more general spike in homegrown American extremism over the past decade and a half. Between 2000 and 2008, the number of hate groups in America rose 54 percent according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and white-supremacist groups — including many with Christian roots — saw an “explosion” in recruitment after Barack Obama was elected the country’s first African-American president in 2008. In fact, the growth of this and other homegrown terrorist threats has become so great that it spurred then-Attorney General Eric Holder to revive the Domestic Terror Task Force in June of this year.

Christian extremism has ravaged other parts of the world as well. Northern Ireland and Northern India both have rich histories of Christian-on-Christian violence, as does Western Africa, where the Lord’s Resistance Army claims a Christian message while forcibly recruiting child soldiers to terrorize local villages. Even Europe, a supposed bastion of secularism, has endured attacks from people who say they follow the teachings of Jesus. In 2011, Anders Behring Breivik launched a horrific assault on innocent people in and around Oslo, Norway, using guns and bombs to kill 77 — many of them teenagers — and wound hundreds more. Breivik said his actions were an attempt to combat Islam and preserve “Christian Europe,” and while he rejected a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ,” he nonetheless championedChristianity as a “cultural, social, identity and moral platform” and claimed the faith as the forming framework for his personal identity.

Chillingly, experts warn that something like Breivik’s attack could easily happen in the United States. Daryl Johnson, a former Department of Homeland Security analyst, said in a 2010 interview that the Hutaree, an extremist militia group in Michigan that touts Christian inspiration, possessed a cache of weapons larger than all the Muslims charged with terrorism the United States since the September 11 attacks combined.

Yet unlike the accusatory responses to domestic jihadist incidents such as the Fort Hood massacre, news of McQuilliams’ possible ties to the Christian Identity movement has yet to produce a reaction among prominent conservative Christians. Greta Van Susteren, for instance, has not asked Christian leaders such as Pope Francis, Rick Warren, or Billy Graham onto her show to speak out against violence committed in name of Christ. Rather, the religious affiliation of McQuilliams, like the faith of many right-wing extremists, has largely flown under the radar, as he and others like him are far more likely to be dismissed as mentally unstable “lone wolfs” than products of extremist theologies.

Granted, right-wing extremism — like Muslim extremism — is a complex religious space. Some participants follow religions they see as more purely “white” — such as Odinism — and others act more out of a hatred for government than religious conviction. Nevertheless, McQuilliams’ attack is a stark reminder that radical theologies exist on the fringes of most religions, and that while Muslim extremism tends to make headlines, religious terrorism is by no means unique to Islam.
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Orwell's mentor

Orwell's mentor

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justjess said:
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"Terrorism has been described generally as the use of violence, or the threat of violence, to accomplish a political, religious, or ideological purpose. The World Health Organization defines violence rather broadly as:

“The intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation.”
The doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” embraced a belief in U.S.-American Anglo-Saxon superiority.
Over the past couple of decades, the term “terrorist” has come into widespread use to describe acts of terror perpetrated primarily by members of groups who use their distorted and corrupted interpretations of Islam as their justification. These groups include al-Quiada, ISIS, Boco Haram, Hamas, and Hesbala, among others.

Throughout our current presidential election cycle, major Republican leaders as well as all candidates on the Republican side have routinely criticized and condemned President Obama and the Democratic candidates for not referring to these violent extremists as “Islamic extremists” or as “radical Islamic terrorists.” For example, Donald Trump slammed the President for being so politically correct that “you’d almost think they have the terrorists coming out from Sweden.”

I believe that people who advocate and inflict injury and murder of innocent non-combatants, young people, women, people adhering to other religious backgrounds, and people of the same religion to which they themselves claim to follow, we must define them for what they are: “evil,” “criminals,” “barbarians,” “thugs,” “savages,” “monsters,” and yes, “terrorists.”

◊♦◊

Obama, Clinton, and Sanders understand, unlike the Republicans, that the perpetrators of this violence do not, in fact, represent the teachings of Islam, and to refer to them as such would not only validate their claims to divine inspiration, but would, in turn, unduly implicate the billions of non-violent follows of Islam worldwide.

If anyone continues to insist, as do all the Republican presidential candidates, that we must refer to these murderers as “Islamic extremists” or “radical Islamic terrorists,” then I contend that we refer to any and all people who were Christian and supported the institution of slavery, like the President of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, as “radical Christian terrorists.”

The expansion of the republic and movement west on this continent, in part, people justified by the overriding philosophical underpinnings since the American Revolution. Called “Manifest Destiny,” it was based on the belief that God intended the United States to extend its holdings and its power across the wide continent of North America over the native Indian tribes and other nations from the east coast to the west. The doctrine of “Manifest Destiny” embraced a belief in U.S.-American Anglo-Saxon superiority. These people, therefore, were radical Christian terrorists.

Joan of Arc, the teenager who helped defeat the English in her native France, became one of the greatest war heroes in French history. In spite of this, she was tried by the Catholic Church on the charge of heresy in rejecting Church authority in preference for direct inspiration from God, and most importantly, by donning men’s clothing. By executing Joan by burning at the stake, the Church falls under the definition of “radical Christian terrorist,” as does Joan herself.

Pope Urban II summoned the First Crusade in Clermont, France to “liberate” Jerusalem from Muslims. In the summer of 1096, as the crusade began, soldiers murdered several thousand Jews along their way in the lands along the Rhine River, looted and destroyed their homes, as the Crusaders stated, “Because why should we go off to attack the unbelievers in the Holy Land and leave the unbelievers in our midst untouched.?” They accused Jews as being treacherous auxiliaries of Muslims.

It was a just and splendid judgment by God that this place would be filled with the blood of the unbelievers.
According to Pope Urban II, “Let us first avenge ourselves on them [the Jews] and exterminate them from among the nations so that the name of Israel will no longer be remembered, or let them adopt our faith.”

When the Crusaders reached Jerusalem in 1099, they pillaged Muslim buildings and killed thousands. The massacre of the Muslim population of Jerusalem reached epic proportions. In addition, the invaders burned the synagogue on the Temple Mount to the ground with all the Jews inside. One Crusader, an eyewitness to the event wrote:

“Men rode in blood up to their knees and bridal reins. It was a just and splendid judgment by God that this place would be filled with the blood of the unbelievers.”
The Crusades lasted from 1040 – 1350. By 1204, however, the tide began to turn against the Western European invaders, as the Mamluk dynasty in Egypt drove them out of Palestine and Syria. So I ask, why do we read in the history books about the “Christian Crusaders” rather than the “radical Christian terrorists.” I ask the same in reference to the Christian “Inquisition,” because this terror was far more than a mere “inquiry.”

And yes, of the many rationales Hitler and the Nazi command used to justify their “solution” to the so-called “Jewish question,” was their justification that they were doing “God’s” work” as stated by Adolph Hitler in his book Mein Kampf:

“Today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord” (p. 65).
So, yes, Hitler was a “radical Christian terrorist” as was the entirety of the Nazi Party.

◊♦◊

What’s in a Name?
If it is not already quite obvious, my intent is to expose the wide and deep double standard in the representations used in public discourse in reporting and discussing violent acts. When officials suspect Muslims of committing crimes or inciting violence, leaders and the media almost automatically term them “Islamic terrorists” or “radical Islamic terrorists,” but rarely if ever refer to Christian perpetrators of crime and violence as “radical Christian terrorists.”

On the other hand, when a Christian engages in crimes, violent or not, we see the person painted as some sort of outlier or deviant of the group norms with their Christianity not seen as part of the portrait.
Which news outlets called Timothy McVey, the convicted perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995, a “radical Christian terrorist”? Who referred to the illegal “occupiers” of federal lands for 41 days in Oregon, led by Ammon Bundy as “radical Christian terrorists”? When was the last time we heard members of the myriad so-called white supremacist groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nation called “radical Christian terrorists”?

The double standard not only exposes inherent Islamophobia, but by naming “Islam” and “Muslims” in the rhetoric regarding the criminal acts, it wrongly legitimizes and validates the suspects’ claimed religious justification for undertaking these actions.

When a Christian performs a good deed, we often hear of that person’s “Christian charity” or “good Christian values” used to describe these acts. This individual is portrayed as representing the group of Christians as a whole. On the other hand, when a Christian engages in crimes, violent or not, we see the person painted as some sort of outlier or deviant of the group norms with their Christianity not seen as part of the portrait. Quite often, the same conditions reproduce themselves in the case of “race.”

◊♦◊

Often when law enforcement officials suspect a white person, the media lede goes something like this: “Police arrested (name), age (fill in the blank), who is suspected of robbing (store).” When a person of color is involved, however, the lede usually includes the suspect’s race: “Police arrested (name), age (fill in the blank), an African American (for example), who is suspected of robbing (store).”

At the intersections of “race” and religion, our society “racializes” persons adhering to a number of non-Christian faiths. For example, for persons our society constructs as “white,” when wearing the sacred head coverings of Muslims, Sikhs, or orthodox Jews, or the hair styles of Rastafarians, the public imagination converts these individuals and groups to the category of “racialized other,” and thus profiles them as such.

This is how dominance functions in our society to sustain and perpetuate itself. In this way, dominance avoids the glaring lights of examination and thus escapes challenge. Therefore, dominance is maintained by its relative invisibility; and with this invisibility, dominant group privilege is neither analyzed nor scrutinized, neither interrogated nor confronted. It is perceived as unremarkable or “normal,” and when anyone poses a challenge or attempts to reveal its significance, those in the dominant group brand them as “subversive” or as “sacrilegious.”

Therefore, I applaud the President and the Democratic candidates for not falling into the discursive traps set by the Republicans."
 
Arch3Typ3

Arch3Typ3

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You can either choose to see this as a hate crime by an vile and ignorant human or to see it as the defiance of three heroic men who in the face of adversity, chose to defend our freedom. As a Muslim I will choose the latter. Here is a link to a GoFundMe page dedicated to raising money for the three men, 2 whom have tragically lost their lives and 1 who has survived, and their families who have been affected by this ordeal. https://www.launchgood.com/project/muslims_united_for_portland_heroes#/. Donate Generously.
 
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