{"id":86966,"date":"2019-04-04T16:03:12","date_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=86966"},"modified":"2019-04-04T16:03:12","modified_gmt":"2019-04-04T23:03:12","slug":"why-a-white-christian-isnt-called-a-terrorist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/04\/04\/why-a-white-christian-isnt-called-a-terrorist\/","title":{"rendered":"Why a White Christian Isn’t Called a Terrorist"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Kalinga Seneviratne\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

SYDNEY (IDN) \u2013 After a White Australian of Christian background Brenton Tarrant gunned down 50 Muslims praying at a Christchurch mosque on a Friday, it took the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern more than a day to call it a terrorist\u201d act, and when she did so, the mainstream media in Australia and New Zealand quoted Tarrant\u2019s mother as describing him an angelic boy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"\/

Photo: Governor-General of New Zealand, Dame Patsy Reddy, lays flowers for the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings at Hagley Park on 19 March 2019. CC BY-SA 4.0 <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo: Governor-General of New Zealand, Dame Patsy Reddy, lays flowers for the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings at Hagley Park on 19 March 2019. CC BY-SA 4.0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social media users across the world have\ncondemned the Western tabloids’ attempts to humanize the killer, while ignoring\nthose Muslims killed \u2013 many of whom had fled such terrorism in their own\ncountries to find refuge in New Zealand. If the killer had a Muslim background,\nheadlines across the world would scream Islamic Terrorism Strikes \u2018Peaceful\u2019\nNew Zealand\u2019 and would have described the killer as an evil\u201d person and a\nproduct of a violent religious culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This thinking was reflected in a statement\nreleased by Australian senator Fraser Anning from Queensland following the\nChristchurch massacre. He blamed the New Zealand immigration program that\nallowed Muslim fanatics to migrate\u201d who promote a violent ideology\u201d as the\ncause of the attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was condemned widely in Australia for\nspreading such hate speech. But his diatribes distracted attention from the\nviolent nature of Christian identity politics, which the Western media prefer\nto call far-right\u201d, white supremist\u201d or Neo-Nazi\u201d violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They never call it Christian Terrorism\u201d even\nthough using violence to spread or defend Christianity has a long history from\nthe crusades of the 11th<\/sup> to 13th<\/sup> centuries,\nEuropean colonial conquests and to contemporary violence against Muslim\ncommunities in Western countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Four days after the Christchurch massacre,\nAustralia\u2019s only high-profile Muslim media identity Waleed Aly said on the\npopular TV Show he hosts \u2018The Project\u2019 that he was gutted, scared, overcome\nwith utter hopelessness \u2014 but not shocked by extremists\u2019 violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added that some eight years ago the then\nShadow Minister for Immigration had suggested at a party room meeting that the\nopposition should use community concerns that Muslims fail to integrate to\nAustralian society as political strategy. Though he did not name the person, he\nwas referring to the current Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who threatened to\nsue him for defamation but later withdrew the threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Needless to say, similar strategies have been\nused by mainstream politicians and political parties in the West \u2013 the most\nnotable are U.S. President Donald Trump and French opposition figure Marine Le\nPen \u2013 to drum up political support from their Christian bases. The media tend\nto use the word race\u201d rather than religion to discuss such issues, even though\nthe word Muslim\u201d refers to a religion rather than a particular race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Germany hosts the second largest community of\nMuslims in Europe numbering around 5 million and last year there have been over\n570 attacks on Muslims, but, these attackers are always described as\n\u2018far-right\u201d or neo-Nazis\u201d not Christian extremists\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2018, when nine French men and a woman\nwere charged in a Paris Court for planning to attack veiled women, imams,\nmosques and halal grocery stores across France, the New York Times (NYT) said\nthe group claimed they were fighting an Islamic peril\u201d but nowhere in the\nreport was the word Christian used, instead they were described as a small\nright-wing vigilante group\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2005, the popular American Christian\ntelevangelist Pat Robertson publicly called on the U.S. government to kill\nVenezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He was quoted in NYT as saying it\u2019s a whole\nlot cheaper than starting a war. And I don\u2019t think any oil shipments will\nstop\u201d. Though the newspaper did quote Venezuelan Vice-President Jose Rangel as\nsaying that it is sheer hypocrisy for a nation supposedly fighting terrorism to\nlet a Christian preacher make such a terrorist statement, NYT did not label\nRobertson as a Christian Terrorist\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But, in 2013, Time magazine ran a cover story\non \u2018The Face of Buddhist terror\u201d in Asia referring to how militant monks are\nfuelling anti-Muslim riots in Asia. But, when Christian evangelical preachers\ndo the same it is not \u2018Christian Terror\u2019. Even the Burmese army that attacked\nRohingyas were called a Buddhist Army\u201d but NATO jets pounding so-called\nIslamic terror camps\u201d in Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq are not called\nChristian Armies\u201d. Applying the same logic as for Myanmar it can be said so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leave aside the crusades and European\ncolonialism that destroyed the Inca civilization of South America, in the\npost-war era we have had a whole chain of Christian terror groups that have\nkilled people and bombed communities. There was the Irish Republican Army that\nalmost assassinated British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984. In the\n1970s and 1980s they terrorized the UK with bombings and assassinations but\nthey were never called  Catholic Terrorists\u201d just merely IRA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between 1987 and 2004, the Lord’s Resistance\nArmy (LRA) was involved in a terror campaign to create a Christian state in\nUganda ruled according to the Ten Commandments. They killed thousands of people\nin the process and were described as one of the most ruthless terror groups in\nthe world \u2013 even the U.S. State Department declaring them a terrorist\norganization. In 2005, LRA leaders were charged by the International Criminal Courts\nfor crimes against humanity and war crimes. But, the western media never called\nthem Christian Terrorists\u201d just referred to them as LRA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is the infamous Oklahoma City bombing of\n1995, which killed 168 people and two white Americans were ultimately convicted\nfor the bombing. The media described them as belonging to a religious cult\u201d or\nwhen it became obvious this was Christian they said both were radicalized by a\nDavidian religious sect\u201d near Waco, Texas \u2013 a state well-known as a base of\nEvangelical Christianity movement that propelled both George W Bush and Donald\nTrump to the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In China, when two Christian cult members were\nsentenced to death for murdering a woman at a McDonald\u2019s restaurant, media\nreporting across Asia referred to them simply as members of a Chinese cult\u201d\neven though it was stated in the reports that they belong to an underground\n\u2018Church of the All Mighty God\u201d that believes its founder is a reincarnation of\nJesus Christ.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the 1980s when the campaign for a separate\nKhalistan state for Sikhs in India intensified leading to the blowing up of an\nAir India flight flying between Montreal and London, and the assassination of\nIndian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984, these actions were described as\nSikh Terrorism\u201d by the western media, even though Sikh militants would like to\ncall themselves the Khalistan Liberation Army\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In north-east India there is a long simmering\nterror campaign in Nagaland to create a separate Christian state that has\nkilled over 200,000 people, where the late American Christian evangelist Billy\nGraham has attracted pop-star status. Nowhere do we hear about Christian\nterrorists\u201d in Nagaland, but, we hear a lot about the Hindu Saffron Armies\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I raised the question of why Turrant is\nnot labeled a \u2018Christian Terrorist\u2019 when even his manifesto released on social\nmedia had references to threats facing Christianity, a Christian friend of mine\nin Sydney said: He is not a Christian. Because if one were to hold extreme\nChristian views, he would be handing out food to the poor.\u201d Well one could make\nthe same argument about the Muslims, Buddhists and the Hindus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps the best strategy for the media, at\nleast in Asia, would be to take religion out of reporting terrorism and\ninvestigate and analyse more mindfully the socio-economic issues that give rise\nto such conflicts. If that could be done, different religious movements could\ncome together to help solves the pressing economic, social and environmental\nproblems threatening human civilization, as the core values of all the major\nreligions would entice them to do so. [IDN-InDepthNews \u2013 01 April 2019]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Kalinga Seneviratne\u00a0 SYDNEY (IDN) \u2013 After a White Australian of Christian background Brenton Tarrant gunned down 50 Muslims praying at a Christchurch mosque on a Friday, it took the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern more than a day to call it a terrorist\u201d act, and when she did so, the mainstream media in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-terrorism","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}