*References
Wikipedia
*Timeline
March 21, 2015 Christian Gaver family in deadly Walmart parking lot brawl CNN Apr 12, 2015 - Police: Christian family band members in deadly parking lot brawl ....and suspect David Gaver, 28, was shot in the stomach and taken into custody. ... at least three shots were fired in an apparent struggle for an officer's gun.
*Wikipeida
Christian terrorism comprises terrorist acts by groups or individuals who cite motivations or goals that they interpret to be Christian, or within a more basic context of sectarian violence and/or prejudices such as religious intolerance.[citation needed] As with other forms of religious terrorism, they have cited interpretations of tenets of theirfaith to justify the terrorism.[1]
Contents
[hide]Global ideologies[edit]
Christian Identity is a loosely affiliated global group of churches and individuals devoted to a racialized theology which asserts that North European whites are the direct descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, God's chosen people. It has been associated with groups such as the Aryan Nations, Aryan Republican Army, Army of God, Phineas Priesthood, and The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. It has been cited as an influence on a number of terrorist attacks around the world, including the 2002 Soweto bombings.[2][3][4][5]
Historical[edit]
Gunpowder Plot[edit]
Main article: Gunpowder Plot
The early modern period in Britain saw religious conflict resulting from the Reformation and the introduction of Protestant state churches.[6] The 1605 Gunpowder Plot was a failed attempt by a group of English Catholics including Guy Fawkes to assassinate King James I, and to blow up the Palace of Westminster, the Englishseat of government. According to Vahabph D. Aghai, "The beginnings of modern terrorism can be traced back to England and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605."[7] Sue Mahan and Pamala L. Griset classify the plot as religious terrorism, writing that "Fawkes and his colleagues justified their actions in terms of religion."[8]
Pogroms[edit]
See also: Religious persecution and Ethnic cleansing
Orthodox Christian movements in Romania, such as the Iron Guard and Lăncieri, which have been characterized by Yad Vashem and Stanley G. Payne as anti-semitic and fascist, respectively, were responsible for involvement in the Bucharest pogrom, and political murders during the 1930s.[9][10][11][12](p37)[13]
Ku Klux Klan[edit]
Main article: Ku Klux Klan
After the American Civil War of 1861–1865, members of the Protestant-led[14] Ku Klux Klan (KKK) organization began engaging in arson, beatings, destruction of property,lynching, murder, rape, tar-and-feathering, whipping and intimidation via such means as cross burning. They targeted African Americans, Jews, Catholics, and other social or ethnic minorities.
Klan members had an explicitly Christian terrorist ideology, basing their beliefs in part on a "religious foundation" in Christianity.[15] The goals of the KKK included, from an early time onward, an intent to "reestablish Protestant Christian values in America by any means possible", and they believed that "Jesus was the first Klansman."[16] From 1915 onward, Klansmen conducted cross-burnings not only to intimidate targets, but also to demonstrate their respect and reverence for Jesus Christ, and the ritual of lighting crosses was steeped in Christian symbolism, including making prayer and singing Christian hymns.[17] Within Christianity the Klan directed hostilities against Catholics. Modern Klan organizations, such as the Knights Party, USA, continue to focus on the Christian supremacist message, detecting a "war" which allegedly aims to destroy "western Christian civilization."
Contemporary[edit]
Anti-Hindu violence in India[edit]
Tripura[edit]
Further information: Tripura rebellion
The National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), is a rebel group that seeks the secession of Tripura, North-East India, and is a proscribed terrorist organization in India. Group activities have been described as Christian terrorists engaging in terrorist violence motivated by their Christian beliefs.[18][19] The NLFT includes in its aims the forced conversion of all tribespeople in Tripura to Christianity.[20] The NLFT says that it is fighting not only for the removal of Bengali immigrants from the tribal areas, "but also for the tribal areas of the state to become overtly Christian", and "has warned members of the tribal community that they may be attacked if they do not accept its Christian agenda".[21] The NLFT is listed as a terrorist organization in the Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002.[22] The state government contends that the Baptist Church of Tripura supplies arms and gives financial support to the NLFT.[23][24][25] Reports from the state government and Indian media describe activities such as the acquisition by the NLFT of explosives through the Noapara Baptist Church in Tripura,[25] and threats of killing Hindus celebrating religious festivals.[26] Over 20 Hindus in Tripura were reported to have been killed by the NLFT from 1999 to 2001 for resisting forced conversion to Christianity.[27]According to Hindus in the area, there have also been forced conversions of tribal villagers to Christianity by armed NLFT militants.[27] These forcible conversions, sometimes including the use of "rape as a means of intimidation", have also been noted by academics outside of India.[28] In 2000, the NLFT broke into a temple and gunned down a popular Hindu preacher popularly known as Shanti Kali.[20]
Odisha[edit]
See also: Religious violence in Odisha
In 2007 a tribal spiritual Hindu monk, Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati, accused Radhakant Nayak, chief of a local chapter of World Vision, and a former Rajya Sabha member from Odisha in the Indian National Congress party, of plotting to assassinate him.[29] The Swami also said that World Vision was covertly pumping money into India for religious conversion during the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, and criticized the activities of Christian missionaries as going against tribal beliefs.[30] In 2008, he was gunned down along with four disciples on the Hindu festive day of Krishna Janmashtami by a group of 30–40 armed men.[31] Later, theMaoist terrorist leader Sabyasachi Panda admitted responsibility for the assassination, saying that the Maoists had intervened in the religious dispute on behalf of Christians and Dalits.[32][33] The non-governmental organization Justice on Trial disputed that there had been Maoist involvement, and quoted the Swami as claiming that Christian missionaries had earlier attacked him eight times.[34][35]
Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon[edit]
Maronite Christian militias perpetrated the Karantina and Tel al-Zaatar massacres of Palestinians and Lebanese Muslims during Lebanon's 1975–1990 civil war. The 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre, which targeted unarmed Palestinian refugees for rape and murder, was considered to be genocide by the United Nations General Assembly.[36] A British photographer present during the incident said that "People who committed the acts of murder that I saw that day were wearing [crucifixes] and were calling themselves Christians."[37] After the end of the civil war, Christian militias refused to disband, concentrating in the Israeli-occupied south of the country, where they terrorized Muslim and Druze villages and forcefully recruited men and boys from those communities into their groups.[38]
Northern Ireland paramilitaries[edit]
The Troubles in Northern Ireland are widely seen as an ethno-nationalist conflict that was not religious in nature.[39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52] Some experts who subscribe to this view argue that religion was also a motivating factor, with Philip Purpura calling it an "overlap" between religious terrorism and ethnic/nationalist terrorism,[53][54][55] a characterization that is at odds with multiple other analysts.[40][41][48][49][56][57][58]
The aims of republican paramilitary organisations such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) were political: to force British troops out of Northern Ireland and bring about a United Ireland.[59][60] Sociology professor Steve Bruce has said that, with the exception of three small splinter groups, loyalist terrorist organisations were not motivated by Protestant evangelical teaching.[61]
Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda[edit]
The Lord's Resistance Army, a cult and guerrilla army, was engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government in 2005. It has been accused of usingchild soldiers and of committing numerous crimes against humanity; including massacres, abductions, mutilation, torture, rape, and using forced child labourers as soldiers, porters, and sex slaves.[62] A quasi-religious movement that mixes some aspects of Christian beliefs with its own brand of spiritualism,[63][64] it is led byJoseph Kony, who proclaims himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium, primarily of the "Holy Spirit" which the Acholi believe can represent itself in many manifestations.[65][65][66][67] LRA fighters wear rosary beads and recite passages from the Bible before battle.[63][68][69][70][71][72]
United States[edit]
After 1981, members of groups such as the Army of God began attacking abortion clinics and doctors across the United States.[73][74][75] A number of terrorist attacks were attributed by Bruce Hoffman to individuals and groups with ties to the Christian Identity and Christian Patriot movements, including the Lambs of Christ.[76] A group called Concerned Christians was deported from Israel on suspicion of planning to attack holy sites in Jerusalem at the end of 1999; they believed that their deaths would "lead them to heaven".[77][78]
The motive for anti-abortionist Scott Roeder murdering Wichita doctor George Tiller on 31 May 2009 was the belief that abortion is not only immoral, but also a form of murder under "God's law", irrespective of "man's law" in any country, and that this belief went "hand in hand" with his religious beliefs.[79][80] The group supporting Roeder proclaimed that any force is "legitimate to protect the life of an unborn child", and called on all Christians to "rise up" and "take action" against threats to Christianity and to unborn life.[81] Eric Robert Rudolph carried out the Centennial Olympic Park bombing in 1996, as well as subsequent attacks on an abortion clinic and a lesbian nightclub. Michael Barkun, a professor at Syracuse University, considers Rudolph to likely fit the definition of a Christian terrorist. James A. Aho, a professor at Idaho State University, argues that religious considerations inspired Rudolph only in part.[82]
Terrorism scholar Aref M. Al-Khattar has listed The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSA), Defensive Action, the Montana Freemen, and some "Christian militia" as groups that "can be placed under the category of far-right-wing terrorism" that "has a religious (Christian) component".[83]
In 1996 three men—Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merelle—were charged with two bank robberies and bombings at the banks, a Spokane newspaper, and a Planned Parenthood office in Washington state. The men were anti-Semetic Christian Identity theorists who believed that God wanted them to carry out violent attacks and that such attacks will hasten the ascendancy of Aryan race.[84]
In 2011, analyst Daryl Johnson of the United States Department of Homeland Security said that the Hutaree Christian militia movement possessed more weapons than the combined weapons holdings of all Islamic terror defendants charged in the US since the September 11 attacks.[85]
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