Today Dr George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas was shot and killed. If he is found to have been killed because he performed abortions, most likely, he will be one of many victims of this type of violence. According to CNN:
If Tiller was slain because of his work, he would be the fourth U.S. physician killed by abortion opponents since 1993. In addition, a nurse at a Birmingham, Alabama, clinic was maimed and an off-duty police officer was killed in a 1998 bombing by Eric Rudolph, who included abortion among his list of anti-government grievances.
To me these murders are clearly acts of terrorism. They fit the definition of terrorism because they are violent acts inflicted on a small group of people with the intention to scare and change the behavior of a large group of people. Yet media does not call these murders acts “Christian terrorism”. They don´t because, as we all know, most Christians are not terrorists. But how come then if most Muslims are not terrorists we call terrorists who are Muslim, Muslim or Islamic terrorists?
I end with an account about Dr George Tiller from Planned Parenthood.
Dr. Tiller was the epitome of high quality medical care underscored by deep compassion for his patients. While he was not a Planned Parenthood provider, Dr. Tiller provided critical reproductive health care services, including abortion services, to women facing some of the most difficult medical circumstances. He was continually harassed by abortion opponents for much of his career – his clinic was burned down, he was shot by a health center protestor, and he was recently targeted for investigation only to be acquitted by a jury just a few months ago.
A life of terror.
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Cenci on June 1, 2009 ·
El margen de actuación de los seres humanos en nombre de la religión siempre ha abogado por una licencia y/o actuación en nombre de la fe como eje vertebrador para actuar, sobre todo en las sociedades occidentales. Quizá la cuestión no se encuentre en denominar de una u otra forma a los grupos de personas que asesinan en función de sus creencias y de su juicio moral, sino en la capacidad de reflexión que perdemos cuando nos adscribimos a la justicia divina como principal protagonista para guiar y escudar nuestros pasos.
Me encantan sus comentarios.
Martín on June 1, 2009 ·
Why Christians terrorist?? there are people that are not Christians that are not in favour of abortion… And we have crazy people everywhere, and I will never justify those killers… The difference is that in Muslim religion they have the concept of jihad that some people misunderstand and think that it justifies everything, even killing people… There is nothing said by Jesus that justify the assassination of another human (He died being innocent)…
AustinTX on June 1, 2009 ·
Most of the members of our government claim to be xtians. Therefore it is not politically expedient to associate xtians with fear and distrust in order to leverage control of the population. If we were a muslim nation, every news outlet would surely mention that these acts were carried out by xtians, imply that they were many, and part of a well-organized and well-funded conspiracy. It’s that simple.
George on June 1, 2009 ·
I want to agree with Martin (comment 2), but I fear that if the killer of Dr. Tiller is found we’ll see that this person was moved by Christian fanaticism, or by what he/she believes was for the better of the world and God’s will… Most probably a weak mind wrongly influenced by others with audience and intentions different from religious.
Religion and $$$, ideas and power…
Eric on June 1, 2009 ·
The idea that somehow Islam is in its essence a violent religion or that it is uniquely violent is patently false. Moreover it is part of the widespread anti-Muslim propaganda of the West. The “Jihadists” are incredibly similar to their Evangelical Christian and Jewish zealot brethren in that they all reject the traditional teachings of their religions in favor a fundamentalist revisionism. In other words, they believe that the individual is uniquely qualified to interpret, out of context, the word of God, and that anything that is done in the name of God is justified. Notice that guys like Osama Bin Laden and the great majority of the Al Qaeda top rank have absolutely no formal Koranic training and have publicly called for the deaths of the establishment Islamic clerics because they disagree with them.
In the West, we learn all of the catch phrases in Arabic to scare us about the imminent threat of Islam. Yet no one tells us, for example, that the word “Allah” is the same word that all Arabic speakers, Muslims, Christians and Jews, use for “God” or that “madrasa” means “school” — public, religious, or otherwise. For example, when American evangelical missionaries opened schools in Lebanon at the end of the 19th Century, they were obviously called madrasas. The terrorists aren’t the religiously educated. Quite the contrary.
What we’re now learning about the Bush Administration is that it was fighting its own violent Holy War in Iraq and Afghanistan. A nice report in Time has shown how former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld decorated his security briefings to George W. Bush with Bible verses that justified U.S. military action. There are also plenty of field reports of the U.S. military entering towns in Iraq on tanks proclaiming over a loud speaker in Arabic that “Jesus Killed Mohammad”.
Finally, when we add the numbers up, it’s hard to argue that Islam has ever really been a threat to the “West” since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. If Al Qaeda is at war with Western values, isn’t the direct or incidental deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the name of “democracy” or “liberty” the West at war with them? A couple of hundred fringe Muslims living in caves in Afghanistan don’t like the West, and the “Free World” responds by killing hundreds of thousands of Muslims so that liberate them with “Western” democracy.
Killing for an ideology, religious or political, is fanatical. We don’t need to look towards other cultures that we are simply do not understand to find fanaticism. We just need to look at ourselves.
winga on June 6, 2009 ·
How many “christian terrorist” did you heard about?
And waht about the “muslim terrorist” ?
Come on Martin, you are trying to compare a one single inciden with a christian extremist with the crazy terrorist islam?
mrclmind on June 9, 2009 ·
Winga, this isn’t one single incident at all. There have been christian fundamentalists using violence against abortion clinics and health professionals since at least the 1980s. All you need to do is read the newspaper on a regular basis.
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Martín on June 1, 2009 ·
Why Christians terrorist?? there are people that are not Christians that are not in favour of abortion… And we have crazy people everywhere… The difference is that in Muslim religion they have the concept of jihad that some people misunderstand and think that it justifies everything, even killing people… There is nothing said by Jesus that justify the assassination of another human (He died being innocent)…