Investigate Radical Christianity? Yeah, Why Not

From Robert Spencer at PJM:

During last week’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing on “The Radicalization of Muslim-Americans,” Congressman Al Green (D-TX) took issue with the hearing’s focus on Islam and Muslims, asking the witnesses testifying before the Committee: “If you agree that radicalization exists within all religions to some extent, would you kindly extend a hand into the air.” Noting triumphantly that “all the hands are raised,” Green then asked: “Why not have a hearing on the radicalization of Christians?”

The immediate answer is obvious. On the one hand we have recent jihad plotters in the U.S., including Naser Abdo, the would-be second Fort Hood jihad mass murderer; Khalid Aldawsari, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Lubbock, Texas; Muhammad Hussain, the would-be jihad bomber in Baltimore; Mohamed Mohamud, the would-be jihad bomber in Portland; Nidal Hasan, the successful Fort Hood jihad mass-murderer; Faisal Shahzad, the would-be Times Square jihad mass-murderer; Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Arkansas military recruiting station jihad murderer; Naveed Haq, the jihad mass murderer at the Jewish Community Center in Seattle; Mohammed Reza Taheri-Azar, the would-be jihad mass murderer in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Ahmed Ferhani and Mohamed Mamdouh, who hatched a jihad plot to blow up a Manhattan synagogue; and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the would-be Christmas airplane jihad bomber.

All of them and many others invoked the Qur’an and Sunnah to explain and justify their deeds.

And on the other hand, we have recent “radical Christian” acts of violence committed by people who invoked the Bible and Church teaching to explain and justify their deeds, including — no one at all. Not one. Even the much-vaunted abortion clinic bombers number only a handful, versus nearly 19,000 jihad attacks around the world since 9/11, and have been repudiated by all Christian sects and leaders — as opposed to the many Islamic authorities that teach jihad warfare against unbelievers and exhort their faithful to commit acts of violent jihad.

Rosie O’Donnell enunciated the idea memorably a few years ago: “radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam.” Since then, this has become a commonplace of mainstream media political discourse — remarkably enough, since it has absolutely no evidence to back it up.

Emblematic of how hard it is to find a “radical Christian” — that is, someone driven to violence by the teachings of Christianity, as opposed to genuinely radical Christians like Mother Teresa and the Amish — is that when Green spoke about “the radicalization of Christianity,” he was actually referring to Islamic jihadists, not to Christians at all.

This became clear when he said: “I do not, not — N-O-T — oppose hearings on radicalization. I do oppose hearings that don’t focus on the entirety of radicalization. And if you agree that we have Christians, as has been mentioned by more than one member, Christians who become radicalized, they become part of Islam and they become radicalized as is being said, why not have a hearing on the radicalization of Christians?”

Green’s statement is fundamentally incoherent. “Christians who become radicalized” and “become part of Islam” are not Christians at all, but converts to Islam. Thus a hearing on the radicalization of Muslims, and possibly of converts to Islam, would be needed, not a hearing on the radicalization of Christians. Green himself made this clear, after a fashion, as he continued, digging himself an ever-deeper hole: “I do think that it is a problem of perception. People who see the hearings and never hear about the hearing on the radicalization of Christianity have to ask themselves, ‘Why is this missing?’ Why don’t we go to the next step and ask, how is that a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, white female in the United States of America can become radicalized to the point of wanting to do harm to this country? We don’t have that type of hearing. That’s the problem.”

Green was apparently referring to Colleen LaRose, aka “Jihad Jane,” a convert to Islam from Pennsylvania who plotted to murder a Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks, for drawing a cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. If LaRose had remained a Christian, of course, she never would have been moved to kill by a cartoon of Muhammad; her crime has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with Islam. And so here again, the moral equivalence that Rosie O’Donnell stated baldly and that Green was apparently reaching for founders on the facts. 

Yet Green soldiered on, concluding: “I do know what it feels like to look like a Muslim in the minds of some people and to be demeaned in a public venue. I look forward to the day that we’ll have that hearing that deals with the radicalization of Christians in America.”

So do I, in fact. Investigate radical Christianity! If such a hearing were held with any degree of honesty, it couldn’t help but shed light on the fact that Islam has a unique capacity to incite its adherents to violence today, in a way that neither Christianity nor any other religion shares. And that realization, contrary as it is to official government and media assumptions, could go a long way toward focusing law enforcement upon the real problem the nation faces today, instead of upon politically correct fictions. Much as that prospect may infuriate Congressman Al Green.