How idiotic one has to be to think only Atheists kill...I mean really, can that troll on this board be that effing moronic???????????????????

I mean really??????????

It freaking boggles my mind how ANYONE can really believe their side is squeaky clean?

Conservatism and the religious nut jobs need to get professional help immediately!!!!!!

When a Mass Killer Is a White Christian, He's a Lone Lunatic, but When He's Muslim, He Represents All Muslims

United States

Contemporary American Christian terrorism can be motivated by a violent desire to implement a  Reconstructionist  or  Dominionist  ideology.^[103]  Dominion Theology insists that Christians are called by God to (re)build society on Christian values to subjugate the earth and establish dominion over all things, as a prerequisite for the second coming of Christ.^[104]  Political violence motivated by dominion theology is a violent extension of the desire to impose a select version of Christianity on other Christians, as well as on non-Christians.

At least 11 people have been killed in attacks on abortion clinics in the United States since 1993. After 1981, members of groups such as the  Army of God  began attacking  abortion clinics  and  doctors  across the United States.^{[105][106][107]}  A number of terrorist attacks were attributed by  Bruce Hoffman  to individuals and groups with ties to the  Christian Identity  and  Christian Patriotmovements, including the Lambs of Christ.^[108]  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".^[109][110]

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.^[111]

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".^[112]

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 Parenthoodoffice in  Washington State. The men were anti-Semitic  Christian Identity theorists  who believed that God wanted them to carry out violent attacks and that such attacks would hasten the ascendancy of the  Aryan race.^[113]

1n 1993 Dr. David Gunn was shot and killed by an opponent of abortion during a protest outside his clinic in  Pensacola, Fla. His death was the first known killing of an abortion provider in the United States. The gunman, Michael F. Griffin, shot Dr. Gunn three times in the back as he approached the rear entrance of the clinic, and Mr. Griffin turned himself over to the police just moments later. Mr. Griffin was convicted of the murder in March 1994 and was sentenced to life in prison.

Anti-abortion violence returned to Pensacola one year after the death of Dr. Gunn when Paul J. Hill, a well-known anti-abortion protester, shot and killed Dr. John Britton and a clinic volunteer, James Barrett, outside a women’s health center in July 1994. Mr. Barrett’s wife, June, was also wounded in the shooting. Mr. Hill, a former minister, was well known for advocating violence against abortion doctors, and he had praised the killing of Dr. Gunn. He was arrested shortly after the shooting as he tried to flee the scene. He was convicted in December 1994 of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death. In the interview before his execution in 2003, Mr. Hill said that the killing of Dr. Gunn in 1993 had inspired him to kill Dr. Britton. ”I believe in the short and long term, more and more people will act on the principles for which I stand,” he said. ”I’m willing and I feel very honored that they are most likely going to kill me for what I did.”

Dr.  George Tiller, one of the few doctors in the United States who provided abortions late in pregnancy, was a frequent target of anti-abortion violence and was killed in 2009 by Scott Roeder as he stood in the foyer of his church. A witness who was serving as an usher alongside Dr. Tiller at the church that day told the court that Mr. Roeder entered the foyer, put a gun to the doctor’s head and pulled the trigger. At trial, Mr. Roeder admitted to killing Dr. Tiller and said he did it to protect unborn babies. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. At his sentencing, he told the court that God’s judgment would ”sweep over this land like a prairie wind.” Dr. Tiller was shot once before, in 1993, by Shelley Shannon, an anti-abortion activist who compared abortion providers to Hitler and said she believed that “justifiable force” was necessary to stop abortions. Ms. Shannon was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the shooting of Dr. Tiller and later confessed to vandalizing and burning a string of abortion clinics in  California,  Nevada  and  Oregon.

James Kopp  was convicted of the murder of Dr.  Barnett Slepian, an obstetrician who provided abortion services in the  Buffalo  area, and has been named a suspect in the shooting of several abortion providers in  Canada. Mr. Kopp hid in the woods behind Dr. Slepian’s home in October 1998 and shot him through the window with a high-powered rifle, killing him as he stood in his kitchen with his family. Dr. Slepian had just returned from a memorial service for his father when he was killed. Mr. Kopp spent several years on the run in Mexico, Ireland and France before he was captured and extradited to the Unites States. He was convicted of a state charge of second-degree murder in 2003 and sentenced to 25 years in jail. He was convicted in 2007 on a separate federal charge and sentenced to life in prison. The authorities in Canada also suspect Mr. Kopp in the nonlethal attacks on several abortion providers there who were shot through the windows of their homes. He was charged with the 1995 attempted murder of Dr. Hugh Short, an abortion provider in Ontario, although the charges were dropped after his conviction in New York. The police in Canada also named him a suspect in the 1997 shooting of Dr. Jack Fainman in Winnipeg and the 1994 shooting of Dr. Garson Romalis in Vancouver, which was the first attack on an abortion provider in Canada.

In 2015, Robert Doggart, a 63 year old mechanical engineer, was indicted for solicitation to commit a civil rights violation by intending to damage or destroy religious property after communicating that he intended to amass weapons to attack a Muslim enclave in  Delaware County, New York.^[114]  Doggart, a member of several private militia groups, communicated to an FBI source in a phone call that he had an  M4 carbine  with "500 rounds of ammunition" that he intended to take to the Delaware County enclave, along with a handgun,  molotov <snip>tails  and a machete. The FBI source recorded him saying "if it gets down to the machete, we will cut them to shreds".^[115]  Doggart had previously travelled to a site in  Dover, Tennessee  described in chain emails as a "jihadist training camp", and found that the claims were wrong. Doggart pleaded guilty in an April  plea bargain  stating he had "willfully and knowingly sent a message in interstate commerce containing a true threat" to injure someone. The plea bargain was struck down by a judge because it did not contain enough facts to constitute a true threat.^[116][117]  Doggart stood as an independent candidate in  Tennessee's 4th congressional district, losing with 6.4% of the vote.^[118]  None of the charges against him are terrorism related.^{[119][120][121][122]}

The November 2015  Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood shooting, in which three were killed and nine injured, was described as "a form of terrorism" by Colorado Governor  John Hickenlooper.^[123]  The gunman, Robert Lewis Dear, was described as a "delusional" man^[124]  who had written on a  cannabis  internet forum  that "sinners" would "burn in hell" during the  end times, and had also written about smoking marijuana and propositioned women for sex.^[125][126]  He had praised the  Army of God, saying that attacks on abortion clinics are "God's work".^[127]Dear's ex-wife said he had put glue on a lock of a Planned Parenthood clinic, and in court documents for their divorce she said "He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but does not follow the Bible in his actions. He says that as long as he believes he will be saved, he can do whatever he pleases. He is obsessed with the world coming to an end." Authorities said that he spoke of “no more baby parts” in a rambling interview after his arrest.

1. Wisconsin Sikh Temple massacre, Aug. 5, 2012. The virulent, neocon-fueled Islamophobia that has plagued post-9/11 America has not only posed a threat to Muslims, it has had deadly consequences for people of other faiths, including Sikhs. Sikhs are not Muslims; the traditional Sikh attire, including their turbans, is different from traditional Sunni, Shiite or Sufi attire. But to a racist, a bearded Sikh looks like a Muslim. Only four days after 9/11, Balbir Singh Sodhi, a Sikh immigrant from India who owned a gas station in Mesa, Arizona, was murdered by Frank Silva Roque, a racist who obviously mistook him for a Muslim.

But Sodhi’s murder was not the last example of anti-Sikh violence in post-9/11 America. On Aug. 5, 2012, white supremacist Wade Michael Page used a semiautomatic weapon to murder six people during an attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. Page’s connection to the white supremacist movement was well-documented: he had been a member of the neo-Nazi rock bands End Empathy and Definite Hate. Attorney General Eric Holder described the attack as “an act of terrorism, an act of hatred.” It was good to see the nation’s top cop acknowledge that terrorist acts can, in fact, involve white males murdering people of color.

2. The murder of Dr. George Tiller, May 31, 2009.  Imagine that a physician had been the victim of an attempted assassination by an Islamic jihadist in 1993, and received numerous death threats from al-Qaeda after that, before being murdered by an al-Qaeda member. Neocons, Fox News and the Christian Right would have had a field day. A physician  was  the victim of a terrorist killing that day, but neither the terrorist nor the people who inflamed the terrorist were Muslims. Dr. George Tiller, who was shot and killed by anti-abortion terrorist Scott Roeder on May 31, 2009, was a victim of Christian Right terrorism, not al-Qaeda.

Tiller had a long history of being targeted for violence by Christian Right terrorists. In 1986, his clinic was firebombed. Then, in 1993, Tiller was shot five times by female Christian Right terrorist Shelly Shannon (now serving time in a federal prison) but survived that attack. Given that Tiller had been the victim of an attempted murder and received countless death threats after that, Fox News would have done well to avoid fanning the flames of unrest. Instead, Bill O’Reilly repeatedly referred to him as “Tiller the baby killer." When Roeder murdered Tiller, O’Reilly condemned the attack but did so in a way that was lukewarm at best.

Keith Olbermann called O’Reilly out and denounced him as a “facilitator for domestic terrorism” and a “blindly irresponsible man.” And  Crazy for Godauthor Frank Schaffer, who was formerly a figure on the Christian Right but has since become critical of that movement, asserted that the Christian Right’s extreme anti-abortion rhetoric “helped create the climate that made this murder likely to happen.” Neocon Ann Coulter, meanwhile, viewed Tiller’s murder as a source of comic relief, telling O’Reilly, “I don't really like to think of it as a murder.  It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.” The Republican/neocon double standard when it comes to terrorism is obvious. At Fox News and AM neocon talk radio, Islamic terrorism is a source of nonstop fear-mongering, while Christian Right terrorism gets a pass.

3. Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church shooting, July 27, 2008. On July 27, 2008, Christian Right sympathizer Jim David Adkisson walked into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tennessee during a children’s play and began shooting people at random. Two were killed, while seven others were injured but survived. Adkisson said he was motivated by a hatred of liberals, Democrats and gays, and he considered neocon Bernard Goldberg’s book,  100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, his political manifesto. Adkisson (who pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree murder and is now serving life in prison without parole) was vehemently anti-abortion, but apparently committing an act of terrorism during a children’s play was good ol’ Republican family values. While Adkisson’s act of terrorism was reported on Fox News, it didn't get the round-the-clock coverage an act of Islamic terrorism would have garnered.

4. The murder of Dr. John Britton, July 29, 1994. To hear the Christian Right tell it, there is no such thing as Christian terrorism. Tell that to the victims of the Army of God, a loose network of radical Christianists with a long history of terrorist attacks on abortion providers. One Christian Right terrorist with ties to the Army of God was Paul Jennings Hill, who was executed by lethal injection on Sept. 3, 2003 for the murders of abortion doctor John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett. Hill shot both of them in cold blood and expressed no remorse whatsoever; he insisted he was doing’s God’s work and has been exalted as a martyr by the Army of God.

5. The Centennial Olympic Park bombing, July 27, 1996.  Paul Jennings Hill is hardly the only Christian terrorist who has been praised by the Army of God; that organization has also praised Eric Rudolph, who is serving life without parole for a long list of terrorist attacks committed in the name of Christianity. Rudolph is best known for carrying out the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics—a blast that killed spectator Alice Hawthorne and wounded 111 others. Hawthorne wasn’t the only person Rudolph murdered: his bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama in 1998 caused the death of Robert Sanderson (a Birmingham police officer and part-time security guard) and caused nurse Emily Lyons to lose an eye.

Rudolph’s other acts of Christian terrorism include bombing the Otherwise Lounge (a lesbian bar in Atlanta) in 1997 and an abortion clinic in an Atlanta suburb in 1997. Rudolph was no lone wolf: he was part of a terrorist movement that encouraged his violence. And the Army of God continues to exalt Rudolph as a brave Christian who is doing God’s work.

6. The murder of Barnett Slepian byJames Charles Kopp, Oct. 23, 1998. Like Paul Jennings Hill, Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder, James Charles Kopp is a radical Christian terrorist who has been exalted as a hero by the Army of God. On Oct. 23, 1998 Kopp fired a single shot into the Amherst, NY home of Barnett Slepian (a doctor who performed abortions), mortally wounding him. Slepian died an hour later. Kopp later claimed he only meant to wound Slepian, not kill him. But Judge Michael D'Amico of Erin County, NY said that the killing was clearly premeditated and sentenced Kopp to 25 years to life. Kopp is a suspect in other anti-abortion terrorist attacks, including the non-fatal shootings of three doctors in Canada, though it appears unlikely that Kopp will be extradited to Canada to face any charges.

7. Planned Parenthood bombing, Brookline, Massachusetts, 1994. Seldom has the term “Christian terrorist” been used in connection with John C. Salvi on AM talk radio or at Fox News, but it’s a term that easily applies to him. In 1994, the radical anti-abortionist and Army of God member attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts, shooting and killing receptionists Shannon Lowney and Lee Ann Nichols and wounding several others. Salvi was found dead in his prison cell in 1996, and his death was ruled a suicide. The Army of God has exalted Salvi as a Christian martyr and described Lowney and Nichols not as victims of domestic terrorism, but as infidels who got what they deserved. The Rev. Donald Spitz, a Christianist and Army of God supporter who is so extreme that even the radical anti-abortion group Operation Rescue disassociated itself from him, has praised Salvi as well.

8. Suicide attack on IRS building in Austin, Texas, Feb. 18, 2010. When Joseph Stack flew a plane into the Echelon office complex (where an IRS office was located), Fox News’ coverage of the incident was calm and matter-of-fact. Republican Rep. Steve King of Iowa seemed to find the attack amusing and joked that it could have been avoided if the federal government had followed his advice and abolished the IRS. Nonetheless, there were two fatalities: Stack and IRS employee Vernon Hunter. Stack left behind a rambling suicide note outlining his reasons for the attack, which included a disdain for the IRS as well as total disgust with health insurance companies and bank bailouts. Some of the most insightful coverage of the incident came from Noam Chomsky, who said that while Stack had some legitimate grievances—millions of Americans shared his outrage over bank bailouts and the practices of health insurance companies—the way he expressed them was absolutely wrong.

9. The murder of Alan Berg, June 18, 1984.  One of the most absurd claims some Republicans have made about white supremacists is that they are liberals and progressives. That claim is especially ludicrous in light of the terrorist killing of liberal Denver-based talk show host Alan Berg, a critic of white supremacists who was killed with an automatic weapon on June 18, 1984. The killing was linked to members of the Order, a white supremacist group that had marked Berg for death. Order members David Lane (a former Ku Klux Klan member who had also been active in the Aryan Nations) and Bruce Pierce were both convicted in federal court on charges of racketeering, conspiracy and violating Berg’s civil rights and given what amounted to life sentences.

Robert Matthews, who founded the Order, got that name from a fictional group in white supremacist William Luther Pierce’s anti-Semitic 1978 novel,  The Turner Diaries—a book Timothy McVeigh was quite fond of. The novel’s fictional account of the destruction of a government building has been described as the inspiration for the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.

10. Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City bombing, April 19, 1995.  Neocons and Republicans grow angry and uncomfortable whenever Timothy McVeigh is cited as an example of a non-Islamic terrorist. Pointing out that a non-Muslim white male carried out an attack as vicious and deadly as the Oklahoma City bombing doesn’t fit into their narrative that only Muslims and people of color are capable of carrying out terrorist attacks. Neocons will claim that bringing up McVeigh’s name during a discussion of terrorism is a “red herring” that distracts us from fighting radical Islamists, but that downplays the cruel, destructive nature of the attack.

Prior to the al-Qaeda attacks of 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing McVeigh orchestrated was the most deadly terrorist attack in U.S. history: 168 people were killed and more than 600 were injured. When McVeigh used a rented truck filled with explosives to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, his goal was to kill as many people as possible. McVeigh was motivated by an extreme hatred for the U.S. government and saw the attack as revenge for the Ruby Ridge incident of 1992 and the Waco Siege in 1993. He had white supremacist leanings as well (when he was in the U.S. Army, McVeigh was reprimanded for wearing a “white power” T-shirt he had bought at a KKK demonstration). McVeigh was executed on June 11, 2001. He should have served life without parole instead, as a living reminder of the type of viciousness the extreme right is capable of.