One thing I promise you…
We aren’t going to hear anyone referring to Cho Seung-Hui, the Virginia Tech gunman, as a Christian terrorist.
Sure, he most likely is one – in the “manifesto” he sent to NBC he almost compares his suffering to Christ’s on the cross – so I’m pretty sure he thought himself quite religious. He apparently railed against the hedonism and other behaviors of his classmates at school.
But he’s not a Christian terrorist. We don’t have those.
April 19th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Well, he won’t be referred to as a Christian terrorist because 1-he was a psycho with delusions of martyrdom, not a Christian and 2-he was a mass murderer, not a terrorist.
I believe his rant also said he hated Jesus Christ (besides also hating everyone else). The murders were clearly not committed in the “name of” Jesus Christ or God, nor was Cho associated with any apocalyptic Christian organization, or with any local Christian church for that matter. The complaints about hedonism didn’t talk about how Christians make do with less, either.
As a lover of true crime, there is also a huge difference in m.o. and motive between mass killers, serial killers, and terrorists. They all kill multiple people socially unconnected to them, but they’re different.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:44 am
If he had been a muslim student, I’m quite sure most folks would be calling him a “Muslim mass murderer”, even though he would have been the same psycho with delusions of martyrdom. We have no real idea “why” the murders were committed, given than NBC and the investigators have released very short snippets of his multimedia statement.
Terrorists, by definition, have political aims for their actions, but that isn’t the only way the word is being used these days. Much of the violence in Iraq right now is secular in nature, which would imply that the folks doing it aren’t terrorists — heck, Osama bin Laden claims to be motivated by his religious views, so even he isn’t a terrorist. Most people use terrorist to mean a person who uses violence and intimidation in the pursuit of their goals, and by that definition what he did certainly qualifies.