Brevik: A terrorist who claims roots in crusader Christianity

Q. Calling himself an anti-Muslim ’crusader’ for ’Christendom,’ Anders Behring Breivik killed 76 people in Norway last week. Should Breivik be called a ‘Christian terrorist’?

A. Every major religious tradition on the planet has within it streaks of blood and hatred, even though its fabric as a whole is woven in compassion and justice. The question is: How do we acknowledge these bloody threads while struggling to cleanse the garment of them?

Note: I say “all.” In our own generation I am watching in horror as these bloody threads emerge in some of the Judaisms of today, claiming warrant in some strands of Judaism of the past. Even in Buddhism (see Japanese Buddhism of the 1930s and Sri Lanka of the past 20 years), there are such threads.

What we name these violent versions of compassionate truths may seem less important than what we do about them — but the names we give them matter, since they have a hand in shaping our actions.

My suggestion: Breirik should be called “a terrorist who claims roots in Crusader Christianity,” as Osama bin Laden was a “terrorist who claims roots in Salafist Islam” and Baruch/Aror Goldstein “a terrorist who claims roots in Joshuanic Judaism.”

These namings are truthful, and they simultaneously avoid tarring the whole community with terrorism and remind each community of its responsibility to address the terrorism that claims its roots in the broader tradition.

In 1995, on the first anniversary of Goldstein’s terrorist murders of Muslims prostrate in prayer in Hebron, our communities in Philadelphia brought together Jews, Christians, and Muslims to acknowledge the bloody streaks in all three of our traditions/ communities. By doing this in each other’s sight and hearing, we committed ourselves to cleanse our holy garments.

Arthur Waskow  | Jul 27, 2011 11:03 AM