(a photo of Hutaree's 'Christian Warriors')
That extremists Christians on the far Right would see American Muslims as the enemy is nothing new. Given that Timothy McVeigh massacred over one hundred Christians in Oklahoma City (along with other innocent Americans of other faiths), it should surprise no one that Right Wing militias would target American Muslims. Honestly, it is a matter of when and not if.
News reports in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times and the Detroit Free Press are all reporting that a fanatical Christian organization called Hutaree (they consider themselves Christian Warriors preparing to battle the Beast in the coming End Times) has been the target of federal investigators and that over the weekend arrests have been made in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. In Illinois the arrest was made in Clarendon Hills according to the Chicago Sun Times.
Last November I wrote on this blog (click here to read that post) that we need to wary of extremist warmongers and that our concern should extend beyond Al Qaeda and to the right wing militias that seem to operate feely across our country. At the time I wrote:
You know who these folks are - they are the people you see at rallies and protests, they are the screwballs who call into right-wing talk radio and lace their anti-Muslim diatribes with "God Bless America", "Amen" and "Yee Haa" and they are the entertainers pretending to be pundits and journalists on Faux News and on America Right satellite radio and are on the donor rolls of extremist Christian leaders like Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham. They are the people shaving their heads and putting bedsheets on their heads and getting swastikas tattooed on their bodies. They are the people bombing abortion clinics, killing doctors, going on shooting rampages against anyone who is not White and who target non-Christians with gun violence and random thuggery. They have the blogs that rightly decry Al Qaeda organized violence and then go one indict every other Muslim for good measure.These extremist Americans have more in common with Al Qaeda than with the rest of America. Instead of allowing Americans to close ranks and deal with the fanaticism of Al Qaeda together, their hate ideology is extremely effective in keeping American Muslims off balance and consistently in a defensive posture. Instead of spending time rooting out extremism, hours and hours of time is spent by American Muslims telling America who they are and what they believe.
We will see later today (Monday, 3/29/10) what the indictments allege about these wackos. Dawud Walid, the Executive Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Michigan was contacted by journalists for comment according to the Detroit Free Press. Why was the Muslim community contacted for comment and not, say for example, the Jewish community or leaders of the Gay and Lesbian community, in this instance? Perhaps it is because this particular investigation involved plots of violence against fellow Americans within the Muslim community?
I don't know the answer to that but I am concerned. Whether their targets turn out to be Muslims, Jews, other Christians, gays, immigrants or others, I will remain equally concerned.
Good people need to stand up to this hatred, violence and bigotry right now. The world's most free and most tolerant society - the United States of America - has allowed religious extremists using Islam as a cover to retard and stunt the growth and development of the Great American Experiment of creating a more perfect nation based on democracy within a religiously, culturally and ethnically plural citizenry.
The tragedy of 9/11 has made us less critical of bigotry in our dialogue and it has allowed us to be less vigilant in protecting our civil liberties. In that more permissive environment hate groups of varying stripes seem to now be flourishing. The Hutaree's so-called "Chrisitan Warriors" happen to be the group that's caught our attention today but there are lots of others out there and we need to be wary of them.
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