A terrorist plot to kill people in the United States has been uncovered, as police have raided a terrorist cell just outside of San Francisco, and discovered a bomb in the process of being made. Police have one suspect, an unemployed plumber, in custody, and are not yet sure whether others are involved in the conspiracy.
Only, when the Contra Costa Times reported on the terrorist plot, the newspaper refused to call it a terrorist plot.
Why? The man accused of plotting a terrorist attack is named William, not Mohammed. He is a supporter of Donald Trump, not of the Islamic State. The people he threatened to kill were Muslim Americans, not Christian Americans.
Activists from Town Hall, Western Journalism, Charisma News and American Clarion have declared that there is no such thing as a Christian terrorist. So, when a man stands outside of a Mosque, shouts, “I’m going to kill you all!” and then is found with a bomb inside his home, newspapers don’t use the word “terrorism”.
Apparently, it doesn’t count as terrorism if the targets aren’t Christians. That’s why William Celli has been accused of making criminal threats and possession of an explosive device. He won’t be charged with terrorist conspiracy. He won’t be waterboarded. He won’t be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He won’t face a military tribunal.
Neither will Celli be noted as evidence that “they” are invading the United States. As of the time that I write this, Donald Trump has not yet responded to the news by calling for all plumbers to be banned from entering the United States.
When incidents of violent extremism don’t fit into pattern asserted by Homeland Insecurity ideology, they’re simply dismissed.
As a recent survey by the Public Religion Research Institute found, religious violence gets tagged to Islam more easily than it does to Christianity. “Three-quarters (75%) of Americans say that self-identified Christians who commit acts of violence in the name of Christianity are not really Christian. Only 19 percent of Americans say that these types of perpetrators are actually Christian. In contrast, only half (50%) of the public say that self-proclaimed Muslims who commit acts of violence in the name of Islam are not really Muslim.”