Question:
Are Muslims permitted to lie?



Summary Answer:
Muslim scholars teach that Muslims should generally be truthful to each other, unless the purpose of lying is to "smooth over differences."

There are two forms of lying to non-believers that are permitted under certain circumstances, taqiyya and kitman. These circumstances are typically those that advance the cause Islam - in some cases by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them.



The Qur'an:
Qur'an (16:106) - Establishes that there are circumstances that can "compel" a Muslim to tell a lie.

Qur'an (3:28) - This verse tells Muslims not to take those outside the faith as friends, unless it is to "guard themselves" against danger, meaning that there are times when a Muslim may appear friendly to non-Muslims, though they should not feel that way..

Qur'an (9:3) - "...Allah and His Messenger are free from liability to the idolaters..." The dissolution of oaths with the pagans who remained at Mecca following its capture. They did nothing wrong, but were evicted anyway.

Qur'an (40:28) - A man is introduced as a believer, but one who must "hide his faith" among those who are not believers.

Qur'an (2:225) - "Allah will not call you to account for thoughtlessness in your oaths, but for the intention in your hearts" The context of this remark is marriage, which explains why Sharia allows spouses to lie to each other for the greater good.

Qur'an (3:54) - "And they (the disbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed (against them): and Allah is the best of schemers." The Arabic word used here for scheme (or plot) is makara, which literally means 'deceit'. If Allah is supremely deceitful toward unbelievers, then there is little basis for denying that Muslims are allowed to do the same. (See also 8:30 and 10:21)

Taken collectively these verses are interpreted to mean that there are circumstances when a Muslim may be "compelled" to deceive others for a greater purpose.



From the Hadith:

Bukhari (52:269) - "The Prophet said, 'War is deceit.'" The context of this is thought to be the murder of Usayr ibn Zarim and his thirty unarmed men by Muhammad's men after he "guaranteed" them safe passage (see Additional Notes below).

Bukhari (49:857) - "He who makes peace between the people by inventing good information or saying good things, is not a liar." Lying is permitted when the end justifies the means.

Bukhari (84:64-65) - Speaking from a position of power at the time, Ali confirms that lying is permissible in order to deceive an "enemy."

Muslim (32:6303) - "...he did not hear that exemption was granted in anything what the people speak as lie but in three cases: in battle, for bringing reconciliation amongst persons and the narration of the words of the husband to his wife, and the narration of the words of a wife to her husband (in a twisted form in order to bring reconciliation between them)."

Bukhari (50:369) - Recounts the murder of a poet, Ka'b bin al-Ashraf, at Muhammad's insistence. The men who volunteered for the assassination used dishonesty to gain Ka'b's trust, pretending that they had turned against Muhammad. This drew the victim out of his fortress, whereupon he was brutally slaughtered despite putting up a ferocious struggle for his life.

From Islamic Law:

Reliance of the Traveler (p. 746 - 8.2) - "Speaking is a means to achieve objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish through lying because there is no need for it. When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible (N:i.e. when the purpose of lying is to circumvent someone who is preventing one from doing something permissible), and obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory... it is religiously precautionary in all cases to employ words that give a misleading impression...

"One should compare the bad consequences entailed by lying to those entailed by telling the truth, and if the consequences of telling the truth are more damaging, one is entitled to lie.



Additional Notes:

Muslims are allowed to lie to unbelievers in order to defeat them. The two forms are:

Taqiyya - Saying something that isn't true.

Kitman - Lying by omission. An example would be when Muslim apologists quote only a fragment of verse 5:32 (that if anyone kills "it shall be as if he had killed all mankind") while neglecting to mention that the rest of the verse (and the next) mandate murder in undefined cases of "corruption" and "mischief."

Though not called Taqiyya by name, Muhammad clearly used deception when he signed a 10-year treaty with the Meccans that allowed him access to their city while he secretly prepared his own forces for a takeover. The unsuspecting residents were conquered in easy fashion after he broke the treaty two years later, and some of the people in the city who had trusted him at his word were executed.

Another example of lying is when Muhammad used deception to trick his personal enemies into letting down their guard and exposing themselves to slaughter by pretending to seek peace. This happened in the case of Ka'b bin al-Ashraf (as previously noted) and again later against Usayr ibn Zarim, a surviving leader of the Banu Nadir tribe, which had been evicted from their home in Medina by the Muslims.

At the time, Usayr ibn Zarim was attempting to gather an armed force against the Muslims from among a tribe allied with the Quraish (against which Muhammad had already declared war). Muhammad's "emissaries" went to ibn Zarim and persuaded him to leave his safe haven on the pretext of meeting with the prophet of Islam in Medina to discuss peace. Once vulnerable, the leader and his thirty companions were massacred by the Muslims with ease, belying the probability that they were mostly unarmed, having been given a guarantee of safe passage (Ibn Ishaq 981).

Such was the reputation of Muslims for lying and then killing that even those who "accepted Islam" did not feel entirely safe. The fate of the Jadhima is tragic evidence for this. When Muslim "missionaries" approached their tribe one of the members insisted that they would be slaughtered even though they had already "converted" to Islam to avoid just such a demise. However, the others were convinced that they could trust the Muslim leader's promise that they would not be harmed if they simply offered no resistance. (After convincing the skeptic to lay down his arms, the unarmed men of the tribe were quickly tied up and beheaded - Ibn Ishaq 834 & 837).

Today's Muslims often try to justify Muhammad's murder of poets and others who criticized him at Medina by saying that they broke a treaty by their actions. Yet, these same apologists place little value on treaties broken by Muslims. From Muhammad to Saddam Hussein, promises made to non-Muslim are distinctly non-binding in the Muslim mindset.

Leaders in the Arab world routinely say one thing to English-speaking audiences and then something entirely different to their own people in Arabic. Yassir Arafat was famous for telling Western newspapers about his desire for peace with Israel, then turning right around and whipping Palestinians into a hateful and violent frenzy against Jews.

The 9/11 hijackers practiced deception by going into bars and drinking alcohol, thus throwing off potential suspicion that they were fundamentalists plotting jihad. This effort worked so well, in fact, that even weeks after 9/11, John Walsh, the host of a popular American television show, said that their bar trips were evidence of 'hypocrisy.'

The transmission from Flight 93 records the hijackers telling their doomed passengers that there is "a bomb on board" but that everyone will "be safe" as long as "their demands are met." Obviously none of these things were true, but these men, who were so intensely devoted to Islam that they were willing to "slay and be slain for the cause of Allah" (as the Qur'an puts it) saw nothing wrong with employing Taqiyya in order to facilitate their mission of mass murder.

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) insists that it "has not now or ever been involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, or supported any covert, illegal, or terrorist activity or organization." In fact, it was created by the Muslim Brotherhood and has bankrolled Hamas. At least nine founders or board members of ISNA have been accused by prosecutors of supporting terrorism.

Prior to engineering several deadly terror plots, such as the Fort Hood massacre and the attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was regularly sought out by NPR, PBS and even government leaders to expound on the peaceful nature of Islam.

The Quran says in several places that Allah is the best at deceiving people. An interesting side note is verse 7:99, which says that the only people who feel secure from Allah are actually those who will perish in Hell. Taken literally, this would mean that those Muslims who arrogantly assume that they will enter heaven are in for a rude surprise (such are the hazards of worshipping an all-powerful deceiver).

The near absence of Qur'anic verse and reliable Hadith that encourage truthfulness is somewhat surprising, given that many Muslims are convinced that their religion teaches honesty. In fact, it is because of this ingrained belief that many Muslims are quite honest. When lying is addressed in the Qur'an, it is nearly always in reference to the "lies against Allah" - referring to the Jews and Christians who rejected Muhammad's claim to being a prophet.

Finally, the circumstances by which Muhammad allowed a believer to lie to a non-spouse are limited to those that either advance the cause of Islam or enable a Muslim to avoid harm to his well-being (and presumably that of other Muslims as well). Although this should be kept very much in mind when dealing with matters of global security, such as Iran's nuclear intentions, it is not grounds for assuming that the Muslim one might personally encounter on the street or in the workplace is any less honest than anyone else.

Question:
Are Muslims permitted to lie?



Summary Answer:
Muslim scholars teach that Muslims should generally be truthful to each other, unless the purpose of lying is to "smooth over differences."

There are two forms of lying to non-believers that are permitted under certain circumstances, taqiyya and kitman. These circumstances are typically those that advance the cause Islam - in some cases by gaining the trust of non-believers in order to draw out their vulnerability and defeat them.



The Qur'an:
Qur'an (16:106) - Establishes that there are circumstances that can "compel" a Muslim to tell a lie.

Qur'an (3:28) - This verse tells Muslims not to take those outside the faith as friends, unless it is to "guard themselves" against danger, meaning that there are times when a Muslim may appear friendly to non-Muslims, though they should not feel that way..

Qur'an (9:3) - "...Allah and His Messenger are free from liability to the idolaters..." The dissolution of oaths with the pagans who remained at Mecca following its capture. They did nothing wrong, but were evicted anyway.

Qur'an (40:28) - A man is introduced as a believer, but one who must "hide his faith" among those who are not believers.

Qur'an (2:225) - "Allah will not call you to account for thoughtlessness in your oaths, but for the intention in your hearts" The context of this remark is marriage, which explains why Sharia allows spouses to lie to each other for the greater good.

Qur'an (3:54) - "And they (the disbelievers) schemed, and Allah schemed (against them): and Allah is the best of schemers." The Arabic word used here for scheme (or plot) is makara, which literally means 'deceit'. If Allah is supremely deceitful toward unbelievers, then there is little basis for denying that Muslims are allowed to do the same. (See also 8:30 and 10:21)

Taken collectively these verses are interpreted to mean that there are circumstances when a Muslim may be "compelled" to deceive others for a greater purpose.



From the Hadith:

Bukhari (52:269) - "The Prophet said, 'War is deceit.'" The context of this is thought to be the murder of Usayr ibn Zarim and his thirty unarmed men by Muhammad's men after he "guaranteed" them safe passage (see Additional Notes below).

Bukhari (49:857) - "He who makes peace between the people by inventing good information or saying good things, is not a liar." Lying is permitted when the end justifies the means.

Bukhari (84:64-65) - Speaking from a position of power at the time, Ali confirms that lying is permissible in order to deceive an "enemy."

Muslim (32:6303) - "...he did not hear that exemption was granted in anything what the people speak as lie but in three cases: in battle, for bringing reconciliation amongst persons and the narration of the words of the husband to his wife, and the narration of the words of a wife to her husband (in a twisted form in order to bring reconciliation between them)."

Bukhari (50:369) - Recounts the murder of a poet, Ka'b bin al-Ashraf, at Muhammad's insistence. The men who volunteered for the assassination used dishonesty to gain Ka'b's trust, pretending that they had turned against Muhammad. This drew the victim out of his fortress, whereupon he was brutally slaughtered despite putting up a ferocious struggle for his life.

From Islamic Law:

Reliance of the Traveler (p. 746 - 8.2) - "Speaking is a means to achieve objectives. If a praiseworthy aim is attainable through both telling the truth and lying, it is unlawful to accomplish through lying because there is no need for it. When it is possible to achieve such an aim by lying but not by telling the truth, it is permissible to lie if attaining the goal is permissible (N:i.e. when the purpose of lying is to circumvent someone who is preventing one from doing something permissible), and obligatory to lie if the goal is obligatory... it is religiously precautionary in all cases to employ words that give a misleading impression...

"One should compare the bad consequences entailed by lying to those entailed by telling the truth, and if the consequences of telling the truth are more damaging, one is entitled to lie.



Additional Notes:

Muslims are allowed to lie to unbelievers in order to defeat them. The two forms are:

Taqiyya - Saying something that isn't true.

Kitman - Lying by omission. An example would be when Muslim apologists quote only a fragment of verse 5:32 (that if anyone kills "it shall be as if he had killed all mankind") while neglecting to mention that the rest of the verse (and the next) mandate murder in undefined cases of "corruption" and "mischief."

Though not called Taqiyya by name, Muhammad clearly used deception when he signed a 10-year treaty with the Meccans that allowed him access to their city while he secretly prepared his own forces for a takeover. The unsuspecting residents were conquered in easy fashion after he broke the treaty two years later, and some of the people in the city who had trusted him at his word were executed.

Another example of lying is when Muhammad used deception to trick his personal enemies into letting down their guard and exposing themselves to slaughter by pretending to seek peace. This happened in the case of Ka'b bin al-Ashraf (as previously noted) and again later against Usayr ibn Zarim, a surviving leader of the Banu Nadir tribe, which had been evicted from their home in Medina by the Muslims.

At the time, Usayr ibn Zarim was attempting to gather an armed force against the Muslims from among a tribe allied with the Quraish (against which Muhammad had already declared war). Muhammad's "emissaries" went to ibn Zarim and persuaded him to leave his safe haven on the pretext of meeting with the prophet of Islam in Medina to discuss peace. Once vulnerable, the leader and his thirty companions were massacred by the Muslims with ease, belying the probability that they were mostly unarmed, having been given a guarantee of safe passage (Ibn Ishaq 981).

Such was the reputation of Muslims for lying and then killing that even those who "accepted Islam" did not feel entirely safe. The fate of the Jadhima is tragic evidence for this. When Muslim "missionaries" approached their tribe one of the members insisted that they would be slaughtered even though they had already "converted" to Islam to avoid just such a demise. However, the others were convinced that they could trust the Muslim leader's promise that they would not be harmed if they simply offered no resistance. (After convincing the skeptic to lay down his arms, the unarmed men of the tribe were quickly tied up and beheaded - Ibn Ishaq 834 & 837).

Today's Muslims often try to justify Muhammad's murder of poets and others who criticized him at Medina by saying that they broke a treaty by their actions. Yet, these same apologists place little value on treaties broken by Muslims. From Muhammad to Saddam Hussein, promises made to non-Muslim are distinctly non-binding in the Muslim mindset.

Leaders in the Arab world routinely say one thing to English-speaking audiences and then something entirely different to their own people in Arabic. Yassir Arafat was famous for telling Western newspapers about his desire for peace with Israel, then turning right around and whipping Palestinians into a hateful and violent frenzy against Jews.

The 9/11 hijackers practiced deception by going into bars and drinking alcohol, thus throwing off potential suspicion that they were fundamentalists plotting jihad. This effort worked so well, in fact, that even weeks after 9/11, John Walsh, the host of a popular American television show, said that their bar trips were evidence of 'hypocrisy.'

The transmission from Flight 93 records the hijackers telling their doomed passengers that there is "a bomb on board" but that everyone will "be safe" as long as "their demands are met." Obviously none of these things were true, but these men, who were so intensely devoted to Islam that they were willing to "slay and be slain for the cause of Allah" (as the Qur'an puts it) saw nothing wrong with employing Taqiyya in order to facilitate their mission of mass murder.

The Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) insists that it "has not now or ever been involved with the Muslim Brotherhood, or supported any covert, illegal, or terrorist activity or organization." In fact, it was created by the Muslim Brotherhood and has bankrolled Hamas. At least nine founders or board members of ISNA have been accused by prosecutors of supporting terrorism.

Prior to engineering several deadly terror plots, such as the Fort Hood massacre and the attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner, American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki was regularly sought out by NPR, PBS and even government leaders to expound on the peaceful nature of Islam.

The Quran says in several places that Allah is the best at deceiving people. An interesting side note is verse 7:99, which says that the only people who feel secure from Allah are actually those who will perish in Hell. Taken literally, this would mean that those Muslims who arrogantly assume that they will enter heaven are in for a rude surprise (such are the hazards of worshipping an all-powerful deceiver).

The near absence of Qur'anic verse and reliable Hadith that encourage truthfulness is somewhat surprising, given that many Muslims are convinced that their religion teaches honesty. In fact, it is because of this ingrained belief that many Muslims are quite honest. When lying is addressed in the Qur'an, it is nearly always in reference to the "lies against Allah" - referring to the Jews and Christians who rejected Muhammad's claim to being a prophet.

Finally, the circumstances by which Muhammad allowed a believer to lie to a non-spouse are limited to those that either advance the cause of Islam or enable a Muslim to avoid harm to his well-being (and presumably that of other Muslims as well). Although this should be kept very much in mind when dealing with matters of global security, such as Iran's nuclear intentions, it is not grounds for assuming that the Muslim one might personally encounter on the street or in the workplace is any less honest than anyone else.

1) Lord’s Resistance Army
Active: 1980s-Present, about 30 years

Who are they? The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is a Christian Fundamentalist terrorist group originally from Uganda, but now active in the Sudan, the Central African Republic, and other places. Uganda, you may remember, is a hotbed of Christian Fundamentalism, so it makes sense that a group who calls themselves “Christians” would come from the country. The LRA surfaced in the popular conscious sometime ago when Joesph Kony suddenly became a meme on the internet; up to that point, their main claim to fame is child sex slaves and children soldiers. Indeed, the LRA is known to orchestrate kidnappings, railroading young boys into fighting while forcing young girls into sexual slavery. Those who refused to fight were hacked to pieces. The young girls are forced to be “brides” for the soldiers, and thus helping to spread HIV. They’re especially brutal towards civilians, as well, wiping out entire villages and attacking refugee camps.
The goal of the LRA is pretty straight froward: they want a Bible-based state that uses the Ten Commandments as guide posts. That’s something any right-wing politician or Christianist can sympathize with, right?

2) Ku Klux Klan
Active: 1860s-Present, 149 years
Who are they? These guys don’t need any introduction; every American knows who the Invisible Empire is. The Klan name probably comes from the Ancient Greek ‘κύκλος‘ (kuklos), which means “circle.” There’s a frightening overlap between White Supremacist ideology and Christian terrorism in the Western World, and the Klan is the tip of that iceberg. There’ve actually been three Klans; the first one was formed in 1865, in Pulaski, and drew on former members of the Confederacy Army. They were a vigilante group, and they wore the sheets as a reminder of their fellow Confederates who died (think the classic “sheet ghost” and you’re not far off). Everything about the Klan is geared towards terrorism and psychological war, from the uniform to the cross burning. And while it’s true the Klan got their start as an arm of the Democratic Party, it was back when the Republicans were Theodore Roosevelt and not Sarah Palin, so I dare you to tell a modern Klansman they voted for Barack Obama.
While the Klan started out hunting down and terrorizing freemen and women, that wasn’t their sole target. The Klan is a far right-wing Protestant organization, and being a Protestant organization, they hate Catholics. As a result, Klan has targeted both Catholics and Jews in the (not-so-distant) past. The KKK’s history is so violent, in fact, that many draw a comparison between the KKK and Al Qaeda, although I think that’s an unfair comparison, as I’ll explain below.

3) National Liberation Front of Tripura
Active: 1989 to present, about 30 years
Who are they? You’ve probably heard of the Lord’s Resistance Army and the KKK, but this is a group that I’m pretty sure you haven’t, unless you’re from India. It’s easy for us to forget, as Americans, just how big India is; it’s far more diverse than Europe is, culturally speaking, and it’s roughly the same size. It’s called the “world’s largest democracy” for a reason, but as the United States shows, no democracy is without it’s secessionists. And these folks are just some of the many secessionist organizations in India.
According to their manifesto, the NLFT wants ” to expand the kingdom of God and Christ in Tripura,” and often does so at the point of a gun. They threatened anyone celebrating the Hindu Festival of Durga Puja with death, and are backed by a Baptist Church that’s selling them arms. They’ve orchestrated at least two massacres, and used rape as a tool of intimidation. While the Nayanbasi faction has been shut down, the Biswamohan faction has promised to fight on. So here we have a Christian terrorist group spreading their faith in India “by sword,” metaphorically, and at the point of a gun more prosaically — small wonder we haven’t heard anything about them in the West, huh?

4) Antibalaka
Active: 1990s to present, about 25 years
Who are they? I’ve cited the Central African Genocide in at least two articles now; these are the militia behind that genocide. Their name means “anti-machete” in the Sango and Mandja languages, and they first formed to defend Christians and Animists who were on the receiving end of politically motivated violence carried out by Muslims. As these things often do, the tables turned, and now the Antibalaka is doing what right-wingers only wish they could do: ethnically cleanse their country of all Muslims. This includes children, who they’ve targeted and murdered in the past. Now, the Antibalaka now stand accused of crimes far worse than anything that Séléka, the Muslim rebel group, are guilty of.

5) Catholic Reaction Force/Protestant Action Force
Active: 1983 till 1994; at least 2002 for other groups using the CRF name; 1970s till 1990s for PAF
Who are they? Really, anytime some claims that Christians aren’t violent, all you have to do is direct them to Ireland. I could do a whole entry on what happened in North Ireland, beginning in the 1970s. Americans like to pretend that Eire is Guinness, the Blarney Stone, and leprechauns, but during the 1970s, religious violence a la the Thirty Years’ War was painting the Emerald Isle ruby red. The Irish call this time period The Troubles, and that’s an understatement if there ever was one.
The Provisional IRA is perhaps the best known terrorist agency from the period and would definitely earn their spot on this list, if I weren’t aiming for more obscure groups, but the Catholic Reaction Force and Protestant Action Force were also active and, in the case of the latter, also responsible for a large number of murders. For those who are unfamiliar with the Troubles, it occurred in North Ireland and, as so many European conflicts do, pitted Protestants against Catholics in unmitigated bloodshed. The CRF was behind the Darkley killings, in addition to several mailed bombings in the early 2000s. The PAF, which was far more effective in their killings, has a rap sheet a mile long. You can find it on the Wikipedia page, here.

6) The Orange Volunteers
Active: Early 1970s to Present, about 40 years
Who are they: We’re staying in Ireland for this next group. Fans of science fiction probably remember the Orange Catholic Bible from Frank Herbert’s Dune, but may never have understood why that name was so subversive, or why it was similar to Herbert’s other Coca-Pepsi religious hybrids like Zensunni. Orange is the color of Protestantism in Ireland, and green is the color of Catholicism; when you wear green on St. Patty’s Day, you’re proclaiming your Catholic heritage. The Orange Volunteers, then, are a Protestant terrorist organization.
The OV are Protestant Fundamentalist, and responsible for a number of violent attacks in North Ireland. While the police have been cracking down on the group, the group is still considered to be active and is still terrorizing Catholic citizens and hitting “soft targets.”

7) The Aryan Nations
Active: Unknown, to the Present
Who are they? “The Aryan Nations” is an umbrella agency that nets a large number of White and Christian Supremacist agencies ranging from certain breeds of Neo-Nazi to the KKK itself. It’s heyday was in the 1980s and the 1990s, when various White Nationalist groups would convene at the group’s Idaho compound for their annual congress.
The Aryan Nations got their start in the Christian Identity movement, but has since fractured into no fewer than three factions, with one faction even looking to buddy-buddy with Al-Qaeda in 2005. The Phineas Priesthood is another branch, and they’ve made headlines here on AATTP before. The last faction is the Aryan Nation Revival, which holds to their Christian Identity heritage like small-town Conservatives cling to their guns and Bibles.

8) The Christian Identity Movement

Active: 1920/1930s to Present, about 95 years
Who are they? When you’re dealing with White Nationalism and White Supremacy in the United States, it’s turtles all the way down, but you can almost certainly find God at the top of the heap. That’s what the Christian Identity Movement is; it’s not necessarily an organization so much as it is a loose affiliation of organizations like the Aryan Nations.

The Christian Identity Movement is a very weird movement; they actually have hostile relations with Evangelicals and other charismatic Protestants — not because they’re racist bigots, no; it’s because the CIM is Post-Millennial, where the vast majority of Evangelicals are Pre-Millennial. This distinction is lost on anyone who hasn’t studied the Scofield-Derby Heresies, but the basic idea is that the Tribulation has already occurred and the goal is to build up the world to the second coming. Their theology is just as skewed, though; for instance, members of the CIM believe that non-Caucasians don’t have souls, and therefore, can’t be saved.
The CIM is made up of various Christian terrorist organizations, like Americans Promise Ministries, who are responsible for terrorist attacks and bank robberies; the aforementioned Aryan Nations; the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord; the Oklahoma Constitution Militia; and the South African Groups that were behind the 2002 Soweto bombings.
This group is why I consider the comparison between the KKK and Al-Qaeda to be unfair. The CIM is a worldwide movement, with adherents across the Commonwealth and former-Commonwealth Countries, as well as the United States, and is responsible for ideologically motivated terrorism. This, I think, makes the Christian Identity Movement a much better comparison to Al-Qaeda than the KKK.

9) 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.

10) 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.

11) 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.

12) Anders Breivik slaughtered 77 people in Norway to further his anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and pro-“Christian Europe” agenda as he stated in his manifesto.

13) The Army of God

A network of violent Christianists that has been active since the early 1980s, the Army of God openly promotes killing abortion providers—and the long list of terrorists who have been active in that organization has included Paul Jennings Hill (who was executed by lethal injection in 2003 for the 1994 killings of abortion doctor John Britton and his bodyguard James Barrett), John C. Salvi (who killed two receptionists when he attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline, Massachusetts in 1994) and Eric Rudolph, who is serving life in prison for his role in the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996 and other terrorist acts. Rudolph, in fact, has often been exalted as a Christian hero on the Army of God’s website, as have fellow Army of God members such as Scott Roeder (who is serving life without parole for murdering Wichita, Kansas-based abortion doctor George Tiller in 2009), Shelley Shannon (who attempted to kill Tiller in 2003) and Michael Frederick Griffin (who is serving a life sentence for the 1993 killing of Dr. David Gunn, an OB-GYN, in Pensacola, Florida).

Although primarily an anti-abortion organization, the Army of God also has a history of promoting violence against gays. And one of the terrorist acts that Rudolph confessed to was bombing a lesbian bar in Atlanta in 1997.

14) Eastern Lightning, a.k.a. the Church of the Almighty God

Founded in Henan Province, China in 1990, Eastern Lightning (also known as the Church of the Almighty God or the Church of the Gospel’s Kingdom) is a Christianist cult with an end-time/apocalypse focus: Eastern Lightning believes that the world is coming to an end, and in the meantime, its duty is to slay as many demons as possible. While most Christianists have an extremely patriarchal viewpoint (much like their Islamist counterparts) and consider women inferior to men, Eastern Lightning believe that Jesus Christ will return to Earth in the form of a Chinese woman. But they are quite capable of violence against women: in May 2014, for example, members of the cult beat a 37-year-old woman named Wu Shuoyan to death in a McDonalds in Zhaoyuan, China when she refused to give them her phone number. Eastern Lightning members Zhang Lidong and his daughter, Zhang Fan, were convicted of murder for the crime and executed in February. In a 2014 interview in prison, Lidong expressed no remorse when he said of Shuoyan, “I beat her with all my might and stamped on her too. She was a demon. We had to destroy her.”

Eastern Lightning’s other acts of violence have ranged from the killing of a grammar school student in 2010 (in retaliation, police believe, for one of the child’s relatives wanting to leave the cult) to cult member Min Yongjun using a knife to attack an elderly woman and a group of schoolchildren in Chenpeng in 2012. Christian groups are not exempt from Eastern Lightning’s fanaticism: in 2002, cult members kidnapped 34 members of a Christian group called the China Gospel Fellowship and held them captive for two months in the hope of forcing them to join their cult. Although mainly active in the communist People’s Republic of China, Eastern Lighting has been trying to expand its membership in Hong Kong.

15) The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA)

The mainstream media have had much to say about the Islamist brutality of Boko Haram, but one terrorist group they haven’t paid nearly as much attention to is the Lord’s Resistance Army—which was founded by Joseph Kony (a radical Christianist) in Uganda in 1987 and has called for the establishment of a severe Christian fundamentalist government in that country. The LRA, according to Human Rights Watch, has committed thousands of killings and kidnappings—and along the way, its terrorism spread from Uganda to parts of the Congo, the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan. The word “jihadist” is seldom used in connection with the LRA, but in fact, the LRA’s tactics are not unlike those of ISIS or Boko Haram. And the governments Kony hopes to establish in Sub-Saharan Africa would implement a Christianist equivalent of Islamic Sharia law.


The list goes on but I think you can get the idea. The only difference between Christians and Muslims is that Christians think they have a justifiable excuse--like killing evil muslims or liberals...or some such...

Lord's Resistance Army


It is listed as a terrorist group by the United States [11] and has been accused of widespread human rights violations, including murder, abduction, mutilation, child-sex slavery, and forcing children to participate in hostilities.[12][13]



The Ku Klux Klan (KKK), or simply "the Klan", is the name of three distinct past and present movements in the United States that have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically expressed through terrorism aimed at groups or individuals whom they opposed.[6] The first organization sought to overthrow the Republican state governments in the South during the Reconstruction Era, especially by using violence against African American leaders. With numerous chapters across the South, it was suppressed around 1871, through federal enforcement. The second group was founded in 1915 and after 1921 it rapidly expanded into a very large nationwide organization. It opposed Catholics and Jews, especially newer immigrants. The current manifestation consists of numerous small unconnected groups that use the KKK name. All three movements have called for the purification of American society, and all are considered right wing extremist organizations.[7][8][9][10]

A hate group!!

Eastern Lightning


Most of the information available on Eastern Lightning comes from human rights organizations, the Chinese government, and international Christian groups with connections to Christian communities in China. The Chinese government lists the group as a cult and has actively tried to suppress it, especially since its millenarian theology takes an explicit stance against the Chinese government. They are believed to employ extreme methods to attain converts, including kidnapping, torturing and brainwashing. In 2002, for instance, they kidnapped 34 of the leading members of the China Gospel Fellowship and held them for two months.[18]


I just looked at a couple...Claiming the name of a church affiliation is just that..These that you quote are cults, hate groups etc that use Christianity as their EXCUSE, nothing more....

Hating Refugees Is Pretty Much As American As Apple Pie

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/hating-refugees-america_564c8fdbe4b06037734bc8a0


In the 1940s, U.S. officials worried that Nazi agents would pose as refugees to infiltrate countries.

While America, home to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, likes to think of itself as a safe haven for the world's tired, poor, huddled masses, it has also long harbored nasty anti-refugee sentiment driven by stereotypes and fears that people who look different or have unfamiliar traditions aren't quite capable of ever becoming truly American. German Jews, Catholics and Japanese-Americans have all faced this sort of skepticism over the years, as evinced by polling from the time, as well as old news clips and cartoons: