Excerpt:
A year or two ago I was at a dinner party where a gentleman and his wife confronted me about my writing on Islamic terrorism. "Why is it," he asked irritably, "that terrorism is always called 'Islamic'? What about 'Christian' terrorists?"
"Well, name a Christian terrorist," I replied. I wasn't being combative; I was genuinely curious to know whom they considered to be someone committing politically-driven murder and mayhem in the name of Jesus. The sentence was barely out of my mouth before the wife shot back, "Timothy McVeigh."
McVeigh's bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City took place sixteen years ago. Unlike Muslim fundamentalists who theologically justify their acts of terrorism, McVeigh can not rightly be characterized as a "Christian terrorist," because he was, by his own admission, not a committed Christian, and he carried out the attack not because God or the Bible commanded him to, but because he hated the U.S. government. And yet after all these years his name remains virtually the sole flimsy example that people have at the ready to challenge what they consider to be the stereotype of Islamic terrorism.