America's secret jihad
Subtitle: the hidden history of religious terrorism in the United States
By: Stuart Wexler
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 417
ISBN-13: 9781619025585; 9781619027411
Subjects: Violence; White supremacy movements; Ku Klux Klan (1915- ); Christian Identity (Sect); Religious aspects; Terrorism; History
Description: "The conventional narrative concerning religious terrorism inside the United States says that the first salvo occurred in 1993, with the first attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. This narrative has motivated more than a decade of wars, and re-prioritized America's domestic security and law enforcement agenda. But the conventional narrative is wrong. A different group of jihadists exists within US borders. This group has a long but hidden history, is outside the purview of public officials and has an agenda as apocalyptic as anything Al Qaeda has to offer. Radical sects of Christianity have inspired some of the most grotesque acts of violence in American history: the 1963 Birmingham Church bombing that killed four young girls; the "Mississippi Burning" murders of three civil rights workers in 1964; the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, the Atlanta Child Murders in the late 1970s; and the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995. America's Secret Jihad uses these crimes to tell a story that has not been told before. Expanding upon the author's ground-breaking work on the Martin Luther King, Jr. murder, and through the use of extensive documentation, never-before-released interviews, and a re-interpretation of major events, America's Secret Jihad paints"--

"Present[s] a picture of Christian extremism. [The book] focuses on a group of dedicated religious zealots who co-opted major elements of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups for a frightening agenda: an apocalyptic race war within the United States. This group has a long but hidden history, is outside the purview of public officials and has an agenda as heinous as anything Al Qaeda has to offer. These radical sects of Christianity have inspired some of the most grotesque acts of violence in American history: the 1963 Birmingham Church bombing that killed four young girls; the "Mississippi Burning" murders of three civil rights workers in 1964; the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, the Atlanta child murders in the late 1970s; and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Expands upon the author's ground-breaking work on the Martin Luther King, Jr. murder, and the Birmingham bombing tragedy-- and uses extensive documentation and never-before-released interviews, as well as a re-examination of major events-- to expose the significant influence of the Christian Identity movement on white supremacist organizations." --

Argues that theologians of the Christian Identity movement have motivated much domestic white supremacist terrorism since the 1950s and not, as scholars have written, only since 1983.--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 377-404) and index.