The Christian Identity Movement is a movement that includes the Anglo-Israelism, British Israelism, white supremacists, anti-Semitic, as well as other groups. This movement consists of “many extremely conservative Churches in Christianity, religious organizations, survival groups and political groups” (Brayton, 2009, para.3).
The adherents of this religious movement are followers as well as churches, which are slackly associated with a racialized doctrine. They believe in Jesus Christ and that he died for the houses of Israel and Judah only.
Therefore, people must receive salvation through both redemption and race for them to be accepted in the kingdom of Christ. The Islamist Movement on the other hand is a religious movement that also believes in God and do not believe in Christ. The Islamists hold that all political authority is God’s. Therefore, all their followers are obliged to create a political body that imitates their religious duty.
All these movements hide behind religion and use violence to impose and achieve their goals, which they consider as being morally right (Juergensmeyer, 2000). This paper compares and contrasts the two religious movements.
The Christian Identity movement believes that the world will someday end and that Christ will come the second time. In preparation for this, they believe in Armageddon, which is a war between God’s people, the white race and forces of evil. This, they consider, is part of the purification process required prior to Christ setting up his dominion on this world.
The Christian Identity groups also believe in interpreting the bible in a conservative way. Through this, they have condemned some actions in the society. Some of these are the practice of homosexuality and disallowing other members of other beliefs. They see the white race as the superior race. In addition, they consider them as true Israelites since they believe that they are the real descendants of Adam and Abel.
These people consider the other races to be satanic. These Christians believe that the original parents of this planet, Adam and Eve, were white. Therefore, these groups consider themselves the direct offspring of Adam and thus God’s chosen people. Many white supremacist groups adhere to these Christian Identity groups’ believes.
The Christian Identity Movement has both political as well as social aims and goals they want to achieve. From the legal aspect, the groups want to bring the American laws and legal system into harmony with the legalisms of the Bible (Cline, n.d.). They also support political aspirants who advocate for their course for them to gain political power. The Identity followers look forward to the day when the human law will cease to exist.
When the human law is in conflict with the divine law, these Christians disobey and resort to violence in order to avoid punishment. Further, the Christian Identity groups aim at forming religious groups that are insulated from the rest of the world.
What is more, they intend to set up groups that express the view that only the local political organizations are lawful. The aim of this is to justify their resistance against governmental actions and even involvement in violent resistance (Ferber, 2004). Beyond the law, these Identity groups’ aims are to overthrow the current governments and to establish religious nations.
Islamism is also a religion. Within Islamism, there are many movements, which take different forms and use different strategies and tactics to achieve their goals. With this, we understand that Islamism is not a united movement. The radical Islamic Movement is also a religious movement.
It also assumes a political function and claims that political supremacy belongs to God. As a result, the movement believes that it has a religious obligation to lead the people in politics and even in their social and personal life. They believe that it is a religious duty of a Muslim to create a political body that shows people that Shari’ah is supreme to the state law.
The movement is militant in nature, believes in, and wages war (Jihad) against anybody who disagrees with its principles. They do all this anticipating to one-day control the world (Emerson, 2002, p. 2).
Like the Christian Identity Movement, the Islamic movement also has its own aims and goals to achieve. The Muslims believe on their law, Shar’iah as the supreme law of God and consider it superior to the state laws. They therefore struggle to replace state laws with their Shar’iah laws (Grant, n.d.). They also perform a political function and aim to take control of the political arena.
The Islamic Movement group supports and campaigns for their political candidates to secure top seats in governments as a means of achieving their goal. This group also aims at controlling the world. Due to this desire, they engage in war with anybody or any nation, which is against them. This has made the Islamic Movement to be associated with many terrorism activities in many parts of the world.
The common goal in the two movements is to have nations of the world governed by religious laws instead of state laws. They both want to do away with state laws. The groups are also not only religious but also political. They seek support from other people in order for them to succeed in their political life.
They also struggle to form some states, which are religiously governed. These religious groups use violence to achieve their goals while using religion to give them a moral justification for their actions (Juergensmeyer, 2000).
Both groups are likely to form alliances with the anti-U.S. transnational groups. This is because the groups need a lot of collaboration and support socially, politically and financially in order for them to succeed. The Islamist groups are most likely to form alliances with the anti U.S. transnational groups. This is because the Islamist movement is more aggressive and targeted most by the America’s anti terrorism operations.
In order to achieve their goal, they also need the financial assistance, which will make them to seek for alliances. The Christian movements have been also observed to relax and not get too much involved in these terrorism activities as much as the Islamist Movements.
There are also many Muslim groups targeted by the United States of America due to terrorism and would be willing to form alliances in order to weaken the efforts of the America’s anti terrorism.
In conclusion, there are many religious groups, which get involved in terrorism activities while hiding behind religion to give them moral justification of their wrongdoing. These religious groups also resort to violence a means of avoiding punishment after going against the state laws.
Most of these religious groups see their religious laws as superior to the state laws and therefore strive to impose the religious law in governing nations.
Because some of these religious laws conflict with those of other religions, the religious groups are also prone to rise against each other violently in order for them to impose their own laws. The Muslims believe in holy fight called Jihad and commit to fight it at all costs to impose their faith on people and to eliminate their enemies.
Reference List
Brayton, E. (2009). Another UD Post Disappears. Science Blogs LLC. Web.
Cline A. (n.d) Christian Identity: White supremacy, Christian Nationalism. About.com. Web.
Emerson, S. (2002). American Jihad. New York: The Free Press.
Ferber, I. A. (2004), Homegrown hate: Gender and Organised racism. New York: Routledge.
Grant, G. (N.d). Al-Qaeda and radical Islam: Economic realities and soco-political solutions. Henry Jackson Society. Web.
Juergensmeyer, M. (2000). Terror in the mind of God: Global rise of the religious violence. Berkeley: University of California Press.