Excerpt:
The revelation that the perpetrator of the terrorist attacks in Oslo, Anders Behring Breivik, is a self-described Christian and conservative is sure to provoke an outburst of the moral equivalence favored by apologists for jihadism. Ever since 9/11, those unwilling to confront the theology of violence in Islam have relied on the tu quoque fallacy––"you do it too"––to dismiss the role of Islamic doctrine in Muslim terrorism. In this argument, all religions have violent extremists, and so it is irrational bigotry to suggest that there's something in Islam that makes such violence more acceptable and legitimate.
After 9/11, for example, the fact that the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was a nominal Methodist was presented as evidence for Christian terrorism––even though he died a self-professed unrepentant agnostic––or used as an example of how religious affiliation had nothing to do with Muslim violence, as Greg Easterbrook did in his book The Progress Paradox. The tendentious depiction of the Crusades in popular culture, as in Ridley Scott's historically ignorant Kingdom of Heaven, went even further, suggesting that Christianity's record of religiously inspired violence was worse than Islam's. More recently, during Representative Pete King's hearings into Muslim extremism in America, Representative Sheila Jackson Lee scolded King for ignoring "Christian militants."