Domestic and International Terror

Name

Institution

Domestic and International Terror

Army of God is a domestic terrorist group operating in the United States of America. The organization is comprised of extremities who believe in the use of violence and brutality to spread hate messages and rise against the practice of abortion in the country. The group subjects clinical workers in abortion clinics to inhumane atrocities in a bid to curb abortion. It has been in operation since the early 1980s.

The group applies paramilitary tactics and other brutal means such as arson, bombings, kidnappings, and murder to repeal the legalization of abortion in America. The extremities chop off hands of abortion doctors, and attack and bomb abortion clinics. The group believes that God, who is the Commander in Chief and General, called them into their work. The members of the group call themselves soldiers of God, for whom they work. The soldiers never meet or communicate with each other unless on a need basis, making it hard for the group to be disbanded. In 1982, the group kidnapped an Illinois abortion specialist together with his wife and later claimed responsibility for the arson of an abortion clinic. Similarly, it bombed a gay bar and another clinic in Atlanta, in 2003.

Army of God has a loose structure without a defined organization. However, an ordained Pentecostal minister, Rev. Donald Spitz, runs the group’s website from his residence in Virginia. Recruitment into the group involves identification of martyrs and militants who have committed violent attacks against abortion specialists. They are then issued with manuals detailing the operation tactics such as manufacturing bombs, butyric acid attacks, arson, and other atrocities. It is through the site that members can access the manuals and other information regarding the tactics.

Al-Qa‘ida, by contrast, is an internationally established terrorist group incorporated in 1988 by Osama bin Laden alongside other Arabs protesting the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The main goal of this terror group is to put up a pan-Islamic caliphate in all Muslim nations globally. It aims at forcefully and violently defeating Israel and fighting western power in Muslim countries worldwide especially in the United States. The United States is a main target of the group because it opposes Islamic governance and supports other enemy institutions and governments fighting Islamic ruling. The ultimate aim of the group is to drive out American armed forces out of Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations (Zimmerman, 2013).

The late Osama bin Laden was the principal leader of the group, and Ayman Al Zawahiri is the second in command. Other members of the group are recruited into special cells in the organization in an intensive training under an experienced trainer. The cells are clandestine and only the trainer knows about each cell and its members. The members are then sworn into the organization under an oath of allegiance to the group and its leaders, and anybody opposing the group’s ideologies and values is executed. The group strengthened its forces and spread to more nations globally after the death of Osama Bin Laden and other significant commanders of the group such as Saeed al-Masri (Zimmerman, 2013).

The main difference between the domestic terror group Army of God and international Al-Qa‘ida is that the former fights social evils in the United States while the latter is a political movement. Al-Qa‘ida aims at ousting non-Islamic governance in Muslim nations while Army of God fights against abortion and other social evils such as homosexuality.

Reference

Zimmerman, K. (2013). The al Qaeda network: A new framework for defining the enemy. Critical Threats. Retrieved on 20 Feb. 2014 from http://www.criticalthreats.org/al-qaeda/zimmerman-al-qaeda-network-new-framework-defining-enemy-september-10-2013