Here's a trick question: Under what circumstances does the presence of a Muslim in a para-military organization become a symbol of increasing tolerance? Answer: When you're reporting on Michigan militias.

News reports on the round-up of members of the "Hutaree" militia in southern Michigan have noted the role of Matt Savino, the leader of another local Michigan militia who declined to assist Hutaree partisans who were on the run from federal agents. Savino, reports note, is a 34-year old Navy veteran and a convert to Islam from Lutheranism.

A Michigan militia member is a Muslim? It appears that journalists don't know quite what to make of this; not one report that I came across has said anything more about Savino's faith, practice or community. He is a Muslim, enough said. Indeed it would seem that in this case, unlike other instances of group violence (potential or actual) that are catalyzed by religious fervor, religion is less important to the story than the Hutaree group's political motivations.

Still, as the perennial counterpoint to the spectral figure of the "Muslim terrorist," Christian groups linked to violence and weapons present a familiar foil. The Hutaree story presents yet another opportunity for journalists and opinionists to "raise questions" about religion and terrorism.  

Last Sunday's New York Times lead opinion essay, for example, begins with a broad question about when to label an act "terrorism." By the third paragraph religion has emerged as a central issue. While the essay lays out familiar arguments on every side, it also presents an example of the increasingly unquestioned, unexamined links between violent extra-state activity and religious ideology. One begins to wonder if it is possible to talk anymore about extra-state violence that is not religiously charged.

Where has secular extremism gone?

And what does this have to do with the Muslim militia commander, Matt Savino? Savino appears to be levelheaded and rational. Intriguingly, he states that his militia doesn't discriminate according to race, gender or sexual orientation.

But does any of this make the Lenawee Militia any less a militia-esque? Does Savino's reasonableness and his group's apparent tolerance make it any less worrisome that they're amassing an arsenal and standing at the ready to combat what they view as tyranny? Have we become, both as journalists and as news consumers, so inured to stories linking small, violent groups with religious fervor that we have trouble acknowledging that a non-discriminatory group that also stockpiles guns and trains in paramilitary combat techniques is just as much a potential threat to public safety as a group that hates gays and reviles the black man in the White House?

The narrative formulas that shape the way journalists describe the role of religious ideology in fomenting violence tend to undercut all that earnest opinion-piece probing. Why is a cadre of armed, angry men framed as less menacing if the men are white and predominantly Christian and if their grievances are directed against a left-leaning government? Why does the Muslim leader of a similar band of would-be rebels get a pass on closer scrutiny if his sexual and gender politics sound more Tiburon than Taliban?     
Savino reports that he met with David Stone in 2006 to inquire about joining the Hutaree. It was soon clear that the collaboration wouldn't work out. Savino's religion was one reason, but there was also another fly in the anointment. Savino favored the AK-47 and Stone's Hutaree militia required the AR-15.
 
In other words, Savino owned the wrong kind of gun.

Courtney Bender is an associate professor of religion at Columbia University. She is the author of the forthcoming The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination (Chicago, 2010) and Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God's Love We Deliver (Chicago, 2003) as well as the co-editor (with Pamela Klassen) of After Pluralism: Reimagining Religious Engagements (Columbia, 2010).