August 05 , 2011
Norwegian Mass Massacre Failed to Promote Islamophobia
Over a week has passed since the July 22 mass murders by Anders Behring Breivik, 32, that claimed 76 lives in Norway’s capital Oslo and at Utoya island, not far from the capital, where a summer youth rally had been organized by the ruling Labor party; but, there is yet not a single significant voice from any part of the world upholding his killing spree and its cause as propounded by him in a 1500-page manifesto he posted on the Internet just before creating the murderous mayhem. “We were hit by evil”, exclaimed the Norwegian premier, Jens Stoltenberg. Breivik was indeed the personification of evil – a total evil.
Years back this evil person had hired a farm far from human habitations to work on his atrocious project of preparing a car bomb.
Some years earlier, another man with a manifesto, Ted Kaczynski, 69, had similarly moved to a remote cabin, without electricity or running water, in the wilderness of Lincoln, Montana, to make letter bombs and mail them to eminent persons to create an atmosphere of shock, awe and anxiety, before he called attention to his manifesto. FBI succeeded in catching him and getting him a life sentence.
Like Kaczynski, Breivik too was a lone operator who received no help or coordination from anyone. He revealed in his manifesto that he had “started preparing himself to do something big, shocking and spectacular” about a decade back. He did achieve that on July 22.
Bulk of the 68 persons that he shot and killed on the picturesque island by his automatic guns were children and teenagers. In Oslo, he had, a short while earlier, detonated a powerful car bomb that destroyed several government offices including that of the Prime Minister and killed 8 unfortunate persons who happened to be there at the time. Breivik, a lone wolf sociopath, who was arrested by the Norwegian police, has willingly accepted responsibility for both catastrophes. Norwegian police has described him as a “right-wing fundamentalist Christian”.
Surprisingly, a section of the media, newspapers in particular, in a knee-jerk reaction, hinted at the possibility of Al Qaeda functionaries being responsible for the carnage. This folly of making the Islamic extremists the scapegoat was a repetition of a similar mistake of identity committed in the case of Timothy Mcveigh, the Oklahoma City bomber in 1995. Earlier in November 1979, when the rebel Al Qahtani tribe laid siege to the shrine at Makkah (Mecca), a report of Radio Teheran attributed it to be the handiwork of the US Intelligence. The report was lifted and rebroadcast by Radio Pakistan. The enraged students of a University in Islamabad sacked and torched the American embassy.
When emotionally charged, some media men tend to abdicate their commitment to objectivity. That is exactly what happened in the initial reporting of Breivik’s berserk behavior. His diatribes against Muslim immigrants to Europe might have misled the reporters. Such totally incorrect and definitely misleading reports cannot be justified by any casuistry.
Breivik’s rambling, bulky manifesto reflects his fiercely held anti-Islamic and pro-Israel views. He placed the entire manifesto on the Internet shortly before he went on the killing rampage. The manifesto mentions Israel 359 times and Jews 324 times, revealing his intense Islamophobia, far-right Zionism and his venom against Marxism and multi-culturalism. He faults the Western media for focusing “unfairly” on the follies of the Jews, while underplaying those of the Muslims. He denigrates his own government for awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to “Islamic terrorist” Yasser Arafat.
To quote his own words, “If one acknowledges that Islam has always oppressed the Jews, one accepts that Israel was a necessary refuge for he Jews fleeing not only the European, but also the Islamic variety of anti-Judaism”.
The above statement is a clear travesty of historical facts. Even a casual student of Muslim history will inform you that the Muslim states have invariably treated the Jews with respect and dignity, being the followers of the revealed book Torah, and Moses being one of their own revered prophets. Among all the religions of the world Judaism is the closest to Islam. The Jews enjoyed in all Muslim societies total security of life and property till the fall of Muslim Spain in 1492. The victorious forces of Ferdinand and Isabella compelled the Muslims and Jews to convert to Christianity or be hanged, as Spain was declared to be a purely Christian kingdom. The Muslims migrated to Morocco and other Muslim states, while the Jews had no territory of their own where they could move. They acquired Christian names and posed as Christians while practicing Jewish beliefs and rituals at home. The Christians discovered this and started the infamous process of Inquisitions. The Turkish Sultan sent his flotilla to evacuate the Jews to Istanbul. The large population of Jews in Istanbul even today testifies to that event.
Yasser Arafat was essentially a guerrilla fighter with a limited vision. Otherwise, he would have, right at the beginning, struck a deal with the Jewish community and benefited from the accruing peace and prosperity.
In his manifesto “2083: A European Declaration of Independence” Breivik posits that Europe’s liberal politicians had given in to the forces of globalization and multiculturalism and the “mud people” (a derogatory moniker for non-white, non-Christian, non-Europeans) are trying to take over the Christian continent. “The cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites –the Nazis of our time- are intent on leading us to the cultural slaughterhouse by selling us into Muslim slavery”, writes Breivik. Like a monomaniac, he keeps harping on the theme that Muslims had nothing better to do than conquer Europe culturally. How far removed from reality can a person be!
The date – 22 Jul y - on which he caused the outrageous massacre to draw attention to his outlandish thesis, was probably selected by him as a good omen for the success of his project. For, it was on July 22, 1099 that the first Crusade was won by the Christian knights and other fighters. The year 2083, similarly recalls the victory of the Christian armies against the Turks in the Battle of Vienna of 1683 in which the Turkish forces were routed by the Christian armies.
Europe is overwhelmingly an open and tolerant society. It has already rebounded from the shock of the asinine act of Breivik and no leader of any worth has uttered a word in support of Breivik’s thesis. Interestingly enough, incidents of terrorism by Muslims account for less than one per cent of terrorist acts in Europe, according to Europol, which collects and analyses police data for use in crime fighting.
Breivik has provided further proof that terror is not just an al-Qaeda trademark or monopoly.
arifsyedhussaini@Gmail.com
