Call him an assailant, an attacker, a gunman, a guy with a bad temperament; anything but a terrorist. After all, does he look like a terrorist? No, not at all! He has blond hair and white skin. He’s not Muzzlim. Well he did kill above ninety people, and yes he should not have done that; especially in front of kids. Kids should be kept away from violence; video games being the exception. It was an act of violence, as stated by the U.S. State department. This type of violence is fine to promote on popular media, but we should try not imitating it in real life. And besides, he’s a lone wolf; an exception. Terrorism is such a strong word, and should be used with responsibility.
If he is a Muzzlim, you are allowed, with all blessings of thy democracy, to be xenophobic, racist, and completely indifferent. You should hate Muzzlims, because they have beards and their women cover themselves. Yes, Jesus had a beard, and Nuns do wear similar outfits; but when Muzzlims do it, they are on to something. They might just explode in front of you, and kill everybody in sight, and especially those who are white, innocent… and white! They are not even humans; in fact, they are alien monsters out to chop off your heads and chew your flesh, slowly. Izzlaam teaches hate; it’s full of Jeehad, and to kill Christians and Jews.
And the lameness goes on and on.
How many times have you not heard the statement “Every Muslim may not be a terrorist, but every terrorist is a Muslim”. And this idea of absolute indifference is propounded not only by foreign neoconservative fascists, but even more so by local “liberal” apologetics.
The Norway incident is just one slip that got things exposed. So easy was it to condemn the event as an act of terror; absolute terror conducted by the likes of Al-Qaeeda. The Global media couldn’t wait till the actual story unfolded, and had got its accusations running in advance. Little does anyone care of the consequences, the Muslim communities have to go through.
But then things turned out different than what Islamophobes predicted. The guy was actually a Christian fundamentalist and an ethnic Norwegian. Yet the lameness continued.
The New York Times, for example, was quick to say “Even if the authorities ruled out Islamic terrorism as the cause of Friday’s assaults, other kinds of groups or individuals were mimicking Al Qaeda’s brutality and multiple attacks.”
So basically when Muslims have nothing to do with it; they still do. The guy was motivated by his hate for Muslims; hate that these media groups had helped fuel. And yet these propagandists have the nerve to bring Al-Qaeda into the equation somehow.
Further still, the term “terrorism” almost completely disappeared to describe this act from popular media discourse. As though the very definition of the word implies, that it must be an act carried out by a Muslim.
So, what about the “lone wolf” thing? Well, statistics tend to differ. According to FBI reports, from the years 1980 till 2005, terrorist activities conducted by Islamist Groups on U.S soil only make about 6 percent of the total. In fact, activities of such nature conducted by Jews, motivated by religion, amount to 7 percent; more than those by Muslims. The greatest perpetuators of such acts happen to be Latino groups.
In Europe, according to Europol, from the years 2007 till 2009, terrorist attacks conducted by groups with Islamist motivations make only 0.15 percent of the total. Separatist groups are the main conductors of terrorism in Europe, and yet all Muslims carry the label.
These statistics do not include the massive state terrorism, conducted by western powers, which we often wrongly term “Bad foreign policy”. Killing thousands of people, genocide, is not foreign policy; it’s organized terrorism, period.
So where does Islamophobia come from? It comes from hate, pure and simple. Some people just want a clash of civilizations. It should not come as a surprise that the Norwegian terrorist described himself as a modern day crusader.
So much does this aspect reveal. The Original Crusades was also a period of Anti-Muslim Propaganda. The message of Islam and the image of the Prophet were distorted and demonized. Muslims were depicted as Satanic Barbarians, off to destroy the Judo-Christian traditions. And the whole of Christian Europe was united on a one point agenda; destroying and stopping Muslims and their faith. The “danger” of creeping otherness took over the minds of the masses, and so begun the bloody crusades.
Let may be very clear on this, Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist is not the only crusader here. The global (or Western, or Eurocentric) media plays its part equally; they just don’t say it out loud. Many western intellectuals have rested not the least, in distorting and demonizing Muslims and Islam, and, by so doing, giving intellectual space to Islamophobia. The United States and her Allies have pretty well acted as Crusaders by bombarding Muslim lands at will, fostering Anti-Muslim sentiment, ridiculing Muslim sensitivities through public policy and in countless other ways.
So it should not be seen as that strange now that George Bush mentioned about launching a crusade in one of his pre-unleashing-of-terror speeches. He called it a slip of the tongue; and sure was it a slip of the tongue, indeed.