A terrorist attack in Oslo, Norway! No, it’s not. It’s unrelated to al Qaeda or any other terror movement. It is the work of one of its own citizens. It is the work of a madman.
Situated in the western part of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Norway’s constitutional monarchy style government feared nothing from attacks by Islamic militants.
Even though there has been threats that Norway supported the American-led NATO military operation in Afghanistan by the number two leader of Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahri, who took over after the death of Osama bin Laden; the scene of panicking people and blown out windows of several government buildings, lay far from the minds of the ordinary working people of Oslo. Instead, they looked forward to enjoying the long days of summer and the glories of the midnight sun. Now that American counterterrorism officials have cautioned that Norway’s own homegrown extremist, Anders Behring Breivik is responsible for the attacks; President Obama’s plea to ‘work cooperatively together both on intelligence and in terms of prevention of these kinds of horrible attacks’ opens the floodgate on domestic terrorism in America and around the world.
Whereas this cautionary tale distracts the American people from the debt ceiling crisis and the failures of the economy, it extends beyond the perpetuated myth of political scientists and sociologists that all Muslims are terrorists and the compressed hysteria and outpouring of hate for Islam and Muslims.
According to Oslo acting chief of police, Sveinung Sponheim, Mr Breivik is not known to have any ties to Islamic extremists, speculating instead that the target was Norway’s liberal government.
Anders Behring Breivik was ‘an army of one’ with a full-fledged ideology that he held together – an ideology that motivated him to stalk youths and open fire on an island summer camp for young members of the governing Labour Party and the government building in Norway.
Anders Behring Breivik committed a terrorist act, yet he is not labeled a violent radical terrorist but rather ‘a right wing Christian fundamentalist.’ Although the atrocity is more politically motivated rather than religious or probably just a prolonged state of mental illness, a new definition of terrorism has been created in the media for other copycats to mimic.
It cannot be denied that we live in a bigoted world. Muslim radicals have a great record of creating havoc and murdering innocent individuals. However, it is clear that if a Muslim was involved then it would have been labeled a terror attack, but because it came from a white Christian man, terrorism is baptized and sanctified with a new aphorism.
It is evident that language again serves its own purpose by entertaining the whims of a blockade type mentality that fuels more antagonism and bitterness for home grown recruiting camps in the US and the Caribbean, thus making them more inward looking and more open to religious extremism.
As a replacement for addressing the vehement revolt of disturbed individuals who use violence against civilians to satisfy their own political ends against elected governments, the media has again detached the issue away from its socio-political context by enforcing the culture of victimhood against Muslims. Muslims are again portrayed as the one stop cause for the myriad of problems facing the world today.
Mr Breivik’s actions have puzzled a nation known for its active diplomacy and peacekeeping missions in the world. For America on the other hand, it is time to look within.
July 26, 2011
caribbeannewsnow
