One of Silvio Berlusconi’s former ministers has defended the thinking of the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik.
Interviewed on a popular radio show, Francesco Speroni, a leading member of the Northern League, the junior partner in Berlusconi’s conservative coalition, said: “Breivik’s ideas are in defence of western civilisation.”
Speroni spoke as other right-wingers around Europe, including leading officials of his own party, distanced themselves from the massacre on Utøya and the ideology that inspired it.
The Italian politician was endorsing the comments of another high-profile member of the league who had drawn fierce criticism for arguing that the killings might have been part of a plot to discredit hardline conservative thinkers. Like many in his party, Mario Borghezio, who sits in the European parliament, is an admirer of the writings of the late Italian journalist and author Oriana Fallaci, who popularised the term Eurabia to describe a future, supposedly Islamised Europe.
Many Muslim Americans had hoped that the death of Osama bin Laden would improve their image among other Americans, but according to a new survey, just the opposite has happened.
Rather than being mollified, anti-Muslim sentiment has intensified since Navy Seals killed the al-Qaida leader in a May 1 raid in Pakistan, according to a new report by researchers from the Ohio State University School of Communication, Cornell University’s Survey Research Institute, and the University of New Hampshire Survey Center.
In the weeks before bin Laden’s death, nearly half of respondents described Muslim Americans as “trustworthy” and “peaceful,” researchers said. After bin Laden’s death, that figure dropped to one-third of respondents.
For Muslims, perhaps the most troublesome finding was that these negative shifts had occurred among political liberals and moderates, a constituency that had been seen as the most sympathetic to Muslims after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
At the Southern Poverty Law Center, Heidi Beirich writes about the ideological trends in the United States that parallel those articulated by Anders Behring Breivik, who rails against cultural Marxism in his manifesto.
Fears of “cultural Marxism” have a long pedigree in this country. It’s a conspiratorial kind of “political correctness” on steroids — a covert assault on the American way of life that allegedly has been developed by the left over the course of the last 70 years. Those who use the term posit that a small group of German philosophers, all Jews who fled Germany and went to Columbia University in the 1930s to found the Frankfurt School, devised a cultural form of “Marxism” aimed at subverting Western civilization. The method involves manipulating the culture into supporting homosexuality, sex education, egalitarianism, and the like, to the point that traditional institutions and culture are ultimately wrecked.
A number of hate groups, including the racist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), have raised the spectre of cultural Marxism as a way to explain contemporary events (click here to watch the CCC’s DVD on the theory). Some prominent conservatives also adopted the conspiratorial theory (culturalmarxism.org features MSNBC contributor Pat Buchanan and Texas Congressman Ron Paul). In 2002, William Lind of the Free Congress Foundation, a far-right outfit long headed by the now deceased Paul Weyrich (one of the founders of the Moral Majority), gave a speech about the theory to a Holocaust denial conference. Saying he was “not among those who question whether the Holocaust occurred,” Lind went on to lay blame for “political correctness” and other evils on so-called “cultural Marxists,” who, he said, “were all Jewish” (Lind is mentioned in passing in Breivik’s manifesto).
Breivik shares more than fears of cultural Marxism with America’s radical right. A recent SPLC report documented an increasingly reckless campaign to vilify American Muslims, driven in some cases by mainstream poltical figures. If irresponsible ideologues or public figures use the upcoming ten-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to further demonize American Muslims, this population may be great danger (in the past year, there have been serious attacks on mosques and other Islamic institutions. For more, read here and here).
Tensions are arising here for very much the same reasons as they are in Europe: societies on both sides of the pond are becoming more demographically diverse. In Europe, the targets of radical-right extremists are typically Muslims, because they make up a large share of European immigrants. In the U.S., until recently, ire has mostly been directed at Latinos and Latino immigrants. This growing population is blamed by racist ideologues for the impending end of a white majority, which will come midcentury according to the Census.
That racial fears could drive someone to kill on a massive scale should come as no surprise. Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in 1995, taking his blueprint for the Oklahoma City bombing from the gruesome race-war novel, The Turner Diaries, written by neo-Nazi leader William Pierce. Between McVeigh’s April 19, 1995 bombing and early 2011, the SPLC has documented some 100 domestic terror plots by right-wing extremists. In recent years, these attacks have been propelled by additional factors such as the election of the nation’s first black president and the troubled economy.
The obvious danger from radical-right domestic terrorism makes it all the more galling that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has largely given up its efforts to monitor such threats. In April 2009, the department released a report, “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment,” warning of possible violence from racists, radical antigovernment types and others. The report was prescient; within a few month of its release two major domestic terrorist attacks took place. But that didn’t stop conservative analysts from savaging the report after it was leaked shortly after its release.
It was one thing for the right-wing media to savage the report; what was truly shocking was DHS’s reaction. The department ended up gutting its non-Islamic domestic extremism intelligence unit, which had been led since its inception by veteran intelligence analyst Daryl Johnson. Johnson recently talked to the SPLC about how the DHS bowed to the political pressure and basically abandoned its role in protecting the country from radical-right threats (The Washington Post provided further evidence here).
“[M]y greatest fear is that domestic extremists in this country will somehow become emboldened to the point of carrying out a mass-casualty attack, because they perceive that no one is being vigilant about the threat from within,” Johnson told SPLC referring to the fact that DHS is out of the non-Islamic domestic terrorism business. “That is what keeps me up at night.”
The SPLC’s CEO J. Richard Cohen recently asked DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to reconsider the department’s actions. The Oslo attacks are a reminder of why this is so critically important.
Anders Behring Breivik’s attorney, Geir Lippestad, says his client appears to be insane. Whether this is what Lippestad actually believes or whether he is simply laying the groundwork for an insanity defense, is unclear. But the idea that only a madman could do what Breivik did, is an idea with dangerous and popular appeal.
We would all like to believe that normal people are incapable of doing dreadful things. We want to imagine that Breivik is one of a kind.
Those who share Breivik’s antipathy for Islam, who promote the idea that the West is being taken over by Muslims and who warn that Europe and America are in jeopardy of coming under the rule of Sharia law, are now trying to protect their investment in this pernicious ideology by joining in the chorus that Breivik is a psychopath.
“The manifesto of the perpetrator makes clear that this is a madman,” writes Geert Wilders.
Conservative blogger and anti-jihadist Pamela Geller told The Daily Caller it’s “outrageous” that she’s been “assign[ed] blame” for Oslo shooter Anders Behring Breivik’s actions.
“It’s like equating Charles Manson, who heard in the lyrics of Helter Skelter a calling for the Manson murders,” Geller said in an exclusive phone interview. “It’s like blaming the Beatles. It’s patently ridiculous.”
Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch refers to Breivik as the “mad murderer in Norway.”
In each instance, the reason the anti-Jihadists want to characterize Breivik as insane is rather transparent: they want to create the widest possible distance between Breivik and their ideology.
The truth is way too uncomfortable — that Breivik, Wilders, Geller, and Spencer all view the world through the same ideological prism; they merely have a tactical disagreement about the best way of promoting their views.
When Wilders asserts that Breivik’s writings make it clear he’s a madman, Wilders is relying on the fact that most people won’t read Breivik. If they do they will quickly discover how closely aligned he is with his anti-Jihadist detractors.
In his compendium, 2083 A European Declaration of Independence, Breivik interviews himself. There we learn that his extremism is mixed with a large measure of political pragmatism.
Even if neo-Nazis and cultural conservatives (like him) share common ground he sees no chance that they can form an alliance. “It will be extremely hard to cooperate with anyone who views our primary ally (the Jews/Israel) as their primary enemy.”
He sees himself as part of “a relatively cynical/cruel/goal oriented armed resistance group” that nevertheless has “foundational principles” that would appeal to the majority of Europeans.
There are plenty of views expressed here that most people will find offensive, and though the fears that Breivik shares with other anti-Jihadists might be irrational or overblown, there is little evidence he is mad.
Q: Is it possible that cultural conservatives and National Socialists will
cooperate in the future?
A: It will be extremely hard to cooperate with anyone who views our primary ally (the
Jews/Israel) as their primary enemy. Their Jew obsession and support to Islamic regimes
will severely hinder any direct cooperation. They are blinded by their Jew hate to a
degree where they fail to see the imminent threat to Europe represented by Islam.
The following poll was taken from eNationalist, a rather hardcore NS site:
eNat Poll[4]: Can the Arab world and part of the Islamic world be our allies?
Yes: 44%
No: 52%
This poll indirectly illustrate that the hardcore NS community reject the concept of
European Christian solidarity and thus rejecting the support to our Eastern Christian
cousins (Greek, Maronite, Assyrian, Copt) with the long term goal of creating future
Christian (Islamic free) zones. It also shows that they are generally supportive of
alliances with Islamic countries.
It wasn’t exactly a secret that many in the NS movements rejected Christendom
completely and instead support Odinism. It is however understandable that they view
modern humanist Christendom as weak and therefore unworthy of support (a view which
I partly agree with). However, the solution is not to reject Christianity but rather to
reform Christianity to re-introduce the concepts of “self-defence” as propagated by
former Crusader Popes. Also, we shouldn’t forget that Nazi Germany allied itself with the
Ottoman Caliphate/Turkey on two occasions and supported the Christian Armenian
genocides.
Many NS support the Islamic conspiracy theory that Jews organised the 9/11 attacks and
both reject that the Holocaust took place. In light of these opposing views it’s hard to
imagine that the “new Western European right” will be willing to trust National Socialists.
One of the reasons why hardcore anti-Semites (David Duke would be a case in point) are
unreliable allies is that they hate Jews so much that it shuts down the rational parts of their brain and they end up making common cause with Muslims, based on mutual hatred.
Fjordman
However, we have certain things in common that shouldn’t be underestimated.
We share the same anti -EU, -UN and –immigration/multiculturalism (Muslim immigration
at least) sentiments and the goal of “preserving European traditions, culture etc” which is
the primary reason why more and more ex-NS people are conforming and joining the
new “European right”.
As a message to those hardcore NS’s who are simply unable to compromise; Conform
and join our armed struggle against the European cultural Marxists/multiculturalists (the
enablers of the Islamisation of Europe), or continue to be sidelined and marginalised.
Multiculturalism is the hole in the dike. Islam is the water pouring in. Everything else
should be irrelevant. Your “Jew” obsession is undermining your own struggle against
multiculturalism.
The cultural conservatives of Western Europe will seize power by 2080, if you want to be
a part of this you will have no choice but to compromise. I would imagine that a
continued Judeo Christian Europe would be considerably better than a European
Caliphate even for the most hardcore NS.
Q: Some “Ghandist/pacifist” members of the conservative resistance will claim
that violence will not solve anything and will instead only give our enemies
more rhetorical ammunition and make it easier for them to gain the moral
ground. They will finally be able to say; “terrorism has no religion”. “By using
terror you are undermining your own struggle and hurting the nationalist
cause”.
How would you react to statements like this?
A: Well, first of all, I would tell him he obviously didn’t have a clue what he was talking
about. Pacifist approaches have been tried in the past; in Lebanon where the Christians
waited until the Muslims made up 60% of the population. The Copts in Egypt have been
relatively pacifist and look what it got them… They are almost extinct due to their
pacifist stance. The same can be said about the Christian Assyrians and Armenians. They
waited and waited, like loyal little dhimmis and “hoped” for a better future, until the day
the Muslims decided to massacre them. Ghandi pacifism worked against the Brits in India
because Christian Europeans aren’t primitive barbarians… However, pacifism doesn’t
work at all against an Islamic entity. As soon as they become a form a majority (and this
will happen unless we can start the deportation campaigns in time) they will strike and
eventually massacre us as history has shown again and again.
A great majority of the European conservatives have chosen dialogue and pacifism since
1955 until today. And what exactly has it gotten us…? During the last 55 years of pacifist
dialogue, the multiculturalists have been allowed to open the gates and flooded our
ancestral lands with 30 million Muslims and they even continue to do so today. Should
we perhaps try dialogue for another 40 years and see what that brings us…? Only a
suicidal individual would accept this. Not acting would be the biggest of all crimes.
The time for dialogue is over for an increasing number of Western Europeans. The
European civil war will progress the coming decades and our traitor enemies will
eventually be defeated and executed.
Your personal life and convictions
Q: How did you first get involved in your current activities?
A: Well, I gained awareness of certain issues at that time. My best friend for many years,
a Muslim, had lived his whole life in Oslo West with limited contact with the Norwegian-
Pakistani community. Yet, he and more or less 100% of youngsters like him still failed in
many ways to be integrated. He attended Urdu classes at school from early childhood. He
went to the mosque occasionally after he was 12. Like most Norwegian-Pakistanis he felt
really torn between the Norwegian community and the Pakistani community. However, I
was wrong when assuming that he would chose to follow my path and the Norwegian
way. I understood early that he resented Norwegians and the Norwegian society. Not
because he was jealous, after all he could have conformed if he wanted to. He resented it
because it represented the exact opposite of Islamic ways. Shortly after we broke of
contact he left Jon Trygve and Richard and started hanging out with his cousin and other
Pakistanis. Since then he has been a part of the Pakistani community in Oslo and has, as
far as I know, minimal contact with the Norwegian community. Since then he and his
Muslim friends have beaten and harassed several ethnic Norwegians, one of them being
my friend, Kristoffer.
According to Kristoffer, Arsalan and a bunch of Pakistanis tried to rob him (See: Jizya).
When he refused to pay them, they beat him badly. Luckily, there were witnesses around
and this incident in addition to Arsalans other acts of violence against ethnic Norwegians
resulted in him being incarcerated for 6 months. Another incident, which was confirmed
from reliable sources, happened on New Year’s Eve in Frognerparken, Oslo. Arsalan and
his Pakistani friends allegedly gang raped an ethnic Norwegian girl. I believe this was in
95 or 96. As far as I know, they were never charged with this crime due to the lack of
witnesses.
Muslim girls were off limits to everyone, even the Muslim boys. The only available
“commodity” at this point was therefore ethnic Norwegian girls, referred to as “whores”.
Due to the tolerance indoctrinated through Norwegian upbringing – girls aren’t brought
up to be sceptics, racists or anti-immigrant, just like most boys. They are all brought up
to be very tolerant. As a result, many ethnic Norwegian girls, especially in Muslim
dominated areas, despise ethnic Norwegian boys because they consider them as weak
and inferior with lack of pride, seeing as they are systematically “subdued” by the
“superior Muslim boys”. Ironically, Muslim boys are raised to view Norwegian girls as
inferior “whores”. Their only purpose is to bring pleasure until the Muslim guys are
around 20-25 when they will find a pure, “superior” Muslim girl, a virgin. At this point,
the ethnic Norwegian “whores” is discarded, and most of the girls go back to their old
“tribe”. They are welcomed back in the name of tolerance.
More or less all Muslim parents will tell their sons the following: “You can have fun with
the Norwegian whores, as long as you marry a Muslim”. If, against all odds, a Muslim guy
wants to marry one of these “whores”, she has to convert to Islam – no exception. The
Muslim girls however are guarded by their male family members like they were made of
pure gold. If a Muslim girl, against all odds, engages in a relationship with an ethnic
Norwegian guy, then the Muslim males from her family or “tribe” will kill her or forcefully
take her to their country of origin to be “educated” for a few years. They will attempt to
lure her on a vacation to Pakistan, Morocco, Somalia etc. and possibly kill her there, if
she still refuses to conform. An alternative strategy is to forcefully marry her off to a local
Muslim guy and keep her in their country of origin until she is sufficiently “tied down”
through impregnating her and systematical indoctrination. When she is “tied down” with
2 or more children there isn’t much she can do. Also, it’s not very risky to kill Muslim girls
in Muslim countries as most government officials are corrupt and “very understanding”,
especially in cases where a family wants to “restore their pride”. This is the main reason
why Muslim girls are occasionally sent back to their country of origin, in order to prevent
them from becoming too “European”. They are often sent back to Europe, after several
years of abduction and indoctrination when they are sufficiently subdued and under
control of the Muslim society. It’s not very tempting for Muslim girls to file a divorce and
risk getting frozen out of the Muslim community or risk getting killed when they have 2-4
children.
I also remember from my earlier childhood, two Pakistani and one Turkish girl from
Smestad school, the primary school I attended; Baligha, Modazzer and Eilif. Baligha was
Faizals, my friend’s, sister, I didn’t know Modazzer although she was my neighbour, but I
used to play with Eilif, Onors sister. At that time there were three Pakistani families in
that area and one Turkish, all except the latter lived in publicly subsidised apartments, in
accordance with the government’s integration program. I remember the day when
Modazzers chair was empty. We didn’t get an answer from our teacher regarding her
whereabouts. She was supposed to have returned from her summer vacation in Pakistan.
The next year Eilif was sent to Turkey. I heard her father thought she had become “too
Norwegian”. A few years later, the exact same thing happened with Baligha. One day she
didn’t show up for school after her vacation in Pakistan. I was only 10 years old at that
time and didn’t really know what was going on. In retrospect I know that they were sent
back to their country of origin, and no one as far as I know has heard from them again.
They were most likely either married away at young age or killed. I know exactly where
those families live(d) and I know for a fact that they vanished and didn’t return for
several years. At this point I knew nothing about Islam. I only learned at school that
Islam was peaceful and tolerant, very similar to Christianity. I was therefore unable to
make the correct conclusions and identify that both Baligha and Modazzer had in fact
been abducted.
Anyway, back to the topic. When I was around 16-17 years old I joined the Progress
Party Youth organisation (FpU) as they were anti-immigration and pro-free-market. Every
single journalist in the country regarded them as racist because of their anti-immigration
program. FrP were under constant attacks from every single media organisation, NGO’s
and all the other political parties. They were called racists and Nazis and were generally
labelled as “fascist pigs”. FrP appealed to me because I had experienced the hypocrisy in
society first hand and I knew already then that they were the only party who opposed
multiculturalism.
It became obvious to me early on that the hypocrisy in society was so prevalent and
overwhelming. I now started to see the connection between Islam, Western media, the
extreme left and the government. I started studying Islamism, Socialism, egalitarianism
and other directions of Political Science and became more aware of what was going on. I
then, for the first time, understood why I hadn’t learned anything of relevance about
Islam at school, and the motives for suppressing the truth on these issues – political
correctness.
Around year 2000 I realised that the democratic struggle against the Islamisation of
Europe, European multiculturalism was lost. It had gone too far. It is simply not possible
to compete democratically with regimes who import millions of voters. 40 years of
dialogue with the cultural Marxists/multiculturalists had ended up as a disaster. It would
now only take 50-70 years before we, the Europeans are in a minority. As soon as I
realised this I decided to explore alternative forms of opposition. Protesting is saying that
you disagree. Resistance is saying you will put a stop to this. I decided I wanted to join
the resistance movement.
However, the main problem then was that there weren’t any alternatives for me at all.
There weren’t any known armed cultural conservative, or Christian, anti-Jihad
movements.
An NS or racist/anti Jewish movement was completely out of the question, as they
represented much of what I oppose. I came in contact with Serbian cultural conservatives
through the internet. This initial contact would eventually result in my contact with
several key individuals all over Europe and the forming of the group who would later
establish the military order and tribunal, PCCTS, Knights Templar. I remember they did a
complete screening and background check to ensure I was of the desired calibre. Two of
them had reservations against inviting me due to my young age but the leader of the
group insisted on my candidature. According to one of them, they were considering
several hundred individuals throughout Europe for a training course. I met with them for
the first time in London and later on two occasions in Balticum. I had the privilege of
meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader
and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle. Due to EU persecution for alleged
crimes against Muslims he was living at one point in Liberia. I visited him in Monrovia
once, just before the founding session in London, 2002.
I was the youngest one there, 23 years old at the time. One of the key founders
instructed the rest of the group about several topics related to the goal of the
organisation. I believe I scribbled down more than 50 full pages of notes regarding all
possible related topics. Much of these notes are forwarded in the book 2083. It was
basically a detailed long term plan on how to seize power in Western Europe. I did not
fully comprehend at the time how privileged I was to be in the company of some of the
most brilliant political and military tacticians of Europe. Some of us were unfamiliar with
each other beforehand so I guess we all took a high risk meeting face to face. There were
only 5 people in London re-founding the order and tribunal (1 by proxy) but there were
around 25-30 attending in Balticum during the two sessions, individuals from all over
Europe; Germany, France, Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Balticum, Benelux, Spain, Italy,
Greece, Hungary, Austria, Armenia, Lebanon and Russia. Electronic or telephonic
communication was completely prohibited, before, during and after the meetings. On our
last meeting it was emphasised clearly that we cut off contact indefinitely. Any type of
contact with other cells was strictly prohibited.
This was not sessions were regular combat cells were created. It was more like a training
course for pioneer cell commanders. We were not instructed to attack specific targets,
quite the opposite. We were encouraged to rather use the information distributed to
contribute to build and expand the so called ”cultural conservative anti-Jihad movement,
either through spreading propaganda, provide funding for the creation of new groups
through various forums or by recruiting other people directly. All individuals attending the sessions learned about PCCTS, the Knights Templar but they were not specifically
instructed to represent that particular order and tribunal. Everyone was encouraged but
at the end, it was their own decision how they decided to manifest their resistance. A
special emphasis was put on the long term nature of the struggle (50-100 years). Our
task was to contribute to a long term approach and not to act prematurely. If there was a
large scale attack the next 10 years it was said, we should avoid any immediate follow up
attacks as it would negate the shock effect of the subsequent attacks. A large successful
attack every 5-12 years was optimal depending on available forces.
This was not a stereotypical “right wing” meeting full of underprivileged racist skinheads
with a short temper, but quite the opposite. Most of them were successful entrepreneurs,
business or political leaders, some with families, most of them Christian conservatives
but also some agnostics and even atheists. I remember it struck me how impressed I
was regarding how they had set up the screening parameters (for accepting new
candidates). They obviously wanted resourceful pragmatical individuals who were able to
keep information away from their loved ones and who were not in any way flagged by
their governments. Every one of them was supportive of a Judeo Christian Europe and
did not have any reservations against cooperating with non-European Christians Hindu or
Buddhist nationalists. I had or have a relatively close relationship with at least one of
them, an Englishman, who became my mentor. He was the one who first described the
“perfect knight” and had written the initial fundament for this compendium. I was asked,
not only once but twice, by my mentor; let’s call him Richard, to write a second edition of
his compendium about the new European Knighthood. As such, I spent several years to
create an economic platform which would allow me to study and write a second edition.
And as of now, I have spent more than three years completing this second edition.
Perhaps, someone out there will be able to contribute by creating a third edition one day.
Q: What tipped the scales for you? What single event made you decide you
wanted to continue planning and moving on with the assault?
A: For me, personally, it was my government’s involvement in the attacks on Serbia
(NATO bombings in 1999) several years back. It was completely unacceptable how the
US and Western European regimes bombed our Serbian brothers. All they wanted was to
drive Islam out by deporting the Albanian Muslims back to Albania. When the Albanians
refused, they really didn’t have any choice but to use military force. By disallowing the
Serbians the right for self-determination over their sovereign territory they indirectly dug
a grave for Europe. A future where several Mini-Pakistan’s would eventually will be
created in every Western European capital. This is unacceptable, completely
unacceptable.
There have been several issues that have reaffirmed my beliefs since then. Among them;
my governments cowardly handling of the Muhammad Cartoon issue and their decision to
award the Nobel peace prize to an Islamic terrorist (Arafat) and appeasers of Islam.
There have been tens of other issues. My government and our media capitulated to Islam
several years ago, after the Rushdie event. Since then, it has gone downhill. Thousands
of Muslims pouring in annually through our Asylum institution, or by family reunification.
The situation is just chaotic. These suicidal traitors must be stopped. Continue reading →
Anders Behring Breivik had extensive links to the far-Right English Defence League, senior members of the group have admitted.
Breivik was understood to have met leaders of the EDL in March last year when he came to London for the visit of Geert Wilders, the Dutch Right-wing politician. Daryl Hobson, who organises EDL demonstrations, said Breivik, who told police there were “two more cells” ready to follow him, had met members of the group.
Another senior member of the EDL said Breivik had been in regular contact with its members via Facebook, and had a “hypnotic” effect on them.
Scotland Yard was investigating Breivik’s claims that he began his deadly “crusade” after being recruited to a secret society in London, and that he was guided by an English “mentor”. David Cameron, who was being kept updated on developments, said Breivik’s claims were being taken “extremely seriously”.
Breivik wrote of having strong links with the EDL, saying he had met its leaders and had 600 EDL members as Facebook friends.
Mr Hobson said in an online posting that: “He had about 150 EDL on his list … bar one or two doubt the rest of us ever met him, altho [sic] he did come over for one of our demo [sic] in 2010 … but what he did was wrong. RIP to all who died as a result of his actions.”
Another senior member of the EDL, who spoke to The Daily Telegraph on condition of anonymity, said he understood Breivik had met EDL leaders when he came to Britain to hear Wilders speak in London last year.
“I spoke to him a few times on Facebook and he is extremely intelligent and articulate and very affable,” said the source. “He is someone who can project himself very well and I presume there would be those within the EDL who would be quite taken by that. It’s like Hitler, people said he was hypnotic. This guy had the same sort of effect.”
Anders Behring Breivik’s world view seems to have been shaped by online fantasy games and the anti-Islamist blogosphere – a recipe for national fragmentation.
There is a reason why the Norwegian police have not been overly concerned with rightwing extremism in recent years. It is plainly not very visible. An estimated 40 Norwegians currently belong to self-proclaimed extreme rightwing groups.
However, anyone familiar with the darker waters of the blogosphere would for years have been aware of the existence of a vibrant cyberscene characterised by unmitigated hatred of the new Europe, aggressive denunciations of the “corrupted, multiculturalist power elites” and pejorative generalisations about immigrants, targeting Muslims in particular.
Contributors to these websites, blogs and chat groups cannot merely be labelled “rightwing”. One member of the Norwegian “Forum Against Islamisation” was also a member of the Socialist Left party. Others see themselves as the true heirs of social democratic values, or as the last carriers of the torch of the Enlightenment. Many talk about gender equality, some about social injustices and class. Others hold more conventional rightwing views, ranging from downright racism to paranoid conspiracy theories about Muslims plotting to take political control of western Europe. Some are online daily; others drop in once a month. They constitute loose networks and cannot easily be counted.
What the denizens of this blogosphere have in common is, first and foremost, a resentment of the defenders of diversity. These “elite” are often described as “traitors”, “sellouts” or just “naive multiculturalists”. They also share the conviction that Islam is incompatible with the democratic values of the west. This view is problematic in a country where the Muslim population is over 150,000 and growing. Nobody knows how widespread such views are, but they can no longer be written off as harmless.
The fact that Breivik was Made in Norway, a homegrown terrorist with a hairdo and an appearance suggesting the west end of Oslo, and not a bearded foreign import, should lead not only to a closer examination of these networks, but also to a calm, but critical reflection over the Norwegian self-identity itself. It would come as a relief to many if the leadership of the country were to state unequivocally that religion and skin colour were irrelevant to membership in the Norwegian nation. King Haakon VII, who reigned from 1905 to 1957, famously said that he was “the king of the communists, too”. King Harald V could hardly do better, in the current situation, than pointing out that he is “the king of Norwegian Muslims, Sikhs, Jews and Hindus, too”. Perhaps it goes without saying, yet a statement of this kind would cleanse the air in a situation where extreme xenophobia and religious prejudice have been the source of inspiration for unspeakably atrocious acts.
Every country needs some degree of cohesion. Just how much is a legitimate matter of dispute. Some believe that cultural pluralism is a recipe for fragmentation and the loss of trust. This may be the case, but not necessarily. So long as common institutions function impartially – education, housing, work etc – a society can live well with considerable diversity. However, the moment we cease to speak to each other, something serious is under way. This is exactly what happened with Breivik and many of his co-believers: they developed a parallel reality on the internet.
The Norway massacre has touched off a nasty war of words on the Israeli Internet over the meaning of the event and its implications for Israel. And I do mean nasty: Judging by the comments sections on the main Hebrew websites, the main questions under debate seem to be whether Norwegians deserve any sympathy from Israelis given the country’s pro-Palestinian policies, whether the killer deserves any sympathy given his self-declared intention of fighting Islamic extremism and, perhaps ironically, whether calling attention to this debate is in itself an anti-Israel or anti-Semitic act.
The debate seems to be taking place almost entirely on Hebrew websites. There’s a bit of bile popping up on the English-language Jerusalem Post site as well (for example, there are a handful of choice comments of a now-they’ll-know-what-it-feels-like variety following this Post news article reporting on Israel’s official offer of sympathy and aid). In Hebrew, though, no holds are barred. I’ve translated some of the back-and-forth from the Ynet and Maariv websites below, to give you taste.
The debate exploded above ground on Saturday in an opinion essay at Ynet (in Hebrew only) by Ziv Lenchner, a left-leaning Tel Aviv artist and one of Ynet’s large, bipartisan stable of columnists. It’s called “Dancing the Hora on Norwegian Blood.” He argues that the comment sections on news websites are a fair barometer of public sentiment (a questionable premise) and that the overwhelming response is schadenfreude, pleasure at Norway’s pain. As I’ll show below, that judgment seems pretty accurate.
He goes on to blame the Netanyahu government, which he accuses of whipping up a constant mood of “the whole world is against us.” Again, a stretch—a government can exacerbate a mood, but it can’t create it out of whole cloth. Israelis have been scared and angry since long before this government came in two and a half years ago, for a whole variety of reasons. The government isn’t working overtime to dispel the mood, but it can’t be blamed for creating it. Finally, Lenchner argues, on very solid ground, that the vindictive mood reflected on the Web is immoral and un-Jewish, citing the biblical injunction “do not rejoice in the fall of your enemy.”
His article has drawn hundreds of responses—more than any of the articles he complains about. They fall into four basic categories in roughly equal proportions: 1.) Hurray, the Norwegians had it coming; 2.) What happened is horrible but maybe now they’ll understand what we’re up against; 3.) What happened is horrible and the celebrations here are appalling; 4.) This article is a bunch of lies, Ziv Lenchner invented this whole schadenfreude thing because he’s a lying leftist who wants to destroy Israel.
[…]
When the news came out on Saturday that the killer was not a Muslim but a right-wing Norwegian nationalist angered at multiculturalism, liberalism and tolerance of Islam, the tone sharpened. Suddenly there was a rush of comments claiming the killer was right and the victims had it coming.
When terrorism has a white face it invariably gets marginalized in the popular narrative. The lone wolf, the outsider, the sociopath — in many cases these portraits of misanthropic, isolated individuals who turn to violence are quite accurate.
The Oslo killings, however, should be seen in a different light since there is a wealth of evidence to suggest that the perpetrator of this atrocity, even if it turns out he was acting alone, was very much part of a political movement — a movement whose leading ideologues regularly appear on Fox News and have high public profiles.
Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old Norwegian man widely assumed to be responsible for the mass murder that took place in Oslo yesterday, is being referred to as a Christian fundamentalist in many press reports.
His comments appearing on the political website Document.no suggest however that this is a rather misleading description. His views, as revealed there, are ideological rather than religious with his preeminent focus being his opposition to multiculturalism. (Quotations of Breivik appearing below come from a translation provided by Doug Saunders.)
In the United States, one of the most prominent public faces of the movement to which Breivik belongs is that of the notorious right-wing, pro-Israel, Islamophobic blogger, Pamela Geller, whose principal mouthpiece is Atlas Shrugs.
The poster below shows a recent event which she backed, along with Robert Spencer who operates Jihad Watch.
The World War Two iconography they employ — battleships, tanks and squadrons of bombers — makes it clear that they regard their campaign against “Islamization” as a kind of war. One of the battles in that war played out in Oslo yesterday.
Breivik, who probably sees himself as one of SIOE’s “freedom fighters,” describes himself as a cultural conservative and anti-Marxist liberal. In his comments at Document.no, he says little about his religious beliefs and seems to see his Christian identity primarily as a cultural identity. He writes:
I myself am a Protestant and baptized / confirmed to me by my own free will when I was 15
But today’s Protestant church is a joke. Priests in jeans who march for Palestine and churches that look like the minimalist shopping centers. I am a supporter of an indirect collective conversion of the Protestant church back to the Catholic. In the meantime, I vote for the most conservative candidates in church elections.
The only thing that can save the Protestant church is to go back to basics.
These are the preeminent voices promoting fear and hatred of Islam across Europe and America. But they also form — at least in Breivik’s mind — the “epicenter” of “political analysis” on the threat posed to cultural conservatives by multiculturalism in Europe and America. He recommends Fjordman’s book, “Defeating Eurabia,” as “the perfect Christmas gift for family and friends.”
Do any of the leaders of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) and Stop Islamization of Europe (SIOE) advocate that their “freedom fighters” should adopt violent tactics such as those employed by Breivik? Perhaps not. Indeed, I have little doubt that in the coming days we will hear many vociferous disavowals of their having any association with the Norwegian. But have no doubt, while they might have a sincere revulsion for Breivik’s actions, they cannot so easily disassociate themselves from the ideas that drove him to murder almost a hundred innocent people.
Two years ago, Breivik called on fellow Norwegians to form a youth action group “that represents our ideological platform (anti-racist but critical of multiculturalism / Islamization etc).” He saw the group developing as part of Stop Islamization of Europe or as a new group that would model itself on SIOE and the English Defense League.
“For me it is very hypocritical to treat Muslims, Nazis and Marxists differ[ently]. They are all supporters of hate-ideologies,” Breivik writes. There is a whiff of the Bush doctrine here — that we should not differentiate between terrorists and those who harbor them. There’s also a hint of Bin Laden’s idea of the near enemy and the far enemy.
Breivik argues that cultural conservatives should not identify their main opponents as Jihadists, but instead should focus their attention on those he regards as the “facilitators” of Jihadists, namely, the proponents of multiculturalism. Hence his vehement opposition to Norway’s Labour Party and its leader, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.
Those in the anti-Islam movement who now want to distance themselves from Breivik will proclaim that they are opponents of hatred and maybe that’s true — but that’s how he sees himself too: as a man dedicating his life to combating the “hate ideologies.”
As the last decade has demonstrated, whether it’s on the level of governments or individuals, those who take up a banner in the name of a crusade against hatred have a surprising willingness to employ violence in pursuit of that goal.
One of the many signs of the rightward creep of Western European politics is the recent unison of voices denouncing multiculturalism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel led off last October by claiming that multiculturalism “has failed and failed utterly.” She was echoed in February by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron. All three were late to the game, though: for years, the Dutch far right has been bashing supposedly multicultural policies.
Despite the shared rhetoric, it is difficult to discern a common target for these criticisms. Cameron aimed at an overly tolerant attitude toward extremist Islam, Merkel at the slow pace of Turkish integration, and Sarkozy at Muslims who pray in the street.
But while it is hard to know what exactly the politicians of Europe mean when they talk about multiculturalism, one thing we do know is that the issues they raise—real or imagined—have complex historical roots that have little to do with ideologies of cultural difference. Blaming multiculturalism may be politically useful because of its populist appeal, but it is also politically dangerous because it attacks “an enemy within”: Islam and Muslims. Moreover, it misreads history. An intellectual corrective may help to diminish its malign impact.
At the Fox News holiday party the year the network overtook archrival CNN in the cable ratings, tipsy employees were herded down to the basement of a Midtown bar in New York. As they gathered around a television mounted high on the wall, an image flashed to life, glowing bright in the darkened tavern: the MSNBC logo. A chorus of boos erupted among the Fox faithful. The CNN logo followed, and the catcalls multiplied. Then a third slide appeared, with a telling twist. In place of the logo for Fox News was a beneficent visage: the face of the network’s founder. The man known to his fiercest loyalists simply as “the Chairman” – Roger Ailes.
“It was as though we were looking at Mao,” recalls Charlie Reina, a former Fox News producer. The Foxistas went wild. They let the dogs out. Woof! Woof! Woof! Even those who disliked the way Ailes runs his network joined in the display of fealty, given the culture of intimidation at Fox News. “It’s like the Soviet Union or China: People are always looking over their shoulders,” says a former executive with the network’s parent, News Corp. “There are people who turn people in.”
The key to decoding Fox News isn’t Bill O’Reilly or Sean Hannity. It isn’t even News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch. To understand what drives Fox News, and what its true purpose is, you must first understand Chairman Ailes. “He is Fox News,” says Jane Hall, a decade-long Fox commentator who defected over Ailes’ embrace of the fear-mongering Glenn Beck. “It’s his vision. It’s a reflection of him.”
Ailes runs the most profitable – and therefore least accountable – head of the News Corp. hydra. Fox News reaped an estimated profit of $816 million last year – nearly a fifth of Murdoch’s global haul. The cable channel’s earnings rivaled those of News Corp.’s entire film division, which includes 20th Century Fox, and helped offset a slump at Murdoch’s beloved newspapers unit, which took a $3 billion write-down after acquiring The Wall Street Journal. With its bare-bones newsgathering operation – Fox News has one-third the staff and 30 fewer bureaus than CNN – Ailes generates profit margins above 50 percent. Nearly half comes from advertising, and the rest is dues from cable companies. Fox News now reaches 100 million households, attracting more viewers than all other cable-news outlets combined, and Ailes aims for his network to “throw off a billion in profits.”
The outsize success of Fox News gives Ailes a free hand to shape the network in his own image. “Murdoch has almost no involvement with it at all,” says Michael Wolff, who spent nine months embedded at News Corp. researching a biography of the Australian media giant. “People are afraid of Roger. Murdoch is, himself, afraid of Roger. He has amassed enormous power within the company – and within the country – from the success of Fox News.”
Fear, in fact, is precisely what Ailes is selling: His network has relentlessly hyped phantom menaces like the planned “terror mosque” near Ground Zero, inspiring Florida pastor Terry Jones to torch the Koran. Privately, Murdoch is as impressed by Ailes’ business savvy as he is dismissive of his extremist politics. “You know Roger is crazy,” Murdoch recently told a colleague, shaking his head in disbelief. “He really believes that stuff.”
As the ACLU has documented elsewhere, there has been a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment and attacks on Muslim communities in the U.S. in the last few years. Most recently, multiple states have proposed legislation banning the consideration of Islamic or "Sharia" law by state courts. Anti-Muslim groups claim these measures are necessary because the courts are being "overtaken" by Sharia law. Specifically, Sharia-ban proponents have pointed to a number of court cases involving Islamic religious doctrine or Muslim parties that supposedly evince a "Sharia threat" to our judicial system.
A new report by the ACLU, Nothing to Fear: Debunking the Mythical "Sharia Threat" to Our Judicial System, examines, in detail, the cases repeatedly cited by anti-Muslim groups as evidence of the alleged "Sharia threat" to our judicial system. The report concludes that these cases do not stand for the principles that anti-Muslim groups claim. Rather, these court cases deal with routine matters, such as religious freedom claims and contractual disputes. Courts treat these lawsuits in the same way that they deal with similar claims brought by people of other faiths. So instead of the harbingers of doom that anti-Muslim groups make them out to be, these cases illustrate that our judicial system is alive and well, and operating as it should.
As we argue in our case challenging an Oklahoma Sharia law ban, prohibiting courts from considering Islamic law serves only one purpose: to bar Muslims from having the same rights and access to the courts as any other religious individuals. For example, if Sharia law were completely banned from consideration, it would be nearly impossible for Muslims to bring First Amendment claims when their religious rights are violated because the court could be barred from referring to a Muslim plaintiff’s religious beliefs. This result would be patently unfair because it would single out Muslims for disfavorable treatment in our judicial system and render them second-class citizens.
People of all faiths routinely turn to our legal system to protect the right to practice their religion. The Supreme Court has, for example, upheld the right of a Christian to receive unemployment benefits after refusing to work on Sundays in violation of his religious beliefs; and the right of Amish parents to withhold their children from compulsory education on religious grounds. Muslims should not be denied the same opportunities in court, and lawsuits that happen to involve their Islamic faith do not present a "threat" to our legal system any more than claims asserted by Christians, Jews, or other religious individuals.
Osama bin Laden warned in his final audio tape recorded before being killed by American commandos there will be no US security before the Palestinians live in security, an Islamist website reported Sunday.
Addressing US President Barack Obama, he said: “America will not be able to dream of security until we live in security in Palestine. It is unfair that you live in peace while our brothers in Gaza live in insecurity.”
“Accordingly, and with the will of God, our attacks will continue against you as long as your support for Israel continues,” he warned in a message posted on Shamikh1.net, a conduit for Al-Qaeda communications.
The founder of Al-Qaeda said he had tried to send a “message” to the United States through Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to explode a bomb on a Detroit-bound US airliner in December 2009.
“If it were possible to send you messages by way of words, we would not have had to use planes to send them to you,” he said.
“So the message we wanted to convey through the plane of our hero, the fighter Umar Farouk, may God be with him, confirms a previous message which had been sent to you by our heroes of September 11,” he said in a clear reference to the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States.
The audio recording lasting 1.02 minutes had no reference to the recent popular Arab uprising.
However, jihadists had said that the tape, made a week before bin Laden’s death, would have a message for the Arab Spring.
Another branch of the terror network, Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), gave bin Laden credit for the popular Arab revolutions and asked followers to turn their “grief into action” against the West.
“Do not cry for him… Instead rise and go on his path… Rise and thwart the American Zionist Western unjust aggression with all of your power and energy,” the AQIM said in a statement.
“These events that are storming through the Arab region are only a fruit among the fruits of jihad in which the Sheikh (bin Laden) had a prominent role,” the AQIM said. (AFP)
There’s little sign of an end to the conflict in Libya, nearly two months after Western fighter jets began bombing leader Moammar Gadhafi’s forces. The disorganized anti-Gadhafi rebels have been unable to break out of their stronghold of Benghazi in eastern Libya despite the air support.
With signs of a military deadlock, some in the West are calling for a renewed focus on isolating the Libyan dictator financially and politically. But NATO commanders leading the war effort caution patience and insist there has been more progress than meets the eye.
Everything points to a prolonged stalemate in Libya. In the east, the front is static: Gadhafi’s forces are dug in near the important oil ports of Brega and Ras Lanuf. In the west, the dictator’s forces are shelling the town of Zintan and are in firm control of Tripoli, the capital. In Misrata, the rebel’s main western enclave, Gadhafi’s forces still control the airport and all access to the city except the port, which Gadhafi has tried to mine and which he sporadically shells with heavy artillery.
But to U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Mark Ramsay, the glass is half full. NATO’s chief of operations and intelligence says Gadhafi now is unable to effectively command his forces in the field. Take communications: Gadhafi, he says, now has to use unsecured phones and couriers.
“He has to resort to all sorts of measures that no military professional wants to resort to,” Ramsay says. “I wouldn’t say he’s in the 1860 cavalry mode, but it’s getting pretty close to that.” (NPR)
Military forces loyal to Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi struck the fuel terminal of this rebel-controlled city early Saturday with ground-to-ground rockets, igniting a fire that threatened the city’s fuel supply.
The barrage struck shortly after midnight, when rockets began landing and exploding in several areas of the terminal, officials there said.
At least one rocket hit a set of three mammoth tanks, which ruptured and burst into a fireball. The fire settled into a leaping blaze that towered overheard, visible for miles. Its glow illuminated the eastern section of the city throughout the night. Residents woke to a thick, drifting cloud of black smoke.
The attack on the terminal was another escalation against the besieged city, and the second pinpoint attack by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces in two nights.
Residents woke Friday to the news that Misurata’s port, its only lifeline to the outside world, had been peppered with antitank land mines.
At the fuel terminal, a small contingent of firefighters worked throughout the night and the day trying to contain the fire, which had destroyed all three storage tanks in one section of the terminal, but had not spread.
“We want to protect the other tanks from exploding,” said Mufta Youssef, one of the firefighters, after backing away from the containers’ blackened remains for a break from the heat.
No one was wounded in the attack or the firefighting effort, officials said.
The tanks contained diesel fuel and gasoline — each roughly 6,000 cubic meters, or 1.5 million gallons — said Muftah Bazina, the terminal’s director.
The effect on the city’s energy supply was not immediately apparent. Misurata has been cut off from new sources of fuel since the uprising against the Qaddafi government began in February. But it began the siege with large reservoirs of diesel fuel and gasoline, and so far there have not been shortages. (New York Times)
How do you teach in schools where history books omitted revolutions, geography books had few maps and children learned never to question authority?
Libyan rebels are having to come up with responses to those and related issues as they try to reopen schools in rebel-held Benghazi where in the past much of the curriculum was devoted to the wisdom of longtime ruler Colonel Muamma Gaddafi.
Before the uprising against him began in February, “Mushtama” and “Fikr-al-Jamahiri” weekly lessons based on the Gaddafi doctrine were mandatory and the leader’s thinking permeated everything from history to Arabic textbooks, rebels say.
Schoolchildren studied insights from Gaddafi’s Green Book, which famously includes lines like “Women menstruate every month or so, while men, being male, do not” and were quizzed on topics like “Why was Gaddafi’s 1969 revolution successful?”
The correct answer to that, students learned, lay in four points, the first point being that it was planned in secret.
“It was really shameful that you had to memorise and repeat all the things it said as if you were convinced of it,” said Brayka Tarhouni, a doctor who was told to repeat her second year of university after passing all her medical subjects but failing Fikr-Al-Jamihiri.
Those subjects will no longer be taught when schools reopen, but rebel officials said there is much more to overhaul.
“My son in fourth grade was being taught about the Stone Age in history class,” said Hanal el-Gallal, who oversees education issues for the local council in the rebel base of Benghazi.
“History was completely distorted. If you ask any Libyan about historical events, they wouldn’t know about it.
“They don’t know anything about World War One, World War Two or the French Revolution. He (Gaddafi) was scared of any story that might make people stand up for their rights.” (Reuters)
Egypt’s military rulers have detained 190 people in connection with the clashes between Muslims and Christians in Cairo in which at least 12 people have been killed and more than 230 others wounded.
The situation remained tense on Sunday, a day after violence first erupted in the Egyptian capital’s northwestern neighbourhood of Imbaba.
Witnesses said the clashes broke out after a mob of ultraconservative Muslims marched on a Coptic Christian church in Imbaba.
The march began over an apparent relationship between a Coptic woman and a Muslim man, amid reports that the woman was being held inside against her will and prevented from converting to Islam.
The verbal clash soon developed into a full-fledged confrontation where the two sides exchanged gunfire, firebombs and stones, and another church nearby was set on fire. (Al Jazeera)
Two Muslim religious leaders were asked to leave a commercial airliner in Memphis – and were told it was because the pilot refused to fly with them aboard.
Masudur Rahman and another imam had already been allowed to board their Delta Connection flight from Memphis, Tennessee, to Charlotte, North Carolina before they were asked to get off the plane.
Ironically, the two men were headed to a North American Imams conference discussing Islamophobia or fears of Islam and discrimination against American Muslims.
Racism? Masudur Rahman and Mohamed Zaghloul were removed from a flight to North Carolina because the pilot did not want to fly with them
‘It’s racism and bias because of our religion and appearance and because of misinformation about our religion.’ Mr Rahman said. ‘If they understood Islam, they wouldn’t do this.’
Mr Rahman said he and Mohamed Zaghloul, of the Islamic Association of Greater Memphis, were cleared by security agents and boarded the plane for an 8.40am departure.
The aircraft pulled away from the gate, but the pilot then announced the plane must return, Mr Rahman said.
When it did, the imams were asked to go back to the boarding gate where they were told the pilot was refusing to accept them because some other passengers could be uncomfortable. (Daily Mail)
Police on Saturday arrested 61 people — including 19 women — for attempting to hold an outlawed Paris protest against France’s pending ban on face-covering Islamic veils, a top police official said.
Fifty-nine people were detained while trying to demonstrate at Place de la Nation in eastern Paris, as were two others while traveling there from Britain and Belgium, said Nicolas Lerner, chief of staff for the Paris police chief.
The arrests come amid in a rising, if small, groundswell of controversy over Monday’s start of an official ban of garments that hide the face, which includes Muslim veils such as the slit-eyed niqab and the full face-covering burqa. Women who disobey the law risk a fine, special classes and a police record.
There was a time when Shazia Mirza, stand-up comic and British Asian Muslim, performed as a character who wore a hijab. She doesn’t now. But she still has a good line on the full-body veil. “All my cousins in France wear the burqa. Which is great. Because they all use the same bus pass.”
Not any more. Tomorrow, France launches a full-scale ban. For Sarkozy and his friends, the burqa is no joke. It’s dangerous and illegal. Women wearing the burqa and the niqab (the more common facial veil) will not exactly be arrested on sight. But if they wear a veil over their face in a public place, anyone can ask them to uncover their face – or leave. Not quite stop and search. Just stop and unmask. If a woman refuses to co-operate, citizens are advised to call the police. The fine is €150.
Does this sound a little unfriendly to you? If so, be very worried. Because this trend is spreading. A ban is already in operation in Belgium and under discussion in Canada, Denmark and Spain. It is likely to become law in the Netherlands this year or next. There have been calls in Sweden for the niqab to be prohibited in schools and universities.
A de facto ban already exists in Italy (where a 1975 antiterrorism law forbids the covering of the face) and Berlusconi’s party has drafted a new, more specific ruling. Last year, a Tunisian woman was fined €500 for wearing a burqa in Italy’s Piedmont region.
Reflecting on the results of a survey on American attitudes towards Islam, Jonathan Wright writes:
Maybe it’s time that educational curricula made a deliberate effort to explain the diversity of opinion within such communities, emphasizing the way that believers, as individuals and as groups, emphasize the doctrines that suit their worldly interests and political dispositions. Any religion that has existed for so many centuries across such a vast geographical expanse offers a wide range of alternative doctines, many of them incompatible or contradictory. ‘Islam’ as a stable unitary construct hardly exists, except in the most banal sense, however much both Muslims and their enemies might claim that it does. Only individual Muslims can endow the label with meaning, and each Muslim does so in a way that is never identical to the way other individual Muslims do so. This is widely accepted among theoreticians (Aziz al-Azmeh comes to mind – “There are as many Islams as there are situations which contain it”), but it’s clearly taking quite a while for this to sink in among the general public. One day, the Pew Research Center might offer people who respond to such surveys an option reflecting this insight.
Last week, legislators in Tennessee introduced a radical bill that would make “material support” for Islamic law punishable by 15 years in prison. The proposal marks a dramatic new step in the conservative campaign against Muslim-Americans. If passed, critics say even seemingly benign activities like re-painting the exterior of a mosque or bringing food to a potluck could be classified as a felony.
The Tennessee bill, SB 1028, didn’t come out of nowhere. Though it’s the first of its kind, the bill is part of a wave of related measures that would ban state courts from enforcing Sharia law. (A court might refer to Sharia law in child custody or prisoner rights cases.) Since early 2010, such legislation has been considered in at least 15 states. And while fears of an impending caliphate are myriad on the far-right, the surge of legislation across the country is largely due to the work of one man: David Yerushalmi, an Arizona-based white supremacist who has previously called for a “war against Islam” and tried to criminalize adherence to the Muslim faith.
Yerushalmi, a lawyer, is the founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE), which has been called a “hate group” by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). His draft legislation served as the foundation for the Tennessee bill, and at least half a dozen other anti-Islam measures—including two bills that were signed into law last year in Louisiana and Tennessee.
As the train of democracy gathers steam in Egypt, there are those nearby who seem eager to throw themselves under its wheels.
No doubt an observer such as the Israeli historian, Benny Morris, is vain enough to imagine that he is not about to get run over but, on the contrary, hopes his grave warnings will encourage others to seize the train’s brakes and prevent an imminent catastrophe.
What is more likely to happen is that we will only need wait a matter of months before Morris and fellow fearmongers will be exposed as hysterical fools or intellectual rogues.
Morris believes that those of us in the West currently intoxicated by the glorious vision of democracy taking birth in Egypt, have only been able to indulge in such emotions because we don’t understand what Egyptians really want.
Alas, I fear, Westerners will see what most Egyptians actually think and want if and when the country holds free and fair general elections (perhaps in September-October). And I fear that they will be surprised—perhaps even shocked—by the results, and by what the Egyptian masses then say about what they actually think and want. I fear that at that point, “Death to Israel,” “Death to America,” and “Allahu Akbar” will drown out every democratizing and liberalizing chant.
But by then the genie will be well out of the bottle; by then, it will be too late.
Trapped inside a misanthropic Zionist mindset, Morris seems incapable of recognizing that at the core of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, the driving force is not ideological. It is a universal and human demand for respect.
Sensing themselves newly visible on a world stage, ordinary Tunisians and Egyptians stood up, individually and collectively, and said: we refuse to be treated as less than human. We are reclaiming the dignity that is everyone’s birthright and will no longer tolerate the abuse of brutal rulers or the indifference of foreign powers. We demand to be heard and respected.
To the extent that the call from the dignity revolutions is being heard far beyond the Arab world, it resonates most with those who to differing degrees and for different reasons, share the same experience. That many of us live in democracies does little to diminish a sense that our governments do not represent our interests. And that so many of our fellow citizens respond to this reality with indifference only makes us envy the courage and imagination of people who do otherwise as they rise up, declare and discover: we have the power to change the world.
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Anders Behring Breivik, the 32-year-old Norwegian man widely assumed to be responsible for the mass murder that took place in Oslo yesterday, is being referred to as a 
