Thursday, July 28, 2011

Who Commits Terrorism?


Robert Parry, Consortium News, July 27, 2011

Exclusive: A right-wing Christian nationalist has claimed credit for the terrorist attacks in Norway, killing at least 76 people. Though his writings show that Anders Behring Breivik was inspired by anti-Muslim extremists in the United States, that bigotry also made Muslims the early suspects in the U.S. media, Robert Parry reports.

If the Fox News promoters of racial profiling had been in charge of investigating last Friday’s terror attack in Norway, they might well have encountered blond, blue-eyed Anders Behring Breivik and his two smoking-hot guns only long enough to ask if he’d seen any suspicious-looking Muslims around.

After all, it has been a touchstone of the American Right, as well as right-wing Israelis, that Muslims are the source of virtually all terrorism and thus it makes little sense to focus attention on non-Muslims. A clean-cut Nordic sort like Breivik, who fancies himself part of a modern-day Knights Templar, is someone who would get a pass.

Or, as Israel’s UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman told a conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in 2006, “While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim.” [Washington Post, March 7, 2006]

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