Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Lawrence Davidson: Justifying an Anti-Muslim Terrorist

The massacre of 77 people in Norway by a Muslim-hating extremist has prompted soul-searching among some Christians and Jews, but also has provoked rationalizations from some in Israel and elsewhere who view fear and loathing of Muslims as key to their political cause, writes Lawrence Davidson. 

By Lawrence Davidson, Consortium News,  Aug. 8, 2011

By now the world is aware that, despite the ardent wishful thinking of the Western media, the terrorism that struck Oslo on July 22 was not perpetrated by a Muslim individual or organization. It was done by a local Norwegian named Anders Behring Breivik.

The object of his terror was the Norwegian government and its cultural and foreign policies. The government’s sins seem to have been being too much in favor of multiculturalism, too little opposed to Muslims, and not being an ally of Israel.

Breivik is at the violent end of a continuum of fear and loathing toward those who are culturally and/or religiously different. In this case, Muslim immigrants in Europe.

Like millions of others along this anti-Other continuum, he is angry that people different from himself are showing up in his neighborhood. It probably never occurred to him that given one or two generations most of these outsiders would be brought to share the culture and outlook of their adopted lands.

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