Thursday, July 28, 2011

Nidal is Muslim But Breivik is Not Christian?

Taking his cues from the usual Hindu Nationalists' anti-Muslim rhetoric, Norwegian terror suspect Anders Breivik believed there were conspiracies to suppress evidence of a “Hindu genocide” in India. In support of this contention, he quoted verbatim from a Hindu conspiracy theory website in his manifesto, one of many Indian websites that he cited and quoted from, according to the Wall Street Journal.



A Christian Science Monitor report said that a Hindu nationalist leader B.P Singhal, while condemning the shooting, didn’t condemn Mr. Breivik’s ideas. The Monitor quoted Singhal as saying, “I was with the shooter in his objective, but not in his method.”

Singhal was quick to add that he has not corresponded with Breivik, nor does he see much need for alliances to counter Islam’s spread.

The Hindu Nationalists are not alone in distancing themselves from Anders Breivik. It's interesting to see how the Muslim-hating Christian Right in America is also trying to distance itself from the Oslo killer. It's the same people who routinely blame the entire Muslim faith for the violent actions of a few who claim to be Muslim.



For example, Fox Cable TV talk show host Bill O’Reilly has said it was “impossible” that Breivik is Christian just because he claimed to be one. John Stewart took the opportunity to catch O’Reilly's hypocrisy in a recent episode of his popular Daily Show, pointing out that O'Reilly was quite comfortable calling Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood shooting, a “Muslim terrorist” because he had a business card that said “Soldier of Allah.”

“See. That guy printed up a "Soldier of Allah" business card. The other guy only printed up an "Army of Christ" manifesto,” Stewart said on his Daily Show. “I guess the only connection is both psychos, for some reason, spent the day at Kinko’s.”

Stewart concluded by offering that "the Fox News rapid-response team distinguishes violence in the name of a religion from the practitioners of that religion -- as long as it's Christianity".

Here's a video clip of The Daily Show With John Stewart on the subject:



Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Norway Terrorist Inspired By Hindutva Rhetoric

Islam 101 According to FBI Guide

Exposing King's Hypocrisy

Saudi Funding Hate in America

Radical Hindu Government in Exile in Israel

Hindu Nationalists Admire Nazis

Can India Do a Lebanon in Pakistan?

Israeli Approval Ratings Highest in India

India's Washington Lobby Collaborates with Israel Lobby

Enraged Hindu Nationalists Gang Up on Musharraf

Gandhi Opposed Creation of Israel

Hitler Memorabilia Attracts Young Indians

Hindutva Terror Can Spark Indo-Pakistan War?

India-Israel-US Axis

India's Israel Envy\

Anders Breivik's Manifesto

Eropol Terror Stats 2011 Report

15 comments:

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt from a Guardian story on Breivik's Hindutva connection:

In his rambling 1,500-page manifesto, Breivik voiced approval of Hindu nationalist parties and called for the deportation of all Muslims from India. He also berated the Congress-led government for "appeasing Muslims and, very sadly, proselytising Christian missionaries who illegally convert low cast Hindus with lies and fear".

Hindu nationalist leaders have denied links with Breivik and some have sought to distance themselves from his actions. Others, however, have expressed sympathy with Breivik's ideas.

"It is time we sit up and discuss issues like multiculturalism, immigration, [and the] problem of Islam's assimilation with liberal democracies without any malice," prominent nationalist Hindu leader Ram Madhav wrote in his blog.

Former Indian MP BP Singhal, of the Bhartiya Janata party, was more forthright. "I was with the shooter in his objective but not in his method," he told the US-based Christian Science Monitor. Singhal said India and Norway should deny voting rights to "foreign religionists" in order to resolve "the bane of democracy".


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/28/norway-massacre-india-reaction

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt from a Counterpoint article titled "The New Anti-Semitism" by Uri Avnery:

The Nazi Propaganda Minister, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, calls his boss, Adolf Hitler, by hell-phone.

“Mein Führer,” he exclaims excitedly. “News from the world. It seems we were on the right track, after all. Anti-Semitism is conquering Europe!”

“Good!” the Führer says, “That will be the end of the Jews!”

“Hmmm…well…not exactly, mein Führer. It looks as though we chose the wrong Semites. Our heirs, the new Nazis, are going to annihilate the Arabs and all the other Muslims in Europe.” Then, with a chuckle, “After all, there are many more Muslims than Jews to exterminate.”

“But what about the Jews?” Hitler insists.

“You won’t believe this: the new Nazis love Israel, the Jewish State - and Israel loves them!”

THE atrocity committed this week by the Norwegian neo-Nazi – is it an isolated incident? Right-wing extremists all over Europe and the US are already declaiming in unison: “He does not belong to us! He is just a lone individual with a deranged mind! There are crazy people everywhere! You cannot condemn a whole political camp for the deeds of one single person!”

Sounds familiar. Where did we hear this before?

Of course, after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin.

There is no connection between the Oslo mass-murder and the assassination in Tel Aviv. Or is there?

During the months leading up to Rabin’s murder, a growing hate campaign was orchestrated against him. Almost all the Israeli right-wing groups were competing among themselves to see who could demonize him most effectively.

In one demonstration, a photo-montage of Rabin in the uniform of an [] SS officer was paraded around. On the balcony overlooking this demonstration, Binyamin Netanyahu could be seen applauding wildly, while a coffin marked “Rabin” was paraded below. Religious groups staged a medieval, kabbalistic ceremony, in which Rabin was condemned to death. Senior rabbis took part in the campaign. No right-wing or religious voices were raised in warning.

The actual murder was indeed carried out by a single individual, Yigal Amir, a former settler, the student of a religious university. It is generally assumed that before the deed he consulted with at least one senior rabbi. Like Anders Behring Breivik, the Oslo murderer, he planned his deed carefully, over a long time, and executed it cold-bloodedly. He had no accomplices.


http://www.counterpunch.org/avnery07292011.html

Anonymous said...

Probably a statistical representation of violence by muslim on themself or against others vs. other believes will give a more clear picture of trends of religious violence.

Further other believes like hindus and christian are taking lesson from muslim violene as a mark of bravery to perpetuate the same animal like behaviour

satwa

Riaz Haq said...

Satwa: "Further other believes like hindus and christian are taking lesson from muslim violene as a mark of bravery to perpetuate the same animal like behaviour"

Your comments reflect your anti-Muslim bigotry based on ignorance.

To get enlightened, look at Europl terrorism data for 2010, for example.

The Europol TE-Stat 2011 report appendix 2 shows that only 3 out of 249 terror incidents in 2010 involved Muslim attackers.

https://www.europol.europa.eu/sites/default/files/publications/te-sat2011.pdf

Anonymous said...

Here is what a no "friend of muslims" Fareed Zakaria said on his FB paage "Of the 294 terror attacks committed in Europe in 2009, only one was conducted by Islamists. That's a third of one percent. There were 249 terror attacks in Europe in 2010. Only three of those attacks were carried out by Islamist terrorists. Again, that's about one percent. Most of the attacks were by separatist groups or anarchists."

Also another 'ex-expert' Perter Bergen of CNN echoed the same today in an interview on KQED - SFO.

Riaz Haq said...

Anon: "Fareed Zakaria said on his FB paage "Of the 294 terror attacks committed in Europe in 2009, only one was conducted by Islamists."

Yes, I heard Fareed Zakaria say the exact same thing on his CNN GPS show.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2011/07/31/what-is-the-knights-templar/

I also heard Peter Bergen on NPR Fresh Air with Terry Gross compare the manhunt for bin Laden with that of Whitey Bulger. Both men were on the FBI Most Wanted list, and Bulger lived undetected in the US for 17 years until his recent arrest, far longer than bin Laden is said to lived undetected in Pakistan.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/138783681/how-bin-ladens-death-has-affected-al-qaida

Zen, Munich, Germany said...

Riaz,

Muslims have been very bad in media management - lack of leadership. I am not saying that its alright to do terrorism so long as one handles media correctly, rather that Muslims effectively failed to counter the anti Muslim propaganda of some hate mongers when some fringe elements from their community conducts terror. The explicit use of religious texts in videos by terrorists also helped these anti muslim business.
Now though Brevik did more or less the same by quoting Christianity as his motivation for terror, the failure by mainstream Westerners to condemn it as Christian terrorism is hypocrisy from their side. If his name had been Mo.., then there would have been another anti Muslim witch hunting.
Brevik's texts also show the unholy nexus between Christian fundamentalists, Zionists, and Hindutwa - both ideologically and sometimes logistically through internet it seems. They motivate each other in their rhetoric. This was considered an Islamist conspiracy theory, but Brevik proved it correct. This shows that hatred and violence is a state of mind and Islamist extremists do not have the exclusive copyright of it.

Riaz Haq said...

Zen: "This shows that hatred and violence is a state of mind and Islamist extremists do not have the exclusive copyright of it."

I agree with your statement, as does the data compiled by the FBI, Europol, and others.

Riaz Haq said...

Yet another mass shooting in America--this time at Sikh temple where a white supremacist gunman killed Sikhs apparently mistaking them for Muslims.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sikh-temple-shooter-was-military-veteran-who-lived-nearby/2012/08/06/648d8134-dfbd-11e1-a421-8bf0f0e5aa11_story.html

The subtext to this and similar anti-Sikh violence appears to be the hysterical Islamophobic rhetoric that conflates all Muslims with terrorists and it amounts to outright fearmongering. It must stop to free us all from these kinds of incidents in America. Rather than distancing themselves from fellow Americans who happen to be Muslim, the Sikhs and other minorities as well as the white Christian majority must take a stand against such violence. I applaud Ethan for this timely and well-written piece in this regard.

http://www.ethancasey.com/2012/08/the-wisconsin-sikh-killings-and-an-america-worth-fighting-for/comment-page-1/

Riaz Haq said...

Here's an excerpt of a NY Post Op Ed by Bill Cosby:

I’m a Christian. But Muslims are misunderstood. Intentionally misunderstood. We should all be more like them. They make sense, especially with their children. There is no other group like the Black Muslims, who put so much effort into teaching children the right things, they don’t smoke, they don’t drink or overindulge in alcohol, they protect their women, they command respect. And what do these other people do?
They complain about them, they criticize them. We’d be a better world if we emulated them. We don’t have to become black Muslims, but we can embrace the things that work.


http://nypost.com/2013/06/09/bill-cosby-a-plague-called-apathy/

Riaz Haq said...

In 1807, American readers were titillated by a potboiler entitled “History of the captivity and sufferings of Mrs. Maria Martin.” Its salacious story was summed up by its pithy subtitle: “Who was six years a slave in Algiers, two of which she was confined in a dark and dismal dungeon, loaded with irons for refusing to comply with the brutal request of a Turkish officer.”

We often forget that Americans have been thinking about Islam for centuries. In the republic’s early days, Muslims not only accounted for a large part of the enslaved labor force but also often appeared in stories as fearful figures in far-off places—dark hazards to American virtue. These old images help illuminate today’s American debates about Islam.

In the early republic, popular accounts of “Mohammedanism” were largely limited to tales of the capture and enslavement of Americans in Muslim lands. Narratives like Mrs. Maria Martin’s joined fears of North African pirates with titillating plots of kidnapping. They echoed the era’s best-selling accounts of colonists trapped by American Indians.

As the 19th century progressed, some abolitionists began to argue that Islam had things to teach Christianity. Slavery’s foes called slave owners in Muslim lands more fair than their U.S. counterparts.

In 1810, for instance, the New Hampshire Patriot ran a story called “Mohammedan Forbearance,” depicting a Muslim caliph as a model of faith and morality. Even after a slave spills a dish and scalds him, the caliph treats the slave well and later frees him, quoting the Quran to buttress his mercy. This example, the journal says, “might be usefully imitated by the professors of purer doctrines.”

Islam was deployed here as a setting for a morally instructive yarn that sought at once to enlighten and shame its audience. If a Muslim could heed his supposedly lesser religion’s call to free slaves and improve their lot, how could Christians—even if they disdained Islam—not do likewise?

The notion that slavery governed by Islam was more humane than slavery governed by the Gospel was no doubt a fantasy—but a durable one. Seven years later, the Connecticut Courant published a report called “Treatment of Negro Slaves in Morocco,” calling for Christians to learn moral virtues from Muslims. The abolitionists behind the report didn’t deny that many Muslims were slave owners and traders, but they argued that those who prayed to Allah often treated their captives better than did those who prayed to Christ. “The more intelligent [slaves] learn to read and write” and “acquire a partial knowledge of the Koran,” the Courant claimed of slaves in Islamic lands. Their “master exults in having converted an infidel”—and then, like the Patriot’s caliph, sets such slaves free.

Such kid-glove treatment of Islam in the press soon disappeared—due in part, perhaps, to widespread fears from an 1835 Muslim-led slave revolt in the Brazilian city of Bahia, which riveted Americans even outside the slave states. A Massachusetts report was typically breathless: “On the morning of the 25th of January the whole city of Bahia was thrown into a state of the greatest excitement in consequence of an insurrection of the slaves…It was by far the best planned and most extensive rising ever contemplated by those unfortunate beings.”

Later called the Malê rebellion—from the Yoruba word for Muslim—this slave uprising was a religious battle waged by Muslims against Christian slavery. Many of the dead were found wearing protective amulets made of leather pouches, containing slips of paper upon which were inscribed Quranic verses. It was Christian slaveholders’ worst nightmare—a potential holy war on every plantation....

http://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-forgotten-images-of-islam-1425077665

Riaz Haq said...

Is religion relevant? Would ‪#‎Germanwings‬ co-pilot be called terrorist if he were ‪#‎Muslim‬? ‪#‎GermanWingsCrash‬ ‪#‎terror‬

http://www.juancole.com/2015/03/religion-german-terrorist.html

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) –
Once it became clear that Andreas Lubitz, 28, deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, a reporter immediately asked “what was his religion?” (Parent company Lufthansa said they didn’t know). Authorities said there was no evidence it was “terrorism.”
Lubitz is from Rhineland-Palatinate, known for its wine-growing and pharmaceuticals. It is roughly 2/5s Roman Catholic and a third Lutheran. A fourth of its people don’t really care about religion one way or another.
Why in the world would his religion be relevant? If he did crash the plane on purpose then presumably he was depressed and wanted not only to commit suicide but also to be a mass murderer. You could understand how a depressed person with low self-esteem might think it ego-boosting to determine the fate of so many others.
It isn’t political terrorism, likely, but certainly it was a terroristic act of killing.
But we know why they asked. It was out of bigotry against Muslims, probing whether another one had gone postal. The subtext is that white Christians don’t go off the deep end, even though obviously they do, in large numbers. It isn’t a logical question about Andreas Lubitz from Rhineland-Palatinate. Zeynep Tufekci tweeted,

Riaz Haq said...

Is religion relevant? Would ‪#‎Germanwings‬ co-pilot be called terrorist if he were ‪#‎Muslim‬? ‪#‎GermanWingsCrash‬ ‪#‎terror‬

http://www.juancole.com/2015/03/religion-german-terrorist.html

By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) –
Once it became clear that Andreas Lubitz, 28, deliberately crashed Germanwings Flight 9525, a reporter immediately asked “what was his religion?” (Parent company Lufthansa said they didn’t know). Authorities said there was no evidence it was “terrorism.”
Lubitz is from Rhineland-Palatinate, known for its wine-growing and pharmaceuticals. It is roughly 2/5s Roman Catholic and a third Lutheran. A fourth of its people don’t really care about religion one way or another.
Why in the world would his religion be relevant? If he did crash the plane on purpose then presumably he was depressed and wanted not only to commit suicide but also to be a mass murderer. You could understand how a depressed person with low self-esteem might think it ego-boosting to determine the fate of so many others.
It isn’t political terrorism, likely, but certainly it was a terroristic act of killing.
But we know why they asked. It was out of bigotry against Muslims, probing whether another one had gone postal. The subtext is that white Christians don’t go off the deep end, even though obviously they do, in large numbers. It isn’t a logical question about Andreas Lubitz from Rhineland-Palatinate. Zeynep Tufekci tweeted,

Riaz Haq said...

Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who represents 150 victims of American drones and was twice denied entry to the U.S. to speak about them, told my Intercept colleague Ryan Devereaux how two of his child clients would likely react to Obama’s “apology” yesterday:

“Today, if Nabila or Zubair or many of the civilian victims, if they are watching on TV the president being so remorseful over the killing of a Westerner, what message is that taking?” The answer, he argued, is “that you do not matter, you are children of a lesser God, and I’m only going to mourn if a Westerner is killed.”

The British-Yemeni journalist Abubakr Al-Shamahi put it succinctly: “It makes me angry that non-Western civilian victims of drone strikes are not given the same recognition by the US administration.” The independent journalist Naheed Mustafa said she was “hugely irritated by the ‘drone strikes have killed good Westerners so now we know there are issues with drones’ stories.” The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson this morning observed: “It is all too easy to ignore … the dubious morality of the whole enterprise — until the unfortunate victims happen to be Westerners. Only then does ‘collateral damage’ become big news and an occasion for public sorrow.”

This highlights the ugliest propaganda tactic on which the War on Terror centrally depends, one in which the U.S. media is fully complicit: American and Western victims of violence by Muslims are endlessly mourned, while Muslim victims of American and Western violence are completely disappeared.

When there is an attack by a Muslim on Westerners in Paris, Sydney, Ottawa, Fort Hood or Boston, we are deluged with grief-inducing accounts of the victims. We learn their names and their extinguished life aspirations, see their pictures, hear from their grieving relatives, watch ceremonies honoring their lives and mourning their deaths, launch campaigns to memorialize them. Our side’s victims aren’t just humanized by our media, but are publicly grieved as martyrs.

I happened to be in Canada the week of the shooting at the Parliament in Ottawa, as well as a random attack on two Canadian soldiers days earlier in a parking lot in Southern Quebec, and there was non-stop media coverage of the victims, their families, their lives:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/24/central-war-terror-propaganda-tool-western-victims-acknowledged/

Riaz Haq said...

Shooters of color are called ‘terrorists’. Why are white shooters called ‘mentally ill’? #CharlestonShooting http://wpo.st/-l8M0

Police are investigating the shooting of nine African Americans at Emmanuel AME church in Charleston as a hate crime committed by a white man. Unfortunately, it’s not a unique event in American history. Black churches have long been a target of white supremacists who burned and bombed them in an effort to terrorize the black communities that those churches anchored. One of the most egregious terrorist acts in U.S. history was committed against a black church in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. Four girls were killed when members of the KKK bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, a tragedy that ignited the Civil Rights Movement.

But listen to major media outlets and you won’t hear the word “terrorism” used in coverage of Tuesday’s shooting. You won’t hear the white male shooter, identified as 21-year-old Dylann Roof, described as “a possible terrorist.” And if coverage of recent shootings by white suspects is any indication, he never will be. Instead, the go-to explanation for his actions will be mental illness. He will be humanized and called sick, a victim of mistreatment or inadequate mental health resources. Activist Deray McKesson noted this morning that, while discussing Roof’s motivations, an MSNBC anchor said “we don’t know his mental condition.” That is the power of whiteness in America.