Tag: Anders Behring Breivik

Immigration and Islam Raise Questions of Dutch Identity

Amid Rise of Multiculturalism, Dutch Confront Their Questions of Identity

By STEVEN ERLANGER

AMSTERDAM — Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian who admitted to mass killings last month, was obsessed with Islam and had high praise for the Netherlands, an important test case in the resurgence of the anti-immigrant right in northern Europe.

Herman Wouters for The New York Times

Albert Cuyp Market, on a popular street in Amsterdam. In light of the mass killings in Norway, the Netherlands’ population of Muslim immigrants from Morocco and Turkey has stirred debate.

The sometimes violent European backlash against Islam and its challenge to national values can be said to have started here, in a country born from Europe’s religious wars. After a decade of growing public anger, an aggressively anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim politician, Geert Wilders, leads the third-largest party, which keeps the government in power.

In Slotervaart, a majority immigrant neighborhood in southwestern Amsterdam, Maria Kuhlman and her friends watched Muslim families stroll by on a Ramadan afternoon, some of the men in robes and beards, the women wearing headscarves. A large blond woman shouted, “Go Wilders!”

Mr. Wilders’ Freedom Party, which combines racist language with calls for more social spending, won 15.5 percent of the vote in June 2010. He was recently acquitted of charges of hate speech for comparing the Koran to “Mein Kampf” and calling mosques “palaces of hatred.” Mr. Wilders has said that immigrant Muslims and their children should be deported if they break the law, or engage in behavior he has described as “problematic, ” or they are “lazy.” He also warns of the supposed Muslim plot to create “Eurabia.” He declined repeated interview requests.

While many Dutch recoil at his language, he touches on real fears. “Sometimes I’m afraid of Islam,” Ms. Kuhlman said. “They’re taking over the neighborhood and they’re very strong. I don’t love Wilders. He’s a pig, but he says what many people think.”

Now, after Norway, the Dutch are taking stock. The killings frightened everyone, said Kathleen Ferrier, a Christian Democrat legislator born in Surinam, who had objected to her party joining a Wilders-supported government. “Norway makes it clear how much Dutch society is living on the edge of its nerves,” she said. “Wilders says hateful things and no one objects. We have freedom of speech, but you also have to be responsible for the effect of your words.”

Taboos about discussing ethnicity and race — founded in shame about delivering Dutch Jews to the Nazis — are long gone.

via Immigration and Islam Raise Questions of Dutch Identity – NYTimes.com.

September 16, 2011
Norwegian hitman was obsessed with Turkey

A fundamentalist Christian who massacred 76 people in Norway had strong feelings against Turkey and Turks.

Bomb and terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik is pictured in a police car leaving the courthouse in Oslo, Norway, 25 July 2011, after the hearing to decide his further detention. Inset image from a manifesto attributed to Anders Behring Breivik (R) shows a Trojan horse decorated with a Turkish flag.

Bomb and terror suspect Anders Behring Breivik is pictured in a police car leaving the courthouse in Oslo, Norway, 25 July 2011, after the hearing to decide his further detention. Inset image from a manifesto attributed to Anders Behring Breivik (R) shows a Trojan horse decorated with a Turkish flag.

A book believed to have been written by Anders Behring Breivik, who admitted to having staged both the bombing of government buildings in Oslo on Friday and later killing dozens of teenagers at a Labor Party youth camp on the island of Utoya, has revealed that the terrorist was an ardent hater of Turkey.

In a 1,500-page manifesto titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” Breivik made hundreds of references to the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, rambling on about hundreds of years of world history, reflecting a revisionist interpretation that sees history only as being a long-running conflict between Muslims and Christians. His manifesto, written in a fashion akin to a journal, also indicates that he has visited Turkey.

Norwegian police initially reported that the assailant killed 93 people but then it reduced the confirmed death toll on Monday to 76.

There are 237 references to Turks and Turkey in the manifesto, but this number does not take into account the many other references to Ottoman history (written mostly focusing on the state of religious minorities) and the Seljuk Empire. He accuses the Ottoman Turks of genocide of various minorities, including the Armenians, the Orthodox Greeks and the Assyrians.

There are lengthy analyses of the Ottoman Tanzimat (Reformation) era, the Declaration of Reforms (Islahat Fermanı) period, the period under Abdülhamid II and the Committee of Union and Process government and its ruling triumvirate — Enver, Talat and Cemal Paşa — as well as the early republican period. After a 40-page analysis of the Ottomans and the early republican era, on page 187, he concludes: “[Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan’s efforts to further re-Islamize Turkey are entirely consistent with a return to Turkey’s Ottoman past as the heartland of an empire established by jihad and governed by the Shariah. Indeed, both the current Erdoğan administration and the regime headed by the overtly pious Muslim [Necmettin] Erbakan a decade ago reflect the advanced state of Islam’s ‘sociopolitical reawakening’ in Turkey since 1950-1960, when the Menderes government, pandering to Muslim religious sentiments for electoral support, re-established the dervish orders and undertook an extensive campaign of mosque construction. Despite Frank Gaffney’s apparent failure to understand this continuum of related historical phenomena, I share his acute concerns. And ultimately, we agree that Turkey’s bid to join the EU should be rejected.”

Sèvres for Turkey

Starting on page 235, Breivik presents a history of the Battle of Vienna from a Christian perspective and again accuses Turks of Islamizing Bosnia and Kosovo. Starting on page 313, he expresses his hostility toward many international organizations, including the EU and the UN. On page 314, Breivik wrote: “The EU is deliberately destroying the cultural traditions of member states by flooding them with immigrants and eradicating native traditions. This is a gross violation of the rights of the indigenous peoples across an entire continent. Europe has some of the richest cultural traditions on the planet. To replace this with Shariah barbarism is a crime against humanity. The European Union is currently the principal (though not the only) motor behind the Islamization of Europe, perhaps the greatest betrayal in this civilization’s history. Appeasement of Islam and Muslims is so deeply immersed into the structural DNA of the EU that the only way to stop the Islamization of the continent is to get rid of the EU. All of it.”

The ‘Atatürk approach’ has already failed

Breivik says on page 723 that the “Atatürk approach” failed to modernize Muslims. “Many moderate cultural conservatives have suggested that banning the Shariah will solve all our problems and force the Muslims to integrate. Unfortunately, Islam is a lot more resilient than most people can comprehend. Any ‘Atatürk approach’ will not solve anything but only delay the inevitable. Turkey became secular after Mustafa Atatürk, by military force, implemented his harsh reforms 90 years ago. The result? The Shariah lay dormant for 70-80 years. As soon as it was practically possible (Turkey had to implement more human rights to appease the EU) the former ‘dormant’ devout Muslims resurfaced and the Islamist alliance won the last election. … The reason why Atatürk failed is because Islam is extremely resilient, in fact more resilient than most people can comprehend.”

Breivik also asserted that the Treaty of Sèvres should be applied to Turkey and equates supporting Turkey’s membership in the EU as supporting a global jihad. He also says Turkey and Albania should be kicked out of NATO. On top of that, he states that Europe should wage war on Turkey to re-Christianize Eastern and Western Anatolia and the northern part of Cyprus.

via Norwegian hitman was obsessed with Turkey.

September 2, 2011
In Norway, a trigger for discourse

There was a deafening silence at the dinner party in Istanbul’s trendy Cihanger district last Friday night. The half dozen guests abruptly stopped talking when a new guest arrived and announced what had happened in Norway. The first question asked hinted at the fear that filled the room: “Was it a Muslim?”

Geert Wilders: Academics studying Islamic radicalization warn that the success of the extreme right in Europe is a bad sign of things to come Robin Utrecht/Pool/AP

Geert Wilders: Academics studying Islamic radicalization warn that the success of the extreme right in Europe is a bad sign of things to come

Robin Utrecht/Pool/AP

At the time, the answer was still unknown. But, according to the messenger, this was what all the newspaper reports were saying: A bomb had gone off in the heart of Oslo and, said the “experts,” the likely culprits were Islamic extremists. “But is there any proof?” another guest asked. There was none, of course, and this fact ignited an intense debate over media responsibility, Islamophobia and the future of Islam in Europe.

A day later, when it emerged that the suspect in the attack was a not a Muslim, my Turkish friends and colleagues breathed a collective sigh of relief. But solace turned to anger at the Western media for initially speculating on jihadist motivations for attacking Norway. That their speculation was wrong is little consolation to Muslims in Turkey. The damage is done, they say. The dark heart of the West is revealed: If there’s a violent attack, the West seems reflexively prepared to blame it on those crazy Muslims.

Linking acts of terrorism with Islam has become trope to the 21st-century journalistic tragedians. But there’s a larger narrative. The emerging portrait of Anders Behring Breivik, the man in custody for carrying out both the bombing and the shooting rampage at a youth camp, reveals a man deeply immersed in hate. Writings found at his home and posted on the Internet are a profile of a violent psyche awaiting a trigger to act.

Those triggers are plentiful in Europe these days. The alarming pace at which Islamic and Christian right-wing verbal clashes have escalated has set the stage for the violent fringe to justify their murderous outbursts. And the rhetoric has reached dizzying heights. Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician recently acquitted on charges of inciting hatred, is warning that a “tsunami of Islamification” is threatening the Netherlands. One of his party’s key demands – one that Mr. Breivik has voiced – is an end to immigration, particularly Islamic immigration. He goes so far as to propose that Dutch Muslims who don’t “assimilate” be stripped of their citizenship and thrown out of the country.

European Muslims have confessed their growing frustration with politicians such as Mr. Wilders, as well as their fears that the confrontational atmosphere will lead to more violence. Academics studying Islamic radicalization also warn that the success of the extreme right in Europe is a bad sign of things to come.

“It’s a self-propelled spiral into confrontation and violence,” Markha Valenta, a researcher in history at the University of Amsterdam, told me. “Study after study shows that violent extremism – Christian or Islamic – begins with words and the environment words create. In Europe, the discourse between Muslims and non-Muslims has shifted into a dark place. We need to quickly reverse that trend or face the consequences.”

Norway’s response to Friday’s events is a first step. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg’s promise to use the aftermath as motivation to promote “more democracy, more openness, and more humanity” sends the right message: Extremists can’t hijack the discourse. Muslims will have to play their part: It’s incumbent on them to reach out to Europe’s moderate majority, share in their suffering, and confront the violent fringe with a united front.

Adnan Khan is a writer and photographer based in Islamabad.

via In Norway, a trigger for discourse – The Globe and Mail.

July 28, 2011
UK : Anders Behring Breivik was in contact with the EDL

Searchlight Press Release | Tuesday, 26 July 2011

Anders Behring Breivik was in contact with the EDL, supported their aims and was involved in the Norwegian Defence League, Searchlight can reveal.

Only months before he went on his murderous killing spree he exchanged several messages with EDL supporters using his internet pseudonym Sigurd Jorsalfare, the name of the 12th century King of Norway who led one of the Crusades.

In one message on the EDL forum, dated 9 March 2011, he wrote:

“Hello. To you all good English men and women, just wanted to say that you’re a blessing to all in Europe, in these dark times all of Europe are looking to you in surch of inspiration, courage and even hope that we might turn this evil trend with islamisation all across our continent. Well, just wanted to say keep up the good work it’s good to see others that care about their country and heritage. All the best to you all Sigurd”

Asked by EDL supporters if he was active in the Norwegian Defence League, Breivik replied:

“I was but, the site has been put down now. There was to be a demo in Oslo on the 26 of February but after the police security service put us on the “danger-list” the the internet site was sadly shut down.”

He went on to describe his hatred of society in Norway and specifically picked out the Norwegian Labour Party for his criticism.

“The biggest problem in norway is that there is no real free press, there is a left-wing angle on all the political topics so most people are going around like idiots. And offcourse with our norwegian labour party beeing in power for most of the last 50 years dont help. but i i think there is an awakening now atleast i hope so. Do some of you know the truth about what happened to the ndl, there was some clames that neo-nazis had hijacked the organisation, but on the ndl site i cant really say i noticed anything like that. So may guess is that there were some kind of police pressure to stop the movement. Anyone here heard anything?”

In another posting he attacked the British society and expressed his interest in joining an EDL demonstration:

“i’ve seen with my own eyes what has happened to england, i was in bradford some years ago, me and a friend walked down to the football stadium of bradford, real “nice” neighborhood, same thing in the suburbs of london. well thinking about taking a little trip over the sea and join you in a demo. would be nice with a norwegian flag alongside with union jack or the english flag, that is if a norwegian would be welcome offcourse?”

This message appears to confirm the rumour that Breivik once lived in the UK. His father was a diplomat and is believed to have been based in London for some time.

Breivik was told by EDL supporters that he would be most welcome, to which he replied:

“I hoped so:) it’s our common struggle against the islamofacists.”

EDL supporters were keen to have his support. An EDL forum member, username ‘Concerned’, replied: ‘Bravo sigurd admire your views and courage. no surrender and welcome.”

Breivik then went quiet. A few days later he shut down his facebook site, went offline and began the final countdown to his killing spree.

Friends

Breivik was Facebook friends with dozens of EDL supporters and even some BNP members.

Norwegian Defence League

Anders Behring Breivik was a supporter of the Norwegian Defence League and was known to Ronny Alte, from Tensberg, who created a NDL Facebook group with some friends. The group gathered more than 500 members, including convicted nazis and exiled Russians belonging to the banned Slavic Union.

One of the Russians is Vjoteslav Datsik, who walked into an Oslo police station in 2010 and applied for political asylum while waving a handgun. Datsik is in custody awaiting extradition to Russia, where he is wanted by the police after absconding from a mental hospital.

The group’s reputation was tarnished publically after the involvement of these nazis was revealed, but despite claiming they had been expelled Alte had difficulty explaining why his group still included Datsik, as well as the convicted nazi bank robber Werner Holm and violent nazis such as Johnny “Light” Olsen”, Morten Andre Serensen and Dariusz Arnesen, all previously connected with the now defunct Norwegian ‘Blood and Honour’ network.

Ronny Alte, who knew Breivik under the name Sigurd Jorsalfare, remains one of the administrators of the Norwegian Defence League sites.

In his internet exchanges with the EDL, Breivik makes it clear that he did not believe that there was any nazi involvement in the NDL despite the clear evidence to the contrary.

British links to the NDL

The English Defence League has close links with the NDL. The NDL facebook site is administered by Jeff Marsh, a leading EDL organiser and football hooligan. Marsh was once given a two-year prison sentence for stabbing two Manchester United fans.

In April 2011 the NDL held a demonstration in Oslo. Speaking at the event was Tower Hamlets-based EDL activist Darren Lee Marsh. Marsh has been a steward on EDL demos and is close to the EDL youth leader Joel Titus. He also claims to be a member of UKIP. Marsh’s facebook friends include several EDL organisers, including Jack Smith (the London EDL organiser), Paul Prodromou (aka Pitt) (the Essex EDL organiser), and Guramit Singh, who was the EDL’s press officer until recently.

Shared ideology

In addition to their contact, Breivik and the EDL both share the same ideology and worldview. There are numerous references in Breivik’s 1,500 page book and internet postings to Fjordman, a Norwegian anti-Muslim blogger and writer. Fjordman is a strong supporter of the EDL and an acquaintance of Alan Lake, the Christian Fundamentalist who helped set up and funded the EDL.

Breivik is also influenced by other anti-Muslim bloggers and websites, several of which openly back the EDL. These bloggers and websites push the idea that Western Europe is under threat from Islam and that unless drastic action is taken we will be taken over by militant Islam.

EDL and violence

The EDL claim to be a peaceful organisation but its actions and views of its supporters prove otherwise. Here is a selection of comments made by leading EDL supporters in recent weeks:

Dave Davis: “Ratkoa Mladic is our friend. He killed 8,000 Muslims.”

Bill Baker: “know [sic] we need to kill or be killed and no mercy for anyone once it kicks off. Die or leave is the only choice they should have.”

Bill Baker: “If our Government won’t act against Islam and terrorism then we must arm and protect ourselves.”

North West Infidels: “East Belfast is up in flames, our loyalist brothers certainly know how to riot. Imagine [if] we could that against militant Islam.”

Roger Firth: “Something has to happen mate (and I don’t give a shit if the old bill are clocking this). For too long we have let ourselves be penned, while this scum do as they please, patriots being arrested, well today was the final straw, time to get violent.”

Hope Not Hate

July 27, 2011
Anders Behring Breivik And Osama Bin Laden Two Sides Of Same Coin – OpEd

Friday’s horrendous attacks in Norway raise the inevitable question: Is the man who has admitted them, Anders Behring Breivik, a one-off psychopath or is he the start of something frighteningly new in Europe?

That there are those in Europe who, like Breivik, are fanatically opposed to immigration, detest multiculturalism and have a particular hatred of Islam is known. These are the hallmarks of the far right across Europe (not to mention the US, Russia and elsewhere). But is the far right in such places now prepared to kill, as he has killed, in furtherance of these bigoted, twisted ideas?

That he acted alone in planning and carrying out his murderous rampage seems to be the case although he admits to contacts with similarly-minded fanatics in the UK and there is a possible link with the far right in Poland. But he also says are 80 sleepers in Europe, prepared to murder thousands of people in pursuit of eradicating Islam in Europe and to make it a monocultural continent — something it has never been. These claims cannot simply be dismissed as the ravings of a fanatic. They have to be thoroughly investigated.

In his 1,500-page online manifesto, uploaded just before Friday’s killings, he makes it clear that his aim is not only to “cleanse” Europe of Muslims but also to eliminate all who promoted or supported multiculturalism there and opened the door to Muslim immigrants — its politicians, journalists, lawyers and others. His potential targets included the UK’s Prince Charles, its former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and members of all its political parties, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso (popularly known as Durão Barroso in Portugal), former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland and politicians in Belgium, France, the Netherlands. It was not only Europe’s political establishments he hoped to destroy. Targets also included oil refineries and nuclear power plants. His plan was to attack the very core of Western society which he sees as corrupted by liberalism and socialism. This is fanaticism on a scale of insanity not seen since the demise of the Adolf Hitler.

That he calls himself a modern-day Knight Templar, a successor to those commandoes of the medieval Crusades, proclaims him a fantasist. This is the stuff of a Dan Brown novel. But while he is not the first person to imagine himself a Templar, he is the first to cross the divide between fantasy and reality. His is a fantasy soaked in the blood of almost a hundred people, a fantasy made real by a frightening dedication to his hatreds.

Here is Europe’s Al-Qaeda. Anders Behring Breivik and Osama Bin Laden are two sides of the same coin: a fanatical belief that their cultures must be purified, that the political establishments which have overseen their degeneration must be destroyed and that anything “alien” rigorously excluded.

Just as there have been those in the Muslim world who followed Bin Laden, copied his methods or sympathized with his objectives, it is entirely possible that there will be those in the West who will regard Breivik as a hero to be emulated. The language he uses is chillingly reminiscent of Al-Qaeda. He refers to the supposed 80 sleepers across Europe as “martyrs”. Are there going to be other bomb attacks, other killings? We hope that Breivik is a one-off. But we dare not assume so.

Eurasian Review, 26 July 2011

July 26, 2011
Blaming imagined tormentors for violence, in Oslo and in Istanbul

By Ron Kampeas · July 25, 2011

The liberal blogo/Twitterspheres have, legitimately, been making mincemeat of a meme emerging from sectors of the right wing that Anders Behring Breivik, the alleged author of the Oslo massacre, is a bad, bad, man — but, gosh, he might have a point about multiculturalism.

Here, specifically, is Max Blumenthal on Twitter, deriding, with considerable justification, a Jerusalem Post editorial that made that argument:

Echoing Breivik, Jerusalem Post’s editors denounce Norwegian gov’s commitment to multiculturalism via @DidiRemez

And here, specifically, is Andrew Sullivan, ripping apart Bruce Bawer of Pajamas Media:

In fact, this “madman” was, by Bruce’s own judgment, “both highly intelligent and very well read in European history and the history of modern ideas.” It is precisely this blind spot by the anti-Islamist right that made me and others get off the train. They have every right to point out supine government capitulation to restrictions on free speech, and the worst forms of Islamist violence and rhetoric. I second every one of them. Where they went over the top was in the demonization of an entire religion, and in fomenting the Steynian specter that Muslim aliens were bent on destroying Christian Europe by demographic numbers, and that all this was aided and abetted by every European leader in a multicultural, left-wing conspiracy to destroy Christendom.

So what’s with my “specificallys.”

Here’s Max Blumenthal, on July 17, interviewing Turkish Jews about their predicament in Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey:

Turkish Jews experienced unprecedented levels of anxiety during Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip in 2008 and ‘09 and after Israel’s killing of 9 passengers on the Mavi Marmara in 2010. After the Mavi Marmara incident, the Turkish Chief Rabbi issued a statement mildly condemning the Israeli raid. My interviewees told me that despite Prime Minister Recep Erdogan’s declaration that “looking upon hatred at the Jews is…unacceptable,” (which they considered helpful) extremists scapegoated local Jews. Though the reactionary mood has dissipated, the trauma of shrinking from public view for several days was an experience my interviewees have not forgotten.

Neither of my interview subjects objected to my opinion that Zionism imperils Jews around the world, and especially outside the West. Indeed, their testimonies were proof of the crisis Israel has created in Jewish diaspora life. At the same time they displayed a complete lack of interest in engaging with the situation, either by examining the roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, understanding the occupation, or developing a clear position on the issue. While Israel’s actions — and the reactionary tendencies of radical elements inside Turkey — undermine their sense of security, the Jewish state remains a distant abstraction that has only the most fleeting connection to their identity. And the Palestinians do not even merit a second thought.

And here’s Andrew Sullivan today, quoting same Blumenthal interview:

Israel doesn’t seem to be helping them out much. Max Blumenthal interviews two young Turkish Jews.

Blumenthal, at least, has the excuse of writing his twaddle five days before Oslo. Sullivan, on the other hand, is somehow capable of balancing two ideas completely inconsistent with one another within a few blog posts.

As one might have guessed, I’m sympathetic to the notion that bad people who set out to harm innocents need excuses less than they need pretexts. In Norway or in Istanbul, extremists are going to seek out their hated targets whatever the state of multiculturalism or the actions of Israel.

But OK, let’s entertain for a moment the notion that the ideas that supposedly drive extremists into their rages bear a responsibility for the violence that ensues.

If they do in Istanbul, they do in Oslo. Positing anything else is rank hypocrisy.

via Blaming imagined tormentors for violence, in Oslo and in Istanbul | Capital J | JTA – Jewish & Israel News.

July 26, 2011