What if Ahmad Breivik Was Oslo Terrorist?
If the Oslo terrorist suspect Anders was Ahmad, the blame game would have revealed a double standard.
Right-wing ideologues and hate peddlers both in Europe and Australia have hastily ducked for cover and denounced Anders Breivik as a deranged psychopath. They have tip-toed away from the crime scene, insisting that there is no blood on their hands.
By contrast, Muslim leaders step up to the podium, denounce acts of violence and assume a position of responsibility when any misguided Muslim commits a crime in the name of Islam. Rather than shy away, they face the press gallery, even if the criminal is a psychopath. They are cornered to be accountable, with a microphone and camera pointing to their head, as if there is something intrinsically evil about their creed.
If Anders was Ahmad, he would have been promptly linked with some Islamic organisation. The terrorist tag would have begged a series of questions about the sources of the evil.
Counter-terrorism intelligence would have investigated the 'supply chain of hate' that stems from subjective interpretations of the Koran, to the toxic sermons of firebrand Imams, to underground hate groups against western infidels, to illegal suppliers of weapons, to bomb-making internet sites, to those cowards who glorify the mass murder of innocents, and promise the martyrs some reward in a perverted paradise.
But Anders Breivik's terrorist act was re-diagnosed once it was confirmed that a white European was responsible. Our-post mortem zoomed in on his internal psychosis rather than zoomed out to his external supply chain, hence allowing the hate peddlers to keep peddling away.
London mayor Boris Johnson declared that "It wasn't really about ideology or religion. It was all about him."
Similarly, British journalist Simon Jenkins claimed that "The Norwegian tragedy … is so exceptional as to be of interest to criminology and brain science, but not to politics."
Swiss paper Neue Zürcher Zeitung dismissed any link between the terrorism and the rise of right-wing populism is "akin to modern superstition".
His defence lawyer Geir Lippestad is also feeding the pathology diagnosis with his client's recent plea that any psychiatric assessment must be done by a Japanese expert because they understand "the concept of honour". When did we last hear of any Muslim terror suspect having any psychiatric assessment?
In any crime, the diagnosis determines the deployed.
If Breivik's crime was misdiagnosed as pathology, then psychologists are deployed to understand his victimhood, vulnerability, anger and violence.
But if his crime was correctly diagnosed as terrorism, then intelligence experts would have been deployed to crack the supply chain of hate, all the way back to the hate mongers of the ideology.
The experts would have interrogated the sources who supplied Breivik with this ideological 'fertiliser', the sources who sowed the seeds to germinate the 'terror cells' for his Muslim-free utopia, and make them all accountable. The experts would expose his school (madrassa) of thought and identify his peers (shabbab), and make them all accountable under relevant hate crime legislation, exactly like Muslim leaders.
Disowning is an unacceptable cop-out, and the same standard must be applied to the responsible right-wing elders.
Did the hate peddlers ever stop and think that maybe one person, one day may take their rhetoric, policies, propaganda, scaremongering and Islamophobia to the next level and literally fulfil their Muslim-free fantasy with the ultimate solution?
Despite all the speculation that Anders Breivik acted alone, his 1,518 page manifesto, 2083 - A European Declaration Of Independence, is testament that he thrived in the 'good company' of many mentors and vehement voices. He loved people who hated Muslims. In a bizarre twist of alliances, he subscribes to both neo-Nazi and Zionist ideologies. As the Arab adage states, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, and neo-Nazis are increasingly demonising Arabs as the new Semitic target, viewing "Israel as an outpost of Western civilisation in the mortal struggle with barbaric Islam".
His mentors in his manifesto did not advocate killing Muslims, but killing the multicultural policy that sustains "deconstructing Norwegian culture and mass importing Muslims". Hence, he did not attack the dirty water, but the tap itself, blocking the pipeline and supply chain of another generation of these policymakers.
After years of wolf whistling, did the hate peddlers never suspect that one day someone may howl back heroically with a 'martyrdom operation' with a soldier's salute to their ideology?
Attempts to amplify his pathology and downplay the ideology also attempt to straightjacket any public discourse about the dangers of mainstreaming extreme right-wing views. His views echo some of the xenophobic platforms of political parties such as Norway Progress Party, Danish People's Party, Swiss People's Party, Swedish Democratic Party, Dutch Party of Freedom and True Finns.
If we fail to render these same leaders accountable for the ultimate ugly manifestation of their utterances, we do so at our own peril. The double standards between Anders and Ahmad create a chasm wide enough for the hate peddlers to escape with impunity.
Joseph Wakim is a freelance writer and former Multicultural Affairs Commissioner for Victoria.
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