Is Anders Behring Breivik a Christian?

Agnostu Akbar!

Excellent Discussion About Anders Behring Breivik And Silliness

Via Yid With Lid

Norway Terror Attack: Lessons and Illusions

Posted By Barry Rubin On July 26, 2011 @ 11:21 pm In Uncategorized | 44 Comments

Once one gets beyond the polemics and clichés, there is a huge amount that could be learned from an honest discussion about the mass murders in Norway. Let’s look at some of them.

An editorial in the New York Daily News contains both valid points and dangerous silliness. It begins:

In his ravings, Anders Behring Breivik, confessed to having murdered 76 people, repeats a familiar refrain: He killed to save his country, his continent and Western civilization itself from an attempted takeover by Islam.

The trouble with a 1500-page manifesto is that one can find almost anything in it. For example, people, groups, and sites who have been cited once or twice in that manifesto are now being called complicit with the murders. In the case of one group in that position, Breivik actually attacked them for being non-violent! Another author in the United Kingdom had two articles footnoted by the killer that didn’t even deal with Islam. Now people are being incited to go after her in revenge.

Of course, Breivik did see Islam as a threat, but he didn’t attack mosques, he attacked two government targets: a camp of the ruling party and a government building. Thus, the main target was not an “Islamic takeover” but his view that the country was being destroyed by left-wing policies, of which unlimited immigration is one. I have no agenda in making that point, but it is surprising that this hasn’t been a bigger focus of the discussion. Breivik was not a single-issue guy.

A second question is whether his violent action “proves” that there is no such problem regarding Islam. Radical Islamist violence is not mindless. It is a response to a problem. Many view this problem as the oppression of Muslims. My opinion is that it is a strategy for revolutionary takeover, a radical Islamist government, and the fundamental transformation of society. Of course, this is far more likely in Muslim-majority societies.

The Daily News continues:

Breivik’s belief is the photo negative of al-Qaeda’s contention that the United States and its allies are hell-bent on destroying Islam.

That’s a clever point and has some merit. But after studying Islamism for 30 years, I’d say that equally or more important — and certainly the one used more in inner and sophisticated Islamist circles — is the idea that the real crime of the West is “preventing” Islamist revolutions by supporting existing regimes. On this one, they are right generally. The first argument is propaganda; the second is programmatic.

To argue that Western governments want the Islamists to win and take over their societies is paranoid. To argue, though, that Western governments follow bad policies that make it look that way has a lot of merit. Left-wing movements — as in Norway — hope that the Islamists will benefit them. They are wrong. An analogy here is the Communist Party in Germany (at Stalin’s orders, of course) arguing that the growth of the Nazis would benefit them at a certain point. They were dead — literally — wrong. That doesn’t mean the Communists were pro-Nazi, it meant that they were disastrously stupid.

But the next contention of the editorial is more questionable:

The belief, that Islam at large conspires to triumph over all Judeo-Christian society, is a delusion.

Of course, the trick here is to say “Islam at large,” that is all the Muslims, everywhere and all the time. So yes the extremists on the Breivik channel do help the people who say that the threat is a “delusion.” But if radical Islamism gains hegemony and then largely controls the dominant devision of contemporary “Islam,” then it will be no illusion at all.

For now, we know that large elements of Muslims — especially revolutionary Islamists and notably the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the far less significant al-Qaeda — want that triumph because they say so all the time. So do Hamas and Hizballah and Iran’s government, less often perhaps but often a lot. They can quote extensively from Islamic texts — the same ones that “counter-jihadists” point out — and thus persuade Muslims a lot more easily that they represent “authentic Islam” than can moderate Muslims.

That’s one big reason why “reform” or “moderate” Islam is so weak. Others include the fact that the radicals are willing to kill and intimidate people, have more supporters, and have more money.

What most decidedly isn’t a delusion is:

• Revolutionary Islamist movements seek to take over all Muslim-majority countries.
• Where they have taken over they seek to transform those societies permanently into Islamist-run dictatorships. Iran and the Gaza Strip are the two most prominent current examples.
• Revolutionary Islamists seek to wipe Israel off the map and expel Western influence. In practice, they also seek to get rid of Christians. Their seizure of power is against Western interests.
• In Western countries, Islamists seek to gain hegemony over Muslim communities both ideologically, religiously, and through instituting Sharia.
• More speculatively, they dream of total conquest. Of course, that is more speculative, less likely, and far longer-term.

The fact that the last paragraph is pretty unlikely does not invalidate the previous four paragraphs.

A lot of the discussion among “anti-jihadists” is based on quoting from Muslim religious texts, clerical interpretations, and political statements by Islamist groups. The mass media simply refuses to deal with this evidence. That’s why the arguments can easily be labeled fantasies. Yet if you can provide dozens of quotes and hundreds of actions as examples, who is it engaged in “paranoid and poisonous fantasies”?

I partly agree with the editorial’s statement that:

Demonizing a religion rather than those who pervert it is destructive and only wins sympathies to radical fanatics.

I wouldn’t use the word “pervert,” which implies the Islamists are lying. They are using material that actually is in Islam and if one doesn’t understand that then one is powerless to deal with it. But there’s also a nice irony in the quote: which “radical fanatics” are we talking about? The editorial no doubt wants to refer to radical fanatics like Breivik. It is also true, however, that it wins sympathies for the “radical fanatics” who deny that there’s a problem. And those people are far more powerful than the murderous Breiviks, a group that one can count so far on the fingers of one hand.

In fact, the editorial then proves my point:

Counterjihadists are fighting an imaginary enemy. In the United States Muslims constitute less than 1% of the population. In Europe, it is about 7%….[Muslim immigrants]…seek to practice their faith and to assimilate.

The editorial — and the mass media generally — defuses a serious discussion by making the only issue as to whether Muslims will take over. But the immediate dangers are different.

First, will the pool of potential terrorists and their supporters grow? We can add up attacks that total far more than the one in Norway. When, for example, a convert is inspired to murder a military recruiter in Arkansas or a radicalized Muslim opens fire at Fort Hood, this should be a warning bell. Will the number of attacks steadily increase?

Second, will Muslim communities be taken over — or at least the most energetic activists in them — by radical Islamists? There is real reason to believe this has been happening in many places. While one can show to a far more limited extent that “creeping Sharia law” in the West is affecting non-Muslims, it is certainly affecting Muslims.

And when, to cite just two examples, the Archbishop of Canterbury and a leading judge support the imposition of Sharia law on Muslims in Great Britain, can anyone call that a delusion?

Third, Muslims who want to “assimilate” may be targeted or even killed by Islamists, who might be receiving state subsidies. Virtually every “honor killing” is against a woman who wants to assimilate. And since moderate Muslims are few, subject to intimidation, and receive little or no support from the Western establishments, those who often control these communities inhibit assimilation and teach people not to do so.

Any Muslims who are secular in their behavior, want to stop being Muslims, or who believe themselves properly religious but disagree with the extremists are being victimized.

When a woman is murdered in an “honor killing” or has her rights trampled on by Sharia as radically interpreted, she is also a Muslim. Often, governments have turned these people over to control by the radicals. They also finance the radicals, either because of the looseness of Western laws, misguided “multiculturalism,” or a conscious belief that helping radicals who aren’t committing terrorism this week will ensure there won’t be terrorism in future.

Fourth, there are real decisions to be made: Should public schools allow prayer (only, in the US) for Muslims? Can women wearing a veil have that picture on their driver’s license? Are cab drivers going to be allowed to refuse seeing-eye dogs? Will governments register polygamous marriages and give social welfare benefits on that basis? What is the definition of practicing their faith?

And then non-Muslims are being affected by being forced to observe Sharia law in an increasing number of cases, small in the overall extent of society, yet narrowing the freedom of those who experience it.

The final sentence of the editorial says:

Those who see “Muslim domination” and “creeping Sharia law” around every corner are imagining things. Their fictions only feed extremism.

True enough. Nobody should see anything “around every corner.” But saying that the problem is only imaginary and ignoring the real problems is also a fiction that will “only feed extremism,” including Islamist extremism, the triumph of the most radical interpretations of Islam, and extremists who want their own societies to decline.

I Support Operation United Front

Leftists in America finally learned, like a slow child, that attacking soldiers doesn’t work as it appeared to during the US involvement in the Vietnam War. From Reagan to G. W. Bush soldiers returned to being heroes and the left’s demonization of our warriors fell by the wayside. With nowhere to go the left started attacking those that support our soldiers, their mission and America itself.

As that support grew to include opposition to Sharia law in America and Islamofascism everywhere those working blogs, those who wrote posts and articles and all that support conservative ideals were attacked and accused of everything and anything whether true or not. Most of the attacks were outright lies.

Psychopaths who attempted murders, assassinations and other crimes were falsely portrayed as conservatives when actually, if the criminal had any political persuasion it usually had a left tilt. It didn’t matter to leftists though because they had planted the seed of “conservatives are evil and sick” in the public’s mind. They produced bogus lists of “conservatives” who were Nazis, Aryan supremists, racists, anti-Semites and other derogatory terms to spread on websites, television, radio and magazines and newspapers.

Presently, we have the case of Pamela Geller and Howard Spencer and others who are being blamed for the horrors that occurred in Norway because they have warned of the creeping Sharia and radical Islam here in America, Europe and the free world.

You can read about it here:

CALLING ALL LOVERS OF FREEDOM AND GOODNESS!!!

At the end of the piece you can also join in the effort to support Geller and Spencer, et al., and fight against the leftists who are behind the false attacks on all conservatives. Please join in the support of Operation United Front.

It is a curious yet informative exercise to watch what happens when attacks on conservatives are proven wrong whether it is a comment taken out of context, a twisting of facts or whether it is an outright lie.

Many times the untruth continues to spread through leftist sewers like Democratic Underground in the hopes that it will become a “truth” as in speaking truth to power or some such nonsense. Even when a “truth” has been proven a lie, individual leftists, in concert with their peers, try to turn the argument to a subject not even being discussed. If one, say, mentions a toast to the troop the Leftist will rail against alcohol complete with accusations of alcoholism or being a dry drunk or if a person says that a personal attack is nuts the Leftist accuses them of dementia or comes up with an opinion study about the mental instability of conservatives.  The off-subject attack is more than a tacit admission that they have nothing to offer to the debate, it is also an admission of self applied social elitism that, in their mind, allows them to preach and tell others what they must do. Then they will lie and say that they said no such thing and try to scrub the Internet proof that they actually did. That is how obsessively in-control they need to be. It is also a sign post pointing to their ignorance of the real world.

The funniest part of this sad attempt to demonize of supporters of the War on Terror and the troops fighting in-country is when leftists devolve into a parody of fools calling conservatives fat carnivore alcoholics, addicted to nicotine (or some variation based on lifestyle) who will die very soon because we are too stupid to live. All mixed with other name calling such as Nazi, Fascist, hick, rube, red-state moron, etc, and vulgarities and sexist slurs. That is how they fight the “hatred” they say represents conservatism. That’s funny.

The Left Says Pamela Geller And Robert Spencer And The Right Were Responsible For Slaughter In Norway

How can this be news? Well, the Left has been spouting this claim (with their little Leftist puppets who get out their cut and paste tools to help in the spreading) for so long they probably believe it now.  Savants will then pile into comment sections of various blogs, forums and other places they’re still allowed to comment in and quote other Leftists to ensure that they are not alone as a way to further spread the lie.

They will convince no one outside of their small circle of friends

They say politics is even more polarized now, but politics has always had liars and dirty campaigners.  No more and no less than now.

UPDATE: Various LibProg commenters on different conservative sites jumped on the bandwagon to now portray conservatives as haters of humongous proportions by comparing them to National Socialist German Workers' Party, aka Nazis, thus proving Godwin's Law once again. They are childishly doing so because Breivik, Nazis and supposedly conservatives hate minorities. How many minority people did Breivik kill? How many were Muslim?

UPDATE II: Right on cue the sockpuppets and mere puppet savants show up to not answer any question, but to repost their cut and paste comments that have already been rebuffed more than enough to make the original writers and their articles unreliable. That the Leftists that continue to repost the lies they become liars themselves. They know that, but don't care because the meme they push is all that is important to them. They are not honest liberals, new or traditional, to be respected of which there is legion. No, they regurgitate the same lies they have borrowed or stolen from other websites that have been cut and pasted from other sites that knew they were lies, but posted them as truth because that is all they have. They have noting else. They can't say that Breivik killed any Muslims because if he did the Norwegian government would be screaming about it. They say that conservatives hate government, Muslims and immigrants when they know this to be a lie. Conservatives want smaller government, legal immigration and are definitely opposed enough to fight radical Islamofascist Muslims that have murdered worldwide including over 3,000 here in America.

Norway: I Blame Classical Music Lovers

Atlas Shrugged has an interesting report on Anders Behring Breivik. She also asks who put Christian and conservative on his Facebook page.

FWIW, I see it was a crazed batnut classical music lover who killed all those innocent people. I condemn their out of control hatred. It's time to stop them.