By Soroor Ahmed, TwoCircles.net,
As the global as well national media were busy harping on “Islamic Terrorism” a new phenomenon emerged in India, which was given the name of “Saffron Terrorism” by none else but the country’s Home Minister, P Chidambaram. It is not that some Hindus were not involved in the act of terror anywhere in the world, but the cause was somewhat different, not Hindutva. That was in Sri Lanka if not in Nepal. This island country evoked an equally brutal state terrorism by the dominant Buddhist ruling class.
Europe last week saw the ugly manifestation of “Christian Terrorism”, though there is no dearth of apologists for it, be it far-right English Defence League or Sangh Parivar zealots like B P Singhal, who while talking to Christian Science Monitor sympathized with the cause highlighted by the Norwegian killer Anders Behring Breivik, though he did not approve the method.
“I was with the shooter in his objective, but not in his method.”
“If you want to attract the nation’s attention, surely you need to do something drastic and dramatic, but not killing people,” the former BJP MP said.
But Singhal, according to the paper, goes on to say that sometimes violence must be fought with violence. He says people upset by violent responses to Islam must “go one step more to find why (Breivik’s) violence came in. Why was that western Christian talking in bad terms about Islam?” He says it’s because of violent verses in the Koran that continue to be preached in an intolerant way.
As highlighted in the media Breivik in his 1500-page manifesto clearly gave hint about the sources from where he got inspiration. The names included various wings of Sangh Parivar with whom he was in touch through e-mails.
It is not that some Christians have not been indulging in terror attacks anywhere in the world. As in the case of a handful of Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists some Christians are busy killing people, be it in Americas, Africa, Europe or Asia.
Only a couple of years back Pat Robertson, a leading light of the Christian Coalition––and who are they if not the hardline Christians––called upon the United States to attack and conquer Venezuela and assassinate its President, Hugo Chavez. Incidentally, this oil-rich Latin American country is dominated by Christians, but they are mostly Catholics, and not one from Protestant groups.
If men like Pat Robertson are not terrorists then who can be dubbed so? How different this man is from Hafiz Saeed in our neighbourhood? But they have not been getting this bad name for obvious reasons.
Not only that Robertson, a Republican, even ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1988.
Breivik’s manifesto posted online shortly before the massacre said that he was on a self-appointed mission to save Europe from the threats of Islam, immigration and multi-culturalism.
Yes, he killed about 76 Christians to save Christianized Europe from Islam, but none in the western media criticized Christianity as such. In contrast when Muslim terrorists kill fellow Muslims, or anyone else, anywhere in the world he is labelled as “Islamic” and then starts a campaign to vilify and caricature Islam and its Prophet in cartoons or writings. B P Singhal’s remarks on Quran is the latest example.
An article published in New York Times and reproduced in The Hindu on July 27, 2011 quoted this terrorist at one place as Mr Breivik. Even Christian Science Monitor at one place called him Mr Breivik. No problem. But when Digvijay Singh said Osamaji there was storm all over the Indian media though in the previous sentence of the same statement the Congress general secretary clearly appreciated the United States move to get rid of Osama.
In contrast, as per the same New York Times News Service report, “Arne Strand, the former political editor of the paper Dagsavisen, sees Mr Breivik as a ‘lone rider,’ whose jumbled manifesto is unrepresentative of any real strain of thought in Norway, except a tiny fringe right. But as much as Norwegians hate the idea, he thinks the massacre will have some impact on politics.”
But then may one ask as to how this political editor jumped the gun to state that ‘Mr Breivik’ is a lone rider.
After all Christian rights have been indulging in hate campaign and various groups are getting stronger all over the West. Even Pat Robertson’s organization has over 1.7 million members and many times more followers.
The anti-Muslim sentiment is not new in many pockets of the Christianized West. For example writing in September 2001 in National Review, a conservative magazine of the United States, Anne Coulter, wrote: “We should invade their (Muslim) countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
The magazine Editor Rich Lowry had then said in an online forum: “Lots of sentiment for nuking Mecca.”
He went on to explain that the likeliest sites for a US nuclear first strike would be two countries with overwhelmingly Muslim populations: Iraq and Iran. “If we have clean enough bombs to assure a pinpoint damage area, Gaza City and Ramallah (in the Israeli-occupied territories) would also be on list,” he added.
If such strong feeling has been existing for so long how can it be called that Breivik is lonely rider.
Besides, it is somewhat difficult to digest the story that just one man was responsible for triggering blast in downtown Oslo and then indulging in mass killing of so many people in an island.
The July 22 senseless massacre of own civilian population just for the sake of marketing once own absurd hate-philosophy clearly shows that the West has its own quota of lunatics be it Robertsons or Breiviks. Very rightly no one is blaming Jesus Christ or the Bible. Similar should be the response if a person with Muslim-sounding name indulges in such barbarism. Why drag Quran, Mohammad or Islam in it?
[Photo Courtesy: frugal-cafe.com]