It was on a beautiful July afternoon that Norway bore the agony of its worst tragedy since World War II. A man planted a bomb in an Oslo building killing eight people. The same day he ruthlessly murdered 69 other people, mostly teenage boys and girls. Western media and anti-Islam pundits went into overdrive, pointing fingers at a Muslim and jihadi connection. Many quoted extensively from Bruce Bawer’s book ‘While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within’.
It soon dawned that the perpetrator was Anders Breivik, a blue eyed, blond haired Norwegian. He was also a self-declared Christian extremist. Without an iota of remorse, Breivik told the court that his act was “necessary” to save Europe from “Muslimisation”. He was declared a ‘lone wolf’, the West’s euphemism of choice for all non-Muslim terrorists, and sentenced to prison.
A New York Times article described his internment conditions as “a three-room suite with a treadmill, fridge, DVD player, PlayStation, a desk with a typewriter and access to television, radio and newspapers”; a fry cry from what the Guardian dubbed as “the forever prisoners” who were tortured ruthlessly and remained incarcerated at Guantanamo for decades without ever being charged.
The influencing factors of Breivik’s terror were those he called “experts on Islam’s war against the West”. Robert Spencer, an Islamophobic individual and his blog Jihad Watch, was mentioned 162 times in Breivik’s 1500-page manifesto. Pamela Geller’s anti-Islam blog, Atlas Shrugs, was mentioned 12 times. Terrorism expert Marc Sageman was spot on in asserting: “Just as religious extremism is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged, the writings of these anti-Muslim misinformation experts are the infrastructure from which Breivik(s) emerged”.
Post 9/11, the selling point of Islamophobia has been to link Islam with terrorism. No Muslim government, mainstream group or Muslim masses have supported any kind of terrorism by anybody. Despite this established fact, the US and Europe have seen a mushrooming of well-funded anti-Islam individuals and groups emerging and establishing themselves for political or monetary gains. According to Fear Inc, a report by the Center for American Progress, “a network of misinformation experts actively promotes Islamophobia in America”. Islamophobia has become a multi-million dollar industry.
The mainstreaming of Islamophobia became starkly evident when Donald Trump made this narrative a primary peg of his campaign strategy and proved its ‘dividends’ by landing the Oval Office. This extremely dangerous strategy has been aped by quite a few world leaders, foremost being India’s nemesis Narendra Modi, and Emanuel Macron of France. This has led to the Muslim minority in these countries being primary targets and scapegoats in times of political and economic crises.
The Islamophobic wave that has clubbed Muslims with terrorism has become a carte blanche for Modi to murder, torture and terrorise the hapless in Occupied Kashmir and within India. The complicit West, a champion of selective morality, remains a mute spectator. The Modi-Macron duo has banned the hijab in their respective countries. The glaring hypocrisy saw a recent edition of Vogue France carrying a photo with Julia Fox wearing a black headscarf with a blaring caption “Yes to the headscarf”. It should have appropriately read “Yes to the headscarf, provided you are not a Muslim”.
Macron had earlier declared that “Islam is a religion in crisis all over the world today”. In a latest twist, France has announced to host the first summit of the Forum of Islam. The Western media headlines described it as “Macron’s government seeks to reshape Islam in France” and “…seeks to give Islam a French makeover”. This is exactly what resonates with the militants and ensnares many in their cause; a destructive circle that should be avoided at all costs.
There are five million Muslims in France, the largest Muslim minority in a European country. The numbers of Islamophobic incidents in France have risen sharply. According to the National Observatory of Islamophobia, there were 235 attacks on Muslims in France in 2020, up by 53 percent from 154 the previous year; attacks on mosques increased by 35 percent in the same year. A global coalition of 25 NGOs asked the European Commission to investigate France for its state-sponsored support of Islamophobia.
France, like India, has become hostage to this divisive nationalism. In recent decades, the man behind this drive in France has been Renaud Camus, a 71-year-old novelist. Residing at the Chateau de Plieux, a fortified hilltop castle, he is the author of ‘Le Grande Replacement’ – the grand replacement. He professes that “the great replacement is very simple, native white Europeans are being reverse-colonized by black and brown immigrants”. This spiel has wooed over Macron and his political opponent Jean-Marie Le Pen of the far-right National Rally party. Both try to outdo each other for political gains.
The Christchurch shooter Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 Muslim worshippers, admitted that he had been inspired by Renaud Camus; such is the destructive power of these Islamophobic theories. According to Thomas Hammarberg, former European commissioner for human rights, “Islamophobia is a symptom of the disintegration of human values”. This definition has to be accepted by world leaders who by promoting an anti-Islam narrative make Islamophobia state policy. An extremely dangerous trend, its immensely destructive consequences are going unchecked and unheeded.
The best way to counter Islamophobia is certainly not to create carnage and mayhem but as Prime Minister Imran Khan very rightly pointed out, a unified, focused and meaningful response. The recent statements in this regard by Russian President Putin and Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau are a sagacious and welcome step that needs to be emulated in letter and spirit by other world leaders. It is a crucial imperative to promote inclusivity and cohesion among nations and societies. And it remains the only means to counter the vicious scourge of terrorism that bedevils the whole world across the religious divide.
The writer is a freelance contributor. He can be reached at:
miradnanaziz@gmail.com
