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The Jihadist Roots of the Norway Massacre
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Anders Breivik, who went on a shooting spree
in Norway last year, killing some 70 people, recently confessed his
inspiration: al-Qaeda, the jihadists par excellence of the modern world.
According to AFP,
"The gunman behind the Norway massacres said he was inspired by al-Qaida
as he took the stand Tuesday [4/17] at his trial…. he described himself as a
'militant nationalist' and, using the pronoun 'we' to suggest he was part of
a larger group, added: 'We have drawn from al-Qaida and militant Islamists. You
can see al-Qaida as the most successful militant group in the world.'"
Not only was he "inspired" by
al-Qaeda, but his very tactics mirrored those of the jihadist organization.
According to the AP,
Breivik testified "that he had planned to capture and decapitate"
the former Norwegian Prime Minister, with the plan "to film the
beheading and post the video on the Internet," adding that "he was
inspired by al-Qaida's use of decapitation," which he described "as
a very powerful psychological weapon."
In a globalized world where Islam has the
lion's share of acts of terrorism—where nonstop images of jihadists killing
and beheading people have metastasized in the media, and thus in the mind of
the average person—discovering that al-Qaeda is Breivik's source of
inspiration is, of course, not surprising.
But there is a more profound point here:
Breivik is not the first non-Muslim to be "inspired" by Muslim
notions; the Crusaders, for example, lived in an atmosphere thoroughly
permeated and influenced by Islamic jihad, so much so that the very idea of
Christian "holy war"—the use of violence and conquest in the name
of Christianity—finds its ideological origins in jihad.
Emmet Scott, for instance, author of the new
book Mohammed
and Charlemagne Revisited writes:
[I]n addition to some commentaries upon
Aristotle, and a few scientific and technological concepts (which were not
"Arab" inventions at all) Islam was to communicate to Europe a
whole host of ideas and attitudes that were far from being enlightened. Most
obviously, the concept of "holy war" [or jihad], which Europe
adopted (admittedly somewhat reluctantly) in the eleventh century, was
entirely an Islamic innovation (p. xx).
Earlier, historian Bernard
Lewis wrote,
Even the Christian crusade, often compared
with the Muslim jihad, was itself a delayed and limited response to the jihad
and in part also an imitation…. [F]orgiveness for sins to those who
fought in defence of the holy Church of God and the Christian religion and
polity, and eternal life for those fighting the infidel: these ideas …
clearly reflect the Muslim notion of jihad, and are precursors of the Western
Christian Crusade.
For all that, Islamic ideologies did not
pervert the foundations of Christianity. Lewis continues:
But unlike the jihad, it [the Crusade] was
concerned primarily with the defense or reconquest of threatened or lost
Christian territory.… The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was perceived as
unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world
had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule.… The object
of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law.
The point here is that the earliest
manifestations of the sort of terrorism initiated by Breivik are Islamic in
origin. For instance, the medieval Hashashin—the archetypal terrorists who
gave us the word "assassin"—were a Muslim sect that pioneered the
use of fear, murder, and terror for political gain as early as the 11th
century.
Even so, the media has inclined to focus on
Breivik's fascination with Christian historical groups like the Knights
Templar—without bothering to explain exactly how a military order devoted to
protecting Christian pilgrims inspired Breivik to murder innocent Norwegian
children. As one
historian put it, the original Knights Templar, a "very devout
people," would be "horrified" to be associated with Breivik.
Even more ironic, the Knights and Crusaders
in general were frequently on the receiving end of the aforementioned
Hashashin's terror campaign; that is, far from being inspirations for
terrorism, the Knights Templar bore the brunt of one of the earliest
manifestations of Islamic terrorism. Even CNN's Fareed
Zakaria correctly opined that in Breivik's distorted worldview, "the
Knights Templar resembles nothing so much as al Qaeda."
In short, whereas Breivik's goals may have
been anti-Islamic in nature, his actions, those things which we are
rightly judged by—in this case, from ruthless terrorism to planned
beheadings—were jihadist in essence.
Raymond
Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center
and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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