MONTGOMERY VILLAGE, Md, August 10, 2011 — After the horrible killings in Norway, I have been reading all I could about that day. Sadly, in the US, violence is commonplace. However, it seemed highly unusual that a country in Northern Europe had produced such a monster.
While the killer has been condemned in the media, not much has been revealed about his justification for the massacre.
What if the killer had an even stronger gun? In this July 28, 2011 photo, Dana Barzingi, his sister Hana, right, is comforted in Lillestrom near Oslo, Norway. Dana, Hana and their sister Hajin Barzingi survived the shooting at Utoya island on July 22, 2011. (Image: Associated Press)
What we have learned from the mainstream media is that Anders Breivik, a right wing, Christian zealot, bombed a government building and then drove to the island of Utoya, where he gunned down 89 children and adults.
His rationale for mass murder was that he wanted to wake up Norway to the Islamization of the country.
In his 1500 page manifesto, he also mentioned Israel’s Right Wing government and his identification with its perceived hatred of Muslims. However, for the average American reader, this is still seen as an action with no apparent context, since most of us are not well versed in Northern Europe politics.
I certainly wasn’t.
Then I read an article published in The Prism, a multicultural publication in England. The article was written by someone I know, Colombian-born Carlos Vidales, an intellectual who has had to live most of his life outside the country due to his liberal ideas.
In his article, Vidales, who is a retired University Professor in Sweden, writes about the reason many of the countries in that part of Europe have not reacted loudly to the justification given by the killer for his cowardly attack on children and other innocents.
Vidales’ explanation is that even liberal groups in that part of the world are afraid of what is now being called the Islamization of Europe. Seems that even the most progressive countries in the world are growing disenchanted with multiculturalism, believing their futures are no longer viable.
Vidales suggests that perhaps this is a just a polemic between Christians and Muslims. But is it? Or is it more than that?
Did multiculturalism spark the violence?
If not for the horrific violence that started it, I would actually welcome a discussion that examines Europe’s adaptation to the inevitability of multiculturalism. After all, the US has been suffering the growing pains of a multicultural society for at least 150 years. We have taken pride in our identity as a “melting pot” of cultures, implying harmony.
Into that pot went European, Asian, Latin American, Eastern European, and African immigrants, both voluntary and involuntary. We have been literally and figuratively changing the face of what it is to be an American.
While we haven’t always handled the assimilation of foreign cultures well in the short term, we generally manage to eventually accept the new arrivals as Americans with the obvious exception of African Americans, who didn’t come here voluntarily. As for those “voluntary” new arrivals, usually in one generation they have forgone or integrated their own customs to adopt a blend of American ideals and way of thinking.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, most of the children and grandchildren of our immigrants consider themselves unhyphenated Americans and see the culture of their ancestors as something foreign, even when it is positive and many traditions are still followed.
When members of another culture first arrive on our shores in great numbers, many naysayers accuse them of not blending in and accepting the American way of life. They accuse them of segregating themselves and keeping their own ways. These naysayers see them as a threat to the unity of the country, and they are generally proven wrong within one generation.
One of the criticisms of the Muslims in Europe is that they keep to themselves and don’t participate as members of the host country. Our experience here should tell them that these are unsupported worries. The children and grandchildren may keep their culture, but they will also be as Norwegian (or European) as the rest, even if they do it looking and celebrating differently.
As is normal for any new ethnic group entering a homogeneous society (in this case, a nation), recent Muslim immigrants in Europe were seen with suspicion and often prejudice. Both here in the US and abroad, ever since the Iranian hostage situation in 1980 and especially so since 9/11, we have seen periodic conflicts and ongoing tensions between established inhabitants and Muslim groups.
Sometimes, vitriolic expressions of free speech, a part of Western democracies dynamics, have been especially hurtful to some Muslim immigrants. Such explicit writings, articles, and even cartoons have been known to open up a stream of demonstrations by Muslim groups in a number of countries.
Contributing to a toxic atmosphere, there are articles on the Internet about how the high birth rate of Muslims is and how their population will eventually overwhelm the Western European countries where they reside. These articles read as if Muslims act as a monolithic force or as if there were even a master plan to accomplish this.
The fears resulting from such articles also convince many that there is a danger in allowing foreign groups to gain a foothold in their country. This can lead to a ferocious defense of such beliefs and to the repressive politics that often follow.
What if the killer had had a banned AR15?
That is why, Vidales states in his article, the violence in Norway should not come as a surprise in Northern Europe. Sooner or later, acts of violence were bound to happen, made all the easier when Breivik was able to acquire the arms and ammunition he used. Norway has fairly strict gun laws, but he did acquire weapons. In fact, he decried the fact that he was not able to get a version of the AR15 from a Czech manufacturer due to even stricter gun sale requirements in that country. One can only speculate how many more children would have been killed had he obtained that weapon.
Another important factor that probably increased the number of victims was the ammunition magazines that the killer used. These were 30 round, high capacity gun magazines that he purchased from a “small American supplier.” The sale and manufacture of high capacity magazines was banned in the US in the 1994 assault weapon ban. However, this law expired in 2004 and it has not been renewed.
The NRA, commenting on the renewal, suggested that people who have a weapon for protection need to have high capacity magazines. It would be interesting to know how many bullets the average home defender fires in a self-defense incident. My common sense tells me not many.
Some gun proponents have chimed in already, indicating that even tough gun control laws could not prevent a madman from committing these atrocities. Others have said that if the gun laws had not been so strict for regular citizens, someone in that camp might have been armed and able to defend the children. I am reminded of Virginia politician who introduced a bill to allow weapons on the campus of his state’s public universities
However, we can surely, regardless of where we stand on gun control, learn something mind-changing from this tragedy. There is a saying in Colombia that roughly translates to: “If the river is loud, it must be carrying rocks.”
There have been plenty of signs that the multicultural experiment in Northern Europe is encountering its share of rocks. There is now a significant number of people from both the left and the right in these countries who actually see the advent of a significant immigration of Muslims as a threat to their way of life. Officials and other prominent spokespeople should be careful in the words they use to denounce any group. Such denunciations can be interpreted by zealots as a license to act criminally.
The Muslims are the scapegoats right now.
Sooner or later, we can all be scapegoats of prejudice. Isolating any group ultimately hurts all of us.
Mario Salazar, the 21st Century Pacifist, is a bleeding heart liberal, agnostic, exercise fanatic, Redskin fan, technophile, combat infantry veteran, jewelry maker, amateur computer programmer, Environmental engineer, Colombian-born, free thinker, and, not surprisingly, pacifist. You can find his articles - ranging from politics to cooking a mean brisket - in 21st Century Pacifist at The Washington Times Communities.Follow Mario on Twitter @chibcharus and Facebook at Mario Salazar
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