THE carnage in Norway last Friday shocked the world’s conscience. It has also posed some extremely tough questions for European societies, the world’s Muslims in general, and the people of Pakistan in particular. Europe will do itself and the world at large great injustice and harm if it dismisses the matter as the isolated work of a deranged mind. It must look deep into the factors that led to Anders Behring Breivik’s reliance on perverted intelligence. The people of Pakistan have to do more soul-searching than others because Breivik has blamed this country as the cause of his heinous crime. -- I.A Rehman

What is evident in the aftermath of the Norway attacks that there is a definite attempt to polarize the world into Muslims and Christians and to be followed by many other groups...  Democracy with its Utopian ideas and values was the brainchild of the West but why does the West want to fall back upon the Dark Age once again perplexes many of us. Probably the powers who want to control the destiny of this world want to bring about this polarization so that they can convince their population and justify their invasion of the Arabs and their land. They can further claim that this is done to free them from evil and it’s an operation directed by God himself. -- Dr. Shabbir Thingna, al-Bisha

It is not enough to say he is mad. Anders Breivik is patently mad: no one in their right mind would behave as he has done. Nor is it enough to say that he is evil. If the word evil has any meaning at all, then it must obviously apply to a man who can go to a lake island summer camp, call innocent young people to run towards him – and then shoot 85 of them with an automatic rifle. We will never be satisfied with simple words like “mad” or “evil”, and for the days and weeks ahead we can expect exhaustive psychoanalysis of this dreary and supercilious 32-year-old sicko. He killed in the name of Christianity – and yet of course we don’t blame Christians or “Christendom”. Nor, by the same token, should we blame “Islam” for all acts of terror committed by young Muslim males. -- Boris Johnson

The venom spewing article of Subramanian Swamy, lone leader and President of Janta Party has not only hurt minorities but all the secularists of the country. That is why non-Muslim more than the Muslim scholars, Journalists and writers have lodged their displeasure and discontent with his article. They have demanded action from the government against Mr Swamy. Mr Swamy‘s article exploded like a bomb on the peaceful environment of the country. If this live bomb is not defused it is going to be very dangerous for the secularism and peace of the county. Taking the article in question as a mad man’s utterances, can be ignored too, but by doing so there is a danger of encouraging those anti-social elements that are always ready to ignite Hindu-Muslim violence.-- Suhail Anjum (Translated from Urdu by: Arman Neyazi, NewAgeIslam.com)

 The atrocity committed this week by the Norwegian neo-Nazi — is it an isolated incident? Right-wing extremists all over Europe and the US are already declaiming in unison: “He does not belong to us! He is just a lone individual with a deranged mind! There are crazy people everywhere! You cannot condemn a whole political camp for the deeds of one single person!” When I first heard the news about the Oslo outrage, I was afraid that the perpetrators might be some crazy Muslims. The repercussions would have been terrible. Fortunately, the actual mass-murderer surrendered at the scene of the crime. He is the prototype of a Nazi anti-Semite of the new wave. His creed consists of white supremacy, Christian fundamentalism, hatred of democracy and European chauvinism, mixed with a virulent hatred of Muslims.-- Uri Avnery

‎"The primary threat to democracy in Europe is not "Islamo-fascism" -- that clunking, thuggish phrase that keeps lashing out in the hope that it will one day strike a meaning -- but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities in the name of racial, cultural or religious superiority,…. The Norway massacre of July 2011 is indeed Fascism with thick overlays of Racism and Xenophobia. It is also well documented in India where not only government agencies but also the common people – driven by the ceaseless propaganda by the Bharatiya Janata party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, lapped up eagerly by our Hindi and English language TV Channels -- keep track of all things “suspicious” in their neighbourhood. -- John Dayal

Breveik is an extreme rightwing Christian who hates Muslims. About the UPA government he says that it tries to please Muslims at any cost. He praises those Hindu organisations, in his manifesto, who do not tolerate this injustice. He writes, “When situation gets out of control they attack Muslims”. But he denounces this strategy and asks to target the traitors and form militant groups for toppling the multiculturalist government.  “We, (Breiviks and Hindu Fundamentalist Organisations) should cooperate with and learn from each other because our objective is the same.” He quotes two Indian historians, S Lal and Shri Nandan Vyas regarding the danger Europe has from the Muslims. He has advocated medal as, ‘Liberation of India Service Medal’ to the people who will help chase Muslims out of the country. Breivik had got the logo for his organisation made in Varanasi, an Indian city.-- Suhail Haleem (Translated from Urdu by Arman Neyazi, NewAgeIslam.com)

You see, it is politically incorrect to call faith-driven violence despicable without first cursing the awful things that makes a nut a nut. It is ironic that most of these awful things may as well be exactly the things that a politically correct person is also indulging in. For example, in Pakistan, on the eve of a terrorist attack by a Muslim fanatic, the politically-correct, progressive and conscientious person is obliged to first blame western imperialism, then the drone attacks. Then he goes to have a Big Mac. Of course, by then he usually forgets to also issue at least a token condemnation of the death and destruction caused by the religious nuts. The bottom-line is there are now more religious fanatics willing to go on murderous killing sprees in the world because they are more tolerated in the society than ever. Nations are just too busy navel gazing about airy-fairy abstract concepts about spirituality and political-correctness that have nothing to do with the twisted images that pollute a religious fanatic’s head. Such spineless post-modernist behaviour actually ends up (indirectly) justifying a fanatic’s mad existence. -- Nadeem F. Paracha

The killings in Norway are indeed a wake-up call. It is time for Western Muslims to stand up, to be vocal and to refuse to be treated as second-class citizens. Instead of seeing themselves as the victims, instead of marginalizing themselves, they should be an integral part of mainstream social, political and economic debates. Islam is a Western religion, that’s a fact. The issue of immigration is another discussion, one that requires a vision for the future. No Western country can survive and prosper without the support of new and young immigrants in the work force. It is clearly not by pandering to fears that the problem is going to be solved. A climate of fear would only lead to isolation and /or fragmentation within the society, and eventually to violent and extremist behaviour.  The choice is ours: we can use wisdom, or become (explicitly or implicitly) populists. Some intellectuals can make a name for themselves; politicians can win the next election by surfing on people’s fears and sense of loss. But they will surely be forgotten by History. Others are prepared to face prejudices, racism and xenophobia with courage and commitment. -- Tariq Ramadan

Prove your innocence — if you are a Muslim, because the media and the police believe Muslims are guilty by default. Terror intimidates Muslims more than anyone else on earth. After any terrorist activity, inside their houses, Muslims try to put fingers into their ears so as not to hear the phrase: “another act of Muslim terror”. Blaming the jihadists, the Wall Street Journal reported, “Norway is targeted for being true to western norms.” Meanwhile, on The Washington Post’s website, Jennifer Rubin wrote, “This is a sobering reminder for those who think it is too expensive to wage a war against jihadists.” Altogether the instant reaction to the incident, without any pursuance of proof or evidence, was that Muslim terror must be responsible for the attack. -- Shahidur Rashid Talukdar

Watching the initial coverage of the Norway massacre on BBC, I felt a tinge of sympathy for the news producers whom I could literally feel scrambling in the background. After all, with the shooter being a right-wing Christian extremist, the standard rundown they had prepared could no longer be used. Gone was the package on the cartoon controversy. Unusable was the old report on the 7/7 bombing. The rolodex of ‘experts’ on Islam and terrorism was now just a dead weight. Instead, several analysts and academics from a variety of Norwegian institutes and universities had to be trotted out. Breivik may have been a psychopath (in the technical sense of the word), but he wasn’t acting in a vacuum. – Zarrar Khuhro

"The Breivik murders are being used to discredit all resistance to the global jihad and Islamic supremacism. But we're stealing it back … Islamic texts and teachings, and frequently imams, directly exhort their followers to commit acts of violence. I do not. Nor does anyone else in the counter jihad. There is nothing Breivik could conceivably have read here as a justification for killing anyone. There is plenty in the Qur'an and Sunnah that jihadists can and do use as justification for murder." Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Bawer mourned that: During the hours when I thought that Oslo had been attacked by jihadists, I wept for the city that has been my home for many years. But once he realised this was not the scenario, Bawer's sympathy with the victims apparently dissolved into dismay at the probably setback to those who oppose Muslim immigration."When it emerged that these acts of terror were the work of a native Norwegian who thought he was striking a blow against Jihadism and its enablers, it was immediately clear to me that his violence will deal a heavy blow to an urgent cause."-- Sarah Wildman

Breivik blames the "multiculturalists," and, in a twist that I touched on yesterday, also blames Hitler for giving rise to these "politically correct elites." These "elites," he argues, in their zeal to prevent another Holocaust, not only blind themselves to what Breivik calls "Islamic atrocities," which he maintains are worse than Hitler's holocaust, but have simultaneously engaged in a "deliberate scheme to feminise/pacify" European youth. "Multiculturalism is an anti-Western hate ideology aimed at undermining the indigenous peoples of Europe and destroying European civilisation and culture," the manifesto reads. As a result of multiculturalism, Europe has few "cultural defenses," writes Breivik, from "any force which would want to conquer us," that is, Muslims. Thus, Breivik goes on, "the Islamic Ummah" is "currently colonising us, facilitated by our traitorous cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites." He describes "Islamic conquest" of Europe as "demographic warfare."-- Sarah Posner

In the European case, the decline of religion over the decades has been simultaneous with the damping of nationalist sentiment, though many times for good reason. It has unfortunately been replaced by an unsatisfying, often unpopular, elitist, and distant capitalist project, which is economically unnerving and therefore also culturally terrifying. The linking of the Muslim and the Jew as the enemy of Europe is neither uncommon, nor innocuous. It speaks to a sense of embattlement. With an estimated 76 dead, in a country whose population is both small and concentrated, consider how it would translate proportionally into America, a country many times its size: 4,700 dead. -- Haroon Moghul

WESTERN terrorism experts have faced considerable derision in the past few days for jumping to the conclusion, in the immediate aftermath of a bomb blast aimed at governmental offices in central Oslo last Friday, that Al Qaeda had once again picked a relatively soft target. Instead of pondering the possibility of a different source of violence, they generally devoted their mental energies to trying to figure out why violent Islamists would pick Norway as a target. Could it be a consequence of Norway’s minor involvement in Iraq and its continuing role in Afghanistan? After all, Ayman Al Zawahiri had on a couple of occasions threatened reprisals against the nation. Might it have something to do with the deportation proceedings against the Kurdish Islamist figure Mullah Krekar? Or the fact that a Norwegian newspaper reproduced the notorious Danish cartoons? Hey, if none of those explanations stood up to scrutiny, there was always Muammar Qadhafi’s threat of suicide bombings in Europe to avenge NATO’s bombing campaign in Libya, in which Norway has participated. -- Mahir Ali