Fjordman has started a review of Anders Behring Breivik. The first installment called Is the Mass Murderer Anders Behring Breivik Insane?
The article is not without merit, drawing attention to the similarity between Breivik and violent jihadists. Does Breivik represent a kind of emulation?
Breivik has been widely labeled as “anti-Islamic” in the mass media because, as an excuse for his murderous acts, he quotes writers who warn against Islamic inroads in the West. However, there is another side to that story. As a terrorist himself he actually displays admiration for Islamic militant groups and is even willing to accept a renewed Islamic Caliphate in the Middle East. The latter overlaps directly with the stated goals of large international organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, and can hardly be called “anti-Islamic.”
ABB indicates that he wants to glorify death and martyrdom through his words and deeds. Very similar sentiments that have been voiced on countless occasions by Jihadist operatives from Hamas, Hizbollah or other Muslim groups around the world. Breivik says explicitly, as noted on page 163 of the report, that after his terror attacks, what he calls militant cultural conservatives in Europe can now “live in the same way as the Islamists.”
Thomas Hegghammer, a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, wrote in the New York Times that “Breivik goes much further than any counterjihad ideologue has ever done, and his manifesto contains ideas and information that have no precedent in the counterjihad literature. For example, he provides extensive advice on how to build bombs and plan terrorist attacks.” Moreover, “the more belligerent part of Mr. Breivik’s ideology has less in common with counterjihad than with its archenemy, Al Qaeda.”
