When is a terrorist not a terrorist?

Those who have been following the story might notice how he moved from ‘suspect’ to ‘right-wing extremist’ and back to his name Breivik but never once did the mass media think this man deserved the terrorist tag. If terrorism is, like its definition states, the use of violence to achieve political ends, then Breivik is […]

Those who have been following the story might notice how he moved from ‘suspect’ to ‘right-wing extremist’ and back to his name Breivik but never once did the mass media think this man deserved the terrorist tag. If terrorism is, like its definition states, the use of violence to achieve political ends, then Breivik is certainly a full-fledged Norwegian Christian terrorist. So why is there an obvious reluctance to call him so? What could be more violent than detonating a bomb in a busy city with the aim of killing innocent people and then moving ahead to gun down 68 other innocent souls? And what could be more political than targeting a political party youth convention for this dastardly deed? Yes there seems to be a deliberate attempt to white-wash Breviks’ crime of much odium through the deliberate use of subtler euphemisms.

This reminds me of an incident that happened in August 2002, when renowned Muslim scholar Abu Amina Bilal Philips came to Nigeria and gave a lecture at the National Mosque in Abuja. He was asked to describe who a terrorist was, since it had become obvious that some people will be called terrorists for the same crime that others were being hailed as heroes. Sheikh Bilal Philips responded by saying that ‘A terrorist is a man who prays five times a day, who wears a beard and does not shake hands with women.’ In other words any committed Muslim stands the risk of being labelled a terrorist by those who do not understand his religious practices and cannot tolerate them.

Since the identity of this Christian terrorist came to be known, an endless number of Muslims have been saying they can’t imagine what kind of noise would have been made if this man had been a Muslim, or had even had an Arab-sounding name. These double standards in the coverage of Muslims, Arabs and Islam by international media are, of course, nothing new. More than two decades ago, the late Palestinian activist Edward Sa’id had written a book ‘Covering Islam’ talking about the biased reporting of events concerning the Muslim World. But things only came to a head after the manufactured terrorism of September 11th 2001.  Without any proofs then and with none given now, that dreadful atrocity was ascribed to 19 Muslim men who engaged in a suicide hi-jack of four American planes.

Long before now 9/11 had been found to be an inside job, while the suicide hijack theory has been torn to shreds by European, Australian and American investigators who undertook painstaking researches into  September 11th under the  auspices of the 9/11 Truth movement. (Please do an internet search on them and read their findings).  But the damage had been done. The moment the media screams ‘terrorism’ the next word most people expect to hear is Muslim. We sit idly by while words like Islamists and radical cleric find acceptance all over the world because we have accepted that indeed we deserve to be maligned because of our faith.

When I said Christian terrorist in the last paragraph I am sure there are people who found it incongruous. This is because in today’s media, there is no such word. Timothy McVeigh will go down in history as the Oklahoma City bomber not an American Christian terrorist. Members of ETA who had spent decades waging a bloody independence war against Spain, employing all kinds of terror tactics in the process will only be known as Basque separatists, not terrorists. The Irish Republicans who had similarly spent decades waging a war of Independence in Northern Island, also employing their own terrorist measures will also ever be known as Irish Republicans. Same with the Hindu terrorists who destroyed a 16th Century mosque in Ayodhya India and went ahead to kill hundreds of Muslims who opposed the demolition, they will only be known as Hindu Nationalists.

When an American Israeli invaded a mosque in the occupied territories and killed all worshippers observing the Subhi prayer during Ramadhan in 1994, Baruch Goldstein came to be known only as a right-wing extremist. Jewish groups which organise all sorts of terror acts against Palestinians are said to be the Jewish Underground but never terrorists. For all intents and purposes the word terrorist is our cross to bear because as long you are not a Muslim whoever you kill and maim will never earn you this name. And while Norwegians still mourn and find it hard to come to terms with their home grown nightmare, it is surprising to see how their authorities are fighting hard to exonerate this terrorist. Though Breivik insists he is sane, they are trying hard to hear him plead insanity. While he said he was working alone with his murderous instincts, they tried hard to hear him implicate others, until it became obvious that he was a ‘loner’.

And as if all this is not enough, this self-confessed terrorist will end up, if he is ever convicted, in a luxury prison where he will have a mini-fridge, a flat screen TV and a private en-suite bathroom in his cell. The 150 million pounds prison is considered one of the most luxurious prisons in the world. And it will end up providing its services to the man who massacred at least 78 innocent people in cold blood. Now compare this with the Guantanamo gulag’s Camp Delta where so-called suspected Muslim terrorists are being  skept in horrible circumstances, for almost a decade, then ask yourself where the conscience and fairness of the so-called free world is. For now we are left to understand that what happened in Norway is a massacre not a terrorist attack. And the mass murderer who perpetrated it is only the ‘suspect’ not a terrorist. So much for a fair and just world!