Oslo and Utoya — some other reading
Technological and Lone Operator Terrorism: Prospects for a Fifth Wave of Global Terrorism, a paper by Jeffrey D. Simon. I don’t know if this has been published yet, but it picks up on David Rapoport‘s seminal “The Four Waves of Modern Terrorism”. Blog-friend Jean Rosenfeld might like to comment further.
JOURNAL: Knights Templar, by John Robb at Global Guerrillas. John makes the connection between Breivik’s Templars and the Mexican narco-gangs we’ve discussed several times at ZP recently, a connection which David Ronfeldt also made in a comment here. Sharp guys, sharp eyes.
Is Norway’s Suspected Murderer Anders Breivik a Christian Terrorist? by Mark Juergensmeyer at Religion Dispatches. Juergensmeyer is one of the pre-eminent scholars of religious violence, someone who has interviewed a wide variety of activists from half a dozen religious traditions at least, east and west. His book, Terror in the Name of God, is a must read. Key conclusions here — read him to get his reasons for saying these things — “If bin Laden is a Muslim terrorist, Breivik and McVeigh are surely Christian ones” and “in an imagined cosmic warfare time is suspended, and history is transcended as the activists imagine themselves to be acting out timeless roles in a sacred drama.” All in all, a powerful piece.
Quote of the Day by Abu Muqawama at CNAS:
Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”
“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”
Oslo Shooter A Frightening Reminder of Radical Right Terrorist Threat, by Heidi Beirich at SPLC’s HateWatch. Like them or not, SPLC keeps tabs on “homegrown” violence and the rhetoric that arguably enables it in the US context.
Amy Winehouse and the Norway Tragedy: Being More like God, by the Tailor of the Good Garment. The Tailor has a unique “Tailorite” angle on Islam and Sufism, is highly intelligent and highly unorthodox, and recently issued his own book which I look forward to reading — and probably won’t entirely understand. This post should be of interest especially to religious experts.
The Irrelevance of the Knights in a Global Society, by Juan Cole at Informed Comment. If Cole is irreverent enough to have had the White House on his tail, he’s probably (a) a familiar name to Zenpundit readers and (b) worth reading. This is quite a pair of sentences:
Breivik’s medieval romanticism, his artificial European nativism, his pan-Christian vision, his hierarchical, racist view of society, all belong to bits and pieces of past dark episodes in European history. It is as though he has picked through the trash heap of history and attempted to resurrect broken icons, toys and ruined weapons.
The Terror Attacks in Oslo: Anders Behring Breivik on the Middle East and Islam, by Reidar Visser on Iraq and Gulf Analysis. Keeping the best for last, am I? Well, almost. Visser is one of the foremost analysts of Iraq, and as you’d expect, he gets into some fine detail. Writing of the 2083 text, he says:
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