Terrorism is not inherently linked with Islam - The Norwegian attacks
As I sat at work looking for any energy-sector related news that I could include in the association’s daily bulletin, news of a bombing in Norway began to trickle its way through my RSS feeds. Soon after, reports began to surface of a gunman at a Norwegian political party’s youth camp. It goes without saying that these attacks are outrageous and a tragedy.
Quite quickly, the boming and massacre was labelled as a “terrorist attack”. This is a fair and fitting definition of this event. The bomb that blew in Oslo hit a building housing offices affiliated with the Prime Minister. A terrorist attacked is regularly defined as an attack against civilians launched by political motives.
What was interesting to me is that some apparently link the term “terrorist attack” exclusively with Islamic Extremists. Those who do are likely unfamiliar with the terrorists of Northern Ireland, or the right-wing extremists who carried out the Oklahoma City bombings. In both cases, as well as thousands more, the perputrators of these attacks were not practioners of Islam.
Those who inherintly link terrorism and Islam are not necessarily at fault for their erroneous beliefs. The events of 9/11 became the most prominent example of a terrorist attack for those in the Western world, and the media began to use the term almost exclusively with attacks launched by Islamic extremist organizations such as Al-Qaeda. In the aftermath of 9/11, terrorism was increasingly framed as a product of the Islamic religion; the ignorance is astounding.
What is terribly worrisome is that when those in the public and media immediately hear of an attack and assume that is must have been carried out by a member of the Al-Qaeda network. This is precisely what happened in the U.K. when the Sun ran a front-page story shortly after the Norwegian attacks declaring it an “Al-Qaeda Massacre - Norway’s 9/11”. This sort of sensationlist, knee-jerk reaction by the media to sell papers is quite concerning (although, The Sun is a Murdoch paper, so this does not come as a surprise).
When I heard of these attacks, I did not immediately think that Al-Qaeda was behind them. My initial predicition was that it was an pschyotic individual disgruntled by government, which appears to have been the case.
Two things that should be highlighted to the general public are, first, that terrorist attacks can be committed by any individual, not just those blindly devoted to religious ideals. Second, that some media outlets, when lacking any solid information, will make wild assumptions regardless that further higlight their sensationalist ways.
