It’s All the Same to Me

Dust on the streets of Oslo from the recent terrorist bombing and murderous mayhem hardly had time to settle before some pundits were jumping to conclusions, blaming it all on Al Qaeda and radical Muslims. A July 22, 2011, Investors Business Daily editorial called the incident “Norway’s 9/11,” declaring that it has “all the markings of radical Islamic terrorists.”

The piece goes on and on about how nice Norway has been to the Arab world and Muslims over the years, allowing thousands to immigrate there out of “deep humanitarian concern,” hoping to turn them into good Norwegians, but, instead, they are still “largely self-segregated, unassimilated and disgruntled in the heart of Oslo, a fertile breeding ground for terrorism.”

“We are at war with and under constant threat from Islamic fundamentalism,” the author concludes. “…we in the U.S. would do well to be especially vigilant. In the greater jihad waged against the West, Oslo may be just a warning shot across our bow.”

Of course, this Christian oriented pundit is absolutely right … except, that is, for one ironic detail: He’s unwittingly warning us about one of his own. The terrorist bomber and ruthless murderer here is not a fundamentalist right wing radical Muslim. He hates Muslims. In fact, he shares all the fears and paranoia expressed in the IBD editorial point for point. He’s a fundamentalist right wing radical Christian.

Bill O’Reilly was livid on his TV program today because the confessed criminal, Anders Behring Breivik, was described by the New York Times as a Christian terrorist. “No Christian would do something like that,” fumed O’Reilly. I can always tell that Bill O’Reilly is full of baloney on this or that issue when he gets mad. He always gets hopping mad when his religion is implicated in shame.

Breivik’s rambling 1,500 page right-wing extremist manifesto reveals, not only that he hates Muslim’s; he hates Norway's liberal “multi-cultural society,” the "cultural Marxists," who allow thousands of them to come into the country. That’s why he massacred his fellow citizens; he hates them because they tolerate Islam. 

He declares that: "These suicidal traitors must be stopped," and calls for a "European civil war" leading to the execution of "cultural Marxists" and the banishing of Muslims. Meeting Breivik was "like meeting Hitler before World War II," recalls a member of the conservative Fremskrittspartiet party, who knew him well. 

The greatest threat to personal individual liberty is the deliberately promoted deception in consciousness imposed by religion. Religion, since the invention of consciousness, has caused far more harm than good to human civilization. Communism and other manifestations of the state as God are included within the broad meaning of religion. Religion and politics, of course, are but two sides of the same coin.

That is the premise of my Book, “AUTHORITY! …Implications of Consciousness and the Reality of Existence.” It was true long before Judeo-Christian biblical times, from the endless massacres and genocides of antiquity, to the murderous crusades of the middle ages, to the insane inquisitions and witch trials thereafter, to the Nazi Holocaust, and the genocidal purges of the Soviet Union, communist China, and Cambodia, right up to the current War on Terror today – religion lurks in one way or another behind it all.

Whether the terrorist is a radical Islamic or a radical Christian, both fervently believe that they own culture, and they aren’t the least bit afraid to force their version of cultural Authority down our throats by whatever means are available. They view culture as a static entity over which they demand control. They become frustrated when control eludes them and often resort to violence and terror in an attempt to regain it.

Now, please don’t take me wrong, this is not to say that everyone who believes in religion is a raging criminal terrorist. Not at all; it’s the radicals among the religionists who we have to worry about; the ones who would quash your personal freedom given half the chance.

Radical Islam or radical Christian – It’s all the same to me.