First of all, thanks to Dr. Gene Edward Veith for linking to my book trailer at his Cranach blog. Much appreciated.
But of course, my thoughts are mostly in Norway today. As I understand it, we don’t have a final death count in the bombings and shootings that happened today. But even if it rises no higher than the 15 or so we read about at the moment, bear in mind that Norway is an extremely small country in population–only about 5 million people. Oslo is by far the largest population center, with less than 900,000 inhabitants. This is huge.
My first assumption was that this was an act of Islamic terrorism. Latest reports say that they think the two incidents are related, and officials are downplaying the Islamist theory because the camp shooter was an ethnic Norwegian. Frankly that’s just the sort of thing I’d expect them to say, considering the European reluctance to connect anything violent with “the religion of peace.” European converts to the religion are hardly unheard of.
A group called Ansar Al-Jihad Al-Alami very quickly claimed responsibility. There have also been security concerns recently, due to the decision of a Norwegian prosecutor to put a “refugee” Iraqi named Mullah Krekar on trial for threatening Norwegian politicians.
It’s not unthinkable that a Norwegian neo-Nazi group would join forces with Islamists.
I’ll apologize if I’m wrong, but I still expect further investigation to discover that this is an act of Islamic jihadism.
I worry about Norway all the time. As a culture, they have drunk deeply at the well of Jean Jacques Rousseau, and their characteristic posture in the world, ever since the Viking spirit emigrated to America, has been one of genial defenselessness.