Counter Terror Gazette

Christian Fundamentalism and Justiciar Knights: proof of the foolhardiness of ethnic profiling

26 Aug 2011

“We don’t face that kind of threat” is a common phrase in countries that are unrelated to the war on terror and is one uttered by individuals who misguidedly consider that the entire aviation security infrastructure is designed to combat Islamic fundamentalist attacks alone. It was likely that many Norwegian citizens followed this line of thought….until 22^nd July 2011.

That Friday afternoon, Anders Behring Breivik, a good looking 32-year-old man with typically Nordic features (of whom we have studio quality images, unlike the pixellated pictures of some of those who have attacked aviation in the past), detonated a 950kg homemade ammonium nitrate-based explosive device he had left in a rental van in the centre of Oslo, close to governmental buildings. The attack was reminiscent of that perpetrated by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City. In Oslo, 8 people died.

As if that wasn’t enough, Breivik then made his way to Utoeya, an island around 30 kilometers from the capital, where a teenage summer camp was taking place; on arrival, dressed in police uniform to avoid suspicion, Breivik commenced what can only be called a massacre; armed with a semiautomatic 5.56 mm Ruger Mini-14 rifle and a 9 mm Glock pistol he simply started shooting the teenagers at close range. The police took some time to respond, partly because they were responding to the earlier bombing in Oslo and partly as Utoeya is fairly remote. A further 69 people were killed, the vast majority of school age.

22^nd July 2011 became Norway’s 9/11, but with the key difference being that the perpetrator was not an Islamist, but rather a Christian fundamentalist who allegedly felt that the immigration policies and multicultural stance of the Norwegian Labour Party were abhorrent. His targets were, therefore, government buildings and Labour Party youth (who were the attendees of the camp). He elected not to target the Muslim community or its institutions as he felt that, were he to do so, he would simply generate sympathy for them; by attacking the Norwegian political establishment he could force the general public to consider whether multiculturalism is the right path to follow, whilst also making its supporters suffer for its policies to date. Breivik willingly surrendered in Otoeya as his future trial was a key element of the plot – the part in which he could voice his racist rhetoric to a national, if not global, audience.

True the attacks were not against civil aviation. The reality is, however, that they could have been. And Breivik is not the only Christian fundamentalist who may be prepared to commit such atrocities. There may be both existing ‘followers’ of his extremist beliefs and those who may have been inspired by the attacks and who could perpetrate copycat incidents elsewhere. It is against this backdrop that aviation security practitioners need take note.

Breivik’s actions should exorcise the widely held belief in the western world that whilst “not every Muslim is a terrorist, every terrorist attack is perpetrated by Muslims”; in fact, we knew this was false before 22^nd July. According to a Europol Report (TE-SAT 2011) on European Union terrorist trends, “In 2010, 249 terrorist attacks were reported in nine Member States, while 611 individuals were arrested for terrorism related offences”, but of these “Islamist terrorists carried out three attacks on EU territory. Separatist groups, on the other hand, were responsible for 160 attacks, while left-wing and anarchist groups were responsible for 45 attacks. One single-issue attack was reported from Greece.” In other words, only 3 out of the 249 terrorist attacks that were perpetrated in 2010 within the EU were carried out by Islamists.

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