By Abhirup Bhunia

Globalization has integrated the world and anything that’s pre-internationalism appears obsolete. But the roots of religion and faith trace back to centuries and are based on ideals that cannot be blown away with the sermons of all-embracing globalism. This has once again been proven with the onslaught of fanatical activity in once peaceful Norway. 

The ugly face of obsessive religionism has reared its head, yet again. What was Islamic fundamentalism yesterday is Christian extremism today. And no matter if its Christ or Allah, the brutality will rage on hereafter with alternating preeminence. The world will once again be devoid of peace as chauvinistic violence comes to rule the roost. With fanatic followers of both religions – Christianity and Islam – now firm in their distorted belief that they are empowered by their Gods to engage in carnage, it seems that the only thing that separates the Breiviks from the Bin Ladens is their religion, the keystone of their brutal ideas revealing perilous convergence.

After Norway, whichever way one looks at it, it appears to be a concerted attempt to take revenge on Muslims at large (terrorism in popular lingo refers to Islamic fundamentalism alone). In his startlingly lengthy manifesto, Anders Breivik writes that the immigrant Muslim community in Oslo has “transformed my beloved Oslo into a multicultural shithole.” Breivik further writes that the Jewish and Zoroastrian minorities strongly support the far-right cultural nationalists of India who hold with the Hindutva ideology. A new order of Knights Templar, according to the fanatic, identifies with the Hindu extremists who openly promulgate hatred of Muslims.

The response to Islamic fanaticism seems to be yet another round of counter-fanaticism by vehement Christian and Hindu radicals. Now that Breivik has been found to be praising Indian ultra-nationalists in his manuscript, it is now clearly a case of anti-Islamic forces coming together to form a dangerous global far-right that will seek to demolish anything Islamic, regardless of their line of thought. Rejecting the view that all Muslims are not bad is a naïve sort of blanket viciousness, subscribed to by the Breivik brand, which is a subsidiary of the larger European/Western jingoism.

Islamophobia in the West and in Europe has been widely reported thus far. Hitherto, by way of jihad, with 9/11 being the trailblazer, Muslim fanatics have sought to proclaim Islam supremacy. It is a kind of perverse notion that waging battles will finish with the realization that Islamists are powerful beings. While the Islamic fundamentalists have created disgust, the Western hate mongers have generated Islamophobia, a euphemism for sweeping hatred of Muslims. This hatred, in turn, is represented by Breivik, and is a reiteration of religious conflicts and ideological divergences. Cultural integration and religious intermingling – all catchphrases of globalism – are merely pedagogic terms as it stands now.

Often, such far-right fanaticism is linked to nativism and xenophobia, an anti-immigrant posture. This anti-immigrant stance has strangely made inroads into the European mainstream political dogma with global leaders decrying multiculturalism and announcing its abject failure.

The world is hardly in a position to accept a battle of ‘my-terrorism v/s your-terrorism’, a game of strike and counterstrike between one creed of extremism and the other. Is this an international ‘clash of civilizations’ once again? Yes, even the dreamy optimist will admit.

The Indian ultra-rightist movement, represented by Hindu nationalists, comes into the picture as the third participant. Sadly again, it is about religion. Killer Breivik has lauded the attempts by Hindu militants to erase the Muslims who are seen as hateful by Hindu extremists. Time and again, acts of fanaticism by overzealous followers of Hinduism have been bounded by a feeling of hatred of Muslims. ‘Hindu terror’ is already a popular expression, a coinage by the media, unsurprisingly latched on to by Muslims who can now rise up and say that they aren’t the only radicals, and can even end up justifying future terrorist attacks.

Fanatic, white conservative Christians have obstinately interpreted the Bible and drawn on the Old Testament and New Testament to rationalize bloodshed. The extreme underlining idea is to bring about Christian theocracy, just the way Islamic terrorists dream of a Sharia law governed world, dominated by the tenets of their holy text, Quran. 

The world looks poised to return to the medieval ways – where brutal religious and hate-motivated forces clash with each other. Al-Qaeda’s motives and that of Breivik’s could be the same, but the point is not purely one of psychological sadism; it the strong undertone of religion that makes the Oslo event so worrisome, and indeed an eye-opener to how deep the rot of anti-Islamic (Jewish, Hindu, Christian) religious extremism runs.

The same ideology of violent religionism marks both the Christian and Muslim extremists. But both brands are miserable representatives of utopian ideas. The dream on the Muslim side of fanaticism is that Whites and West wont exist, and Christians, Hindus and Jews would be nonentities, while the rightwing Christian militants aspire to establish a first world devoid of Muslims and free of immigrant clusters of bearded Islamists.

The far-right fringe groups in Austria, France, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, UK, Switzerland, Italy and the rest increasingly pose a deadly threat to the cross-cultural and integrated societies that globalization has sought to set up. Even as neo-fascist groups are being busted in and around Europe every now and then, the threat looms large – a threat that can undo the enormous progress civilizations have made by dialogues, friendships, tolerance and adaptation.