It was very sad to read about so many people being killed in Norway for what seems to be a very trivial ideological difference. This incident is very enlightening because of the response it evoked globally.
Almost everybody, including myself, assumed it must be caused by Islamic terrorists and started blaming Islam. I felt very ashamed when the truth was revealed.
Such incidents expose the hidden prejudices in our unconscious. We are very quick to generalise specific incidents to entire communities. And then we wonder why the other community hate us? There is only one weapon against prejudice and that is logical awareness.
I now understand what the island of Sri Lanka went through and what Pakistan is passing through. But what I do not understand is why the western nations call the Pakistani government and their soldiers “war criminals” for having getting rid of the most ruthless terrorists in the world.
Why Muslims are not considered as equal, why don’t they have ‘right to life’? No one cares if a Muslim woman loses her scarf; no one says anything regarding death and destructions of Muslims of Palestine, Kashmir and Bosnia, the genocide of Muslims is like nothing to western nations.
It is a strange world with strange values that we live in. Different value for the western developed nations when they are attacked and different for the developing Muslims when they are attacked.
BILAL SHAHID
Rawalpindi
(II)
A man named Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian Christian, killed almost 80 people on an island and injured many others. He is an extremist and fundamentalist Christian. He confessed that he wanted to defame the Muslims with these attacks.
The so-called champions of human rights were had it all wrong when the media showed their bias as they called Anders Behring Breivik with various names. The Guardian called him “Norwegian gunman”, The New York Times called him “Oslo Suspect”, Fox News mentioned him as “Norwegian suspect” and so on but none declared him a terrorist.
We are at a loss to know what kind of media theirs is. Assume what would happen if a Muslim was involved in this terrorism. Surely, he was immediately would have been entitled as a Muslim terrorist.
All the crimes that take place in the world are immediately blamed on Muslims. Why so? Why don’t they understand that a terrorist, whether a Muslim or a non-Muslim, has no religion.
HAFIZ MUHAMMAD NOMAN
Karachi
(III)
After the attack on Norway which killed around 80 people, I searched on the internet for the titles of the guy who was behind these attacks. I was not surprised by the titles which were given to him by different foreign media: “Norwegian gunman”, “Oslo suspect”, “Norwegian suspect”, and “Norway gunman”. Few called him right wing extremist.
Not even a single media called him a terrorist. I think because he is not a Muslim, he is not called a terrorist even after he killed scores of people.
MUBASHIR MAHMOOD
Karachi
