Sentinel Watch June 11, 2012 Issue

Disarming ethnic terrorism

Annette Kreutziger-Herr—Berlin, Germany

Oliver Elsher

Terrorism has many faces, right-wing crimes being part of them. The killing spree by an East-German neo-Nazi terror cell over almost a decade sparked a heated debate after it was detected several months ago. The motive for murders of small business owners, mostly immigrants from Turkey and Greece, was that these foreigners, in the view of the killers, were threatening the purity of German blood (“Neo-Nazis Suspected in Long Wave of Crimes, Including Murders, in Germany,” New York Times, November 13, 2011). 

In Norway, Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in July 2011, driven by hate, right-wing populism, Islamophobia, cultural conservatism, and ultranationalism. The Christian Science Monitor reported: “He admitted responsibility for the attacks, although he pled not guilty, claiming he was acting preventively against the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Norwegians . . .” (“Breivik says psychiatric report deeming him insane is full of ‘fabrications,’ ” April 25, 2012). 

To me, the ones who can truly start the process of disarming terrorism are the ones who pray. Let all of us join in prayer and be willing to give up anything that would make us fear or hate one another, including any ingrained opinions of others.

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