Post on Norway attacks.

By today, i am sure that all of us are aware of the events that have happened in Norway. If you follow me on my Twitter account, i am also sure that you will notice that my Tweets the past two days have been mostly nothing but updates on the attacks, from the minute it unraveled all the way to yesterday night, when i watched Jens Stoltenberg, the Prime Minister of Norway, answer the questions of many reporters outside of a hotel in Sundvollen.

For those of you still unaware (no excuses!), Norway was attacked through a bomb, which exploded outside of government building in central Oslo, and followed by the shooting of 560 kids at a summer camp on the island of Utøya. The death toll from both these attacks are currently at 92, with the larger percentage of the dead being the teenagers who were at Utøya, attending the camp.

I certainly don't fancy myself as an expert criminologist or anything of the sort, but i have read and studied many, many spree shootings that have happened on this planet, and the destruction caused by Anders Behring Breivik does not compare to any other shooting in history. Throwing aside the bomb and focusing solely on the shooting itself, one wonders how Breivik managed to kill close to 90 teenagers all by himself. As the newscaster on BBC said yesterday, "...extremely sophisticated attack. Very, very well planned and executed." - well executed, i think, are the key words here. And of course, all of us are wondering why, or what drove him to commit such a vile act of terrorism against his own countrymen. Many reports state him as being affiliated to extremist right-wing Christian groups, anti-Islam and anti-multiculturalism. I myself have read three or four of his writings which he posted on the Internet. The guy's an eloquent and well-researched writer, i'll give him that. But no matter how many of his essays you read, or how many answers from him we get, we'll never truly understand what went on his mind as he pulled the trigger against these unarmed, helpless teenagers on that island. Why kill them? Why not the Muslims, if he was so against us? Mysteries all around.

On the night that these attacks happened, my fingers and eyes were busy refreshing and reading CNN and BBC articles as well as the trending topic "Utøya" on Twitter. Without a doubt, i was drawn to the comments section of the developing news article on CNN, and unsurprisingly, many were quick to point their fingers towards "those Muslim pigs", and "that Islam nonsense", and, well, you get the idea. To be frank, before i was convinced that the bombing and Utøya shooting were connected to each other, i just thought it was an extremely, extremely horrible day for Norway. Not once did i think that the gunman on Utøya island was a Muslim affiliated terrorist at all because a spree shooting is not characteristic of a terrorist attack - of an Al-Qaeda attack (if we must). The bomb however, was skeptical and could've passed for the act of an international terrorist group, but all i know was that i was hoping so hard to God that it wasn't related to Islam at all.

I think i had a purpose of writing this post but somewhere along the way, it got lost. I really don't know what else to say about the Norway attacks because i don't know what else to think about it. My dad keeps saying that they will find a way to twist this attack to deflect some of the blame onto the Muslim community but after what happened in Oslo and Utøya, it's not so easy to just jump to conclusions anymore. Stereotypes are a difficult thing. On one hand, i understand why they exist, but on the other, there are just as equally as many stereotype-defying people of a certain community as the ones that do fit the stereotype. Watching Prime Minister Stoltenberg on my television last night though, i have hope that Norway will prove my dad wrong. His responses to the many questions asked were gentle and kind; something i rarely see from heads of government or ministers or people in charge of nations. Certainly, not anything i'm used to in Malaysia. The whole world stands behind you, Norway. Even the Muslims - especially this Muslim.

"If one man alone can show so much hate, imagine all the love and humanity a whole nation can give." - Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway.