An unforgettable memory came to mind when I was following the terror that struck Norway, a Scandinavian country whose name is associated with the opposite of terror, and whose people deserve everything good. In the 1980s, I was doing a Ph.D. at Georgetown University. However, I did not write the thesis and I did not donate hundreds of thousands of dollars, so I did not graduate, like Saif al-Islam Gaddafi did at the London School of Economics. Georgetown was founded by the Jesuits and it might not be as famous as Harvard and Yale. However, it is a half-mile from Foggy Bottom and students end up as State Department employees. The building that I studied in was the work of the late Hassib al-Sabbagh, the head of United Contractors, and Nemir Kirdar, the chairman of Investcorp, the big Arab investment bank. One-third of the building was financed by CCC and holds Christian-Muslim dialogue sessions, led by the esteemed Professor John Waterbury. The other two-thirds were funded by Investcorp, and this includes the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. This is a unique body in American universities, centered on Arab studies alone, and not Middle East studies, for example. There is no Turkish, Israeli or Iranian section. From the beginning I have been on the advisory board of the CCAS, and since it is not an Arab government, a number of people have taken turns in its presidency. They have been businessmen, diplomats and thinkers, from Nemir to Professor Osama Abi-Mershed these days. I have remained a board member, since I belong to "Arab continuity." On 19 April 1995, I was taking part in a bi-annual session of the advisory board, chaired by Nemir Kirdar. A secretary entered and whispered in the president's ear. She turned on the television and asked us to watch what was being broadcast. We were surprised by the terror that hit Oklahoma City and this embarrassed us; half of the members of the board were Arab, and they feared that the blast of the work of those extremist Arabs among us, who want to kill Americans, i.e. the other half of the board members. I began to pray that the terror was by anyone other than Arabs and Muslims. I did not have much trust that God would answer my prayer, since I did the same thing on the day of the Lockerbie bombing, a crime that turned out to be the work of Moammar Gaddafi. But this time, the Lord answered my prayer with regard to the Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people, 19 of them under the age of five. Before the day ended, the American Timothy McVeigh had been arrested, driving an unmarked car without a driver's license. It turned out he was an anti-federal government type, and a supporter of the Branch Davidians, the Protestant breakaway cult led by David Koresh, who distributed a New Light booklet to his followers, allowing him to have sex with the members of the cult. McVeigh and others were convicted in 1997 and was executed by lethal injection on 11 June 2001. All of this came to mind last week when I turned on the television and was surprised by the unexpected terror in Oslo. I quickly prayed to the Lord that he would spare Arabs and Muslims the ramifications of any new terror crime. The young people who were killed were members of the ruling Labor Party, and had held a session of support for the Palestinians. I relied on my wife and a family friend who was with us, and asked them to pray with me, and I admit that their belief is stronger than mine. Their prayers, which were usually restricted to the health of children and school grades, are usually answered. In fact, before the day was over, we heard that the person behind the terror act was Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian fundamentalist terrorist of the Zionist Evangelical type. These people formed the electoral base of George W Bush and Breivik, like them, want to fight Islam and immigration. Terrorists are like unbelievers, and constitute a single group, whether the person involved is an Islamic extremist violating the precepts of his religion, or the fascist government of Israel, or a Christian fundamentalist of the Evangelical Zionist type. They do not carry out terror in America, because the Bush administration was killing Arabs and Muslims for them. A final point. The first editions of the London newspapers the following day said the terrorist was likely one of us. There are such people, and this is probably what the newspapers wanted. The Times said in the first paragraph o fits item on the front page that the attack might have been related to Norway's role in Afghanistan. In the second, it said the attack was of the type traditionally carried out by al-Qaida. The Daily Mail cited a group I had never heard of before, the "Helpers of Global Jihad," that the attack was revenge for the publication of cartoons that insulted the Prophet Mohammed. It printed a box explaining the story of these cartoons, and I have the successive editions. The news changed after the accusation was proven about that Norwegian criminal. Arabs and Muslims turned out to be innocent… this time. Thank God. [email protected]
