July 26, 2011

The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) today released its analysis of the Anders Behring Breivik’s "2083 Manifesto." The analysis shows more than 1 out of 10 of the manifesto’s web citations came from highly visible anti-Muslim sites such as JihadWatch, IslamWatch and Atlas Shrugs.

SEE: "Content Analysis of the 2083 Manifesto" (MPAC.org)

ALSO SEE: "Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S." (New York Times)

Breivik, a domestic violent extremist, wrote a 1500-page "manifesto" which detailed his political motivations. MPAC performed a content analysis of the document to probe his sources of ideological motivation. The websites and writings of anti- Muslim personalities like Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller, Daniel Pipes and Walid Shoebat were frequently cited. For instance the site JihadWatch, alone, was cited 112 times.

As a New York Times quote from Marc Sageman, a prominent counterterrorism analyst and former CIA officer, stated:

"it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam ‘is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.'"

"'This rhetoric'," he added," 'is not cost-free.'"

"The venomous rhetoric of anti-Muslim bigots like Pipes, Spencer, and Shoebat can no longer be written off as fringe and unimportant," said Alejandro Beutel, Government and Policy Analyst and author of the analysis on the "2083 Manifesto". "It’s disturbing to see Breivik extensively referring to Pipes, Spencer, and Shoebat. All three have been mistakenly used by various policymakers as terrorism experts. These hatemongers at best provide misleading information and at worst become intellectual enablers to what Norway had witnessed."