Norway attacks: Norway's tragedy must shake Europe into acting on extremism and right-wing extremists - by Aslak Sira Myhre

The terror of Norway has not come from Islamic extremists. Nor has it come from the far left, even though both these groups have been accused time after time of being the inner threat to our "way of living". Up to and including the terrifying hours in the afternoon of 22 July, the little terror my country has experienced has come from the far right.

For decades, political violence in this country has been almost the sole preserve of neo-Nazis and other racist groups. During the 1970s they bombed leftwing bookstores and a May Day demonstration. In the 80s two neo-Nazis were executed because they were suspected of betraying the group. In the past two decades, two non-white Norwegian boys have been killed in racist attacks. No foreign group has killed or hurt people on Norwegian territory since the second world war, except for the Israeli security force Mossad, which targeted and killed an innocent man by mistake on Lillehammer in 1973.

But even with this history, when this devastating terror hit us, we instantly suspected the Islamic world. It was the jihadis. It had to be. It was immediately denounced as an attack on Norway, on our way of life. In the streets of Oslo, young women wearing hijabs and Arab-looking men were harassed as soon as the news broke.

Small wonder. For at least 10 years we have been told that terror comes from the east. That an Arab is suspicious, that all Muslims are tainted. We regularly see people of colour being examined in private rooms in airport security; we have endless debates on the limits of "our" tolerance. As the Islamic world has become the Other, we have begun to think of that what differentiates "us" from "them" is the ability to slaughter civilians in cold blood.

Note EU-Digest: Hopefully this will awaken Europeans to the fact that the hate spewed out by many of the right-wing politicians in Europe against immigrants and more tolerant and multi-cultural  political parties is the wrong way to go and will eventually create situations as that what happened in Norway this week..

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