Roger Cohen on the attacks in Norway

BREIVIK'S ENABLERS: Roger Cohen weighs in on the attacks in Norway.

Muslims over the past decade have not done enough to denounce those who deformed their religion in the name of jihadist murder. Will the European and U.S. anti-immigrant Islamophobic crowd now denounce what Breivik has done under their ideological banner? I doubt it. We’ll be hearing a lot about what a loner he was.

Huge social problems have accompanied Muslim immigration in Europe in recent decades, much greater than in the more open United States. There is plenty of blame to go around. Immigrants have often faced racism and exclusion. The values of Islam on women, on marriage and on homosexuality, as well as the very vitality of the religion, have grated on a secular Europe. The picture is not uniform — successful integration exists — but it is troubling."

Troubling, perhaps, but something we will all have to tolerate in one sense or another. There is no way around this sort of progress. In denying the integration of other cultures we seem to be denying others of the rights afforded to the original settlers of our nations, themselves immigrants at one stage or another. The real issue surrounding this particular crisis, with regard to religious tolerance, is seen in the widespread double-standard: people are quick to judge Islam following an attack by Muslim extremists, but so many of those same people fail to apply the same generalisation to Christianity in this sort of event. If we choose to deride Islam for events perpetrated by Muslim extremists and jihadists, we must apply the same attitude toward Christianity. Somehow I see this as unlikely, and hope that neither is the case.