The hazards of Muslim-Bashing.

• Author: Pal, Amitabh
• Position: Comment - Column

The Norway attacks teach us the danger of Islamophobia. The lone suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, is full of antipathy toward Islam and multiculturalism, blaming them for ruining his beloved homeland. His 1,500-page manifesto has as its core a defense of "Norwegian" values and a hatred of the outsider.

But the American media rushed in the opposite direction to find the guilty based on preconceptions about whom to hold responsible. There are many parallels with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, also initially blamed on Islamic radicals, only in this case the misinformation spread even more quickly because of social media networks that were not available sixteen years ago. The New York Times did itself no honor, speedily engaging in inaccurate finger-pointing. Even after the identity of the perpetrator was known, the paper quoted a terrorism expert to show that "the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view."

The conservative media was worse, with everyone from Bill O'Reilly to Andrew Breitbart asserting that even if Breivik wasn't Muslim, his actions were Muslim-ish. The Wall Street Journal egregiously published a piece by American Islam-hater Bruce Bawer, an Oslo resident, saying that though Breivik's deeds were unjustified, his ideas weren't. And the flagbearer of Paleolithic conservatism, Pat Buchanan, said that "Breivik may be right."

Much of Breivik's hatred was picked up from our side of the Atlantic. He is a fan of American Islamophobe Pamela Geller, who was a prime mover behind the campaign against the Islamic interfaith center in Manhattan last year. Breivik's manifesto repeatedly cites Robert Spencer and mentions Daniel Pipes, two of the most prominent Muslim-bashers in this country. (Incredibly, the FBI had two of Spencer's books, including The Truth About Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion, as recommended reading for its new recruits as recently as 2009, reveals Spencer Ackerman for Wired.)

Anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States is far from a fringe ideology. The image of Islam in the United States is so overwhelmingly negative that a USA Today/Gallup poll in March found that almost three in ten Americans think American Muslims to be sympathetic to Al Qaeda, while barely half think them to be supportive of the United States.

U.S. suspicion of Islam is often based on sheer ignorance. A Pew Forum...