US Muslims call for probe on Norway killer's ties with Hindu nationalists

American Muslims have urged mosques and Muslim schools to increase security and have demanded an investigation into militant Hindu supremacist groups in the US after it became clear that the suspect in the bombing and mass shooting that killed 76 people in Norway praised nationalist Hindutva elements.

Muslim Peace Coalition USA and Indian Minorities Advocacy Network (ImanNet) leaders Seemi Ahmed and Dr. Shaik Ubaid have condemned the heinous terrorist massacres in Norway and expressed their heartfelt condolences to the victims and their families, according to a statement released by the Muslim Peace Coalition USA on Tuesday. Addressing a meeting of civil rights and human rights activists in New York, they expressed alarm over the connection between Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian suspect, and international Hindutva supremacists. They demanded that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security investigate militant Hindutva supremacist groups in the US. They also appealed to Indian consulates and Hindu temples to not allow Hindutva groups the use of their premises. In his over 1,500-page manifesto titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” Breivik talks of Hindutva elements as allies and urges them to fight shoulder to shoulder with him to stem the spread of Islam in Europe. “The Hindu-supremacist Hindutva movement in the US is a well-funded and powerful movement that has been involved in brainwashing American Hindu children and youth in the US with their brand of violent anti-Muslim and anti-Christian hate. These groups have been actively involved with the recent Islamophobic campaign in the US,” Ubaid said. “For the last thirty years they have been busy infiltrating and gaining power among the various professional and trade associations of the Indian diaspora in the Americas, Europe, Africa and Far East. For the past two decades they have been using the growing economic and political clout of India on the international stage to infiltrate the power centers in the US under the guise of being ‘representatives of the Indian diaspora.' The more militant among the Hindutva fronts have openly formed alliances with white American hate groups and known Islamophobes,” he added. Hindu nationalists have dismissed Breivik's praise of Hindutva as “motivated propaganda.” “His entire so-called manifesto quotes conservative writers from both sides of the Atlantic. Ideological similarities have been drawn from all over, so to say suddenly that it is linked to Indian nationalists or Hindutva is simply motivated propaganda,” Ram Madhav, a senior leader of Indian nationalist movement the RSS was quoted as saying by The Times of India.