Re-Coding Nationalism: Muslims and Islamophobia in Norway

Tuesday, April 8

Time: 6 PM

Location: Suzlberger Parlor, 3rd Floor, Barnard Hall

On July 22, 2011, two terror attacks in Norway were perpetrated by a white
Norwegian right-wing extremist. His stated motivation was to eradicate the
Muslim presence in Norway and Europe by massacring Norwegian social
democrats he believed to be responsible for allowing Muslim immigration to
Norway since the 1960s. Seventy-seven people died that day, most of them
teenagers. The terror attacks came at the end of a decade in which
Islamophobic ideas (often originating in transnational far-right online
activism) had become increasingly mainstream in Norwegian politics. How is
one to understand the popularity and ubiquity of such sentiments in a small
and prosperous country like Norway, in which Muslims make up 3.6 percent of
the population? Sindre Bangstad is a postdoctoral fellow in the department
of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, and the author of Anders
Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia.