Mattias Gardell

Mattias Gardell is Professor of Comparative Religion at Uppsala University, Sweden. His publications include The Return of Torture (Leopard, 2008), Islamophobia (Leopard, 2010) and Revolution in Egypt (Leopard, 2011, co-authored with Jan Hjärpe, Per Björklund and Bitte Hammargren). Gardell is currently engaged in two major projects, one on the militant anti-Muslim milieu and a comparative study of religion, secularism and democracy.

Articles by Mattias Gardell:

Published in Overland Issue 205 Summer 2011 · Politics

Terror in the Norwegian Woods

Mattias Gardell

Lethal political violence in Scandinavia has almost exclusively been perpetrated by far-Right groups or individuals.1 Yet, on 22 July 2011, when a homemade bomb exploded at the office of Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, head of the social democratic Labour Party, and a gunman opened fire on the youth camp of the same party, ‘terrorism experts’, the media and politicians instantly blamed Islamic terrorists.