FrontPage Publishes Essay by Blogger Who Inspired Norwegian Terrorist

As the trial of Muslim-hating Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik enters its third week, a U.S.-based website has published a new essay by a blogger whose work was cited frequently by the man who murdered 77 of his countrymen last July.

In an article posted today on FrontPage, Norwegian blogger “Fjordman” – whose work was mentioned so often in Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto that some bloggers speculated they were the same person – showered praise on Robert Spencer, an American anti-Muslim pundit and hate group leader who Breivik thinks deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.

Fjordman’s particular interest is Spencer’s latest work, Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam’s Obscure Origins, which according to its Amazon page is a “sober but unflinching look at one of the world’s major religions” and includes “many indications that Arabian leaders fashioned Islam for political reasons” – military conquest among them.

This “finding” dovetails conveniently with the idea, embraced by many on the Islamophobic right, that Islam is not a religion protected by the First Amendment but rather a seditious political ideology whose proponents and “training centers” (i.e. mosques) must be rooted out and shut down.

For three months after Breivik’s rampage against progressives, Fjordman – whom Breivik regarded as Europe’s “most talented right wing essay[ist]” – stopped writing his anti-Muslim screeds. He emerged from his self-imposed hiatus last October, declaring in a post on the popular anti-Muslim website Gates of Vienna that after contemplating retirement, “I have decided to continue with undiminished force. Right from the beginning I have been saying that terrorists, whether they come in the shape of Islamic Jihadists or Anders Behring Breivik, should not be allowed to decide what a free society can or cannot discuss, and I meant that.”

It’s no surprise FrontPage would make itself available as a venue for Fjordman’s anti-Muslim bile. The online magazine is published by David Horowitz, a radical leftist-turned-radical-rightist who believes liberals and “Islamofascists” are working together to destroy the West and who leads a network of organizations devoted to spreading his gospel of fear.

Horowitz funds Spencer’s anti-Muslim blog Jihadwatch; has attacked the “Occupy” movement for supposedly wanting “a communist overthrow of the capitalist system”; and has claimed that minority “demands for special treatment” are “only necessary because some blacks can't seem to locate the ladder of opportunity within reach of others.” Just last week, he drew criticism from Jewish groups and others for an ad, placed in The New York Times on the eve of Israel’s Day of Remembrance, comparing supporters of using boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel to Nazis.