I’ve had a lump in my throat since I heard about the terrorist attack in Norway. Youth, for God’s sake. Talk about literally killing hope. For Americans dealing with the aftermath of our own terrorism, the implications are chilling, for this was not an Islamic terrorist. This was a Norwegian killing his own in order to promote his political agenda and he took inspiration from American right wing ideologues he found online. The New York Times printed this quote from his 1,500-page manifesto: “The time for dialogue is over. We gave peace a chance. The time for armed resistance has come.” Just when you think you know who the enemy is and where he is hiding, someone destroys your certainty.

One thread of the attempt to make sense of all this is very similar to the aftermath of the Arizona shooting in which 6 people were killed and 14 wounded, including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, by Jared Loughner. Who or what could inspire such a grotesque act of violence? It’s a natural question, and the right one to ask in both cases. The finger is being pointed at far right politicians and bloggers who proclaim that European identity must be defended against an onslaught by Islamic immigrants. For an excellent overview of the state of Islamophobia on both sides of the Atlantic, I encourage you to read Roger Cohen’s article Breivik and His Enablers. Cohen well chronicles why overt fear mongering against Islam on the part of the Christian West should remind us of facism and we should be chastened.

There’s just one thing I’d like to add to the debate. What should be making us queasy is a weird paradox: Christian and Islamic extremists insist that there is no way to compromise or co-exist with the other yet they seem strangely similar. It certainly gave pause to Thomas Hegghammer, a Norwegian terrorism specialist, who was quoted in the New York Times as saying that Breivik’s rhetoric reminded him of bin Laden’s and other Al Queda leaders. He said of Breivik’s manifesto, “It seems to be an attempt to mirror Al Queda, exactly in reverse.” Hegghammer misses that this is no conscious attempt on Breivik’s part, but an odd characteristic of enemy relationships. The more each side insists on its absolute difference from the other, the more the two sides mirror each other becoming what René Girard calls enemy twins. Enemy twins only appear different to each other – to outside observers who have no stake in their fight all differences vanish. Why? Because while the adversaries only hear their own voices loudly rehearsing the litany of abuse they have suffered at the hands of their opponent, all observers see is that they share a belief in the legitimacy of violence and that shared belief speaks much louder than the supposed differences between them.

The problem is actually much bigger than these particular enemy twins. The problem is the universal belief in violence as a legitimate method to achieve ends, even good ends like peace and security. The entire world is captive to a culture of violence that traps governments and good people everywhere into a perverse logic that allows us to justify our own violence while condemning that of our enemies. It is no wonder the Breivik or Loughner or Bin Laden and his deputies believe in violence, or that Americans can support drone attacks and military campaigns in which thousands of innocents, including youth, are killed. We cannot condemn them without falling under the same condemnation. If we are searching for the inspiration for acts of terrorisms, the truth is closer to home than we might want to admit. The enemy, it turns out, is us.

The only way to distinguish ourselves from violent extremists is to become truly different than they are which means we must abandon our faith in violence at both a personal and institutional level. Americans must demand that our government abandon faith in military means to achieve our ends. The Raven Foundation is inviting Americans to take the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to begin a year long examination of what it would mean for our nation to continue to pursue peace, justice and democracy for the world, but to do it by peaceful means. Please join this important conversation by going to our website, Honor Their Memory – Be a Hero for Peace to see what we can do to get the lumps out of our throats. Peaceful people need to find our voice so we can be heard in political conversations. Be a hero for peace – start today.