In 1974, I traveled through Europe using my Eurail Pass, had a great time everywhere I went and before summer's end, found myself married to a Norwegian woman. I lived in Norway for two years, attended the university, learned to speak passable Norwegian and worked for the Oslo County Surveying Department.

Just before my arrival, Norway had let a large number of Pakistanis immigrate into their country to fill low-paying jobs. Almost immediately animosity developed between the newly arrived Muslim population and the indigenous Christian population. Being a foreigner I had encountered some animosity myself, but since I am of European ancestry most people were perfectly pleasant toward me. Still, my having an attractive Norwegian wife in medical school and a very desirable civil service job did not sit well with some Norwegians, so I made a concerted effort to fit in with their cultural norms.

Last year when the news broke that Anders Breivik had committed his heinous mass murder, I thought back to my time in Norway and tried to make some kind of sense of this senseless outrage. I began by considering such events in other parts of the world: the Middle East, Africa, Asia and Latin America, where such occurrences are far more common. In Kenya in the 1950s a mass murder campaign by a group calling themselves Mau Mau resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of British citizens; men, women and children. But the Mau Mau actually killed many thousands more of there own citizens for having accommodated the British; an act eerily similar to Beivik’s killing of other Christian Norwegians for accommodating the culture of the new Muslim population.

When the British went into Africa they took with them their language, customs, laws and social mores; not only expecting the indigenous populations to accept their cultural norms, but very often demanding it. Throughout all of history powerful intruders have conducted themselves in a similar fashion; causing the world's populations to become increasingly angry with others coming into their countries and telling them how to live, what their laws should be, how and whom to worship, and how their cultures should be changed to something more acceptable to the new comers. Virtually every society on earth has always seen multicultural-ism as a clear and present danger that would destroy their own culture, values, beliefs and eventually the fabric of their entire society.

Our shock and sorrow over this atrocity is understandable, but we should not be so dismayed to find that Norwegians are just like all of the other peoples of our planet. Civilization has reached the point where forcing one's culture upon others as an immigrant has become as unacceptable as it would be for a conqueror. If a culture — any culture — has something to offer others, they will quickly adopt those practices which are perceived to be of value. Lost in the discussion today, is the fact that culture is a shared understanding of how to live with one another, and as such, it is what holds every society together.

The time has come to acknowledge that all nations have the same right to cultural self-determination. Certainly the experience with colonialization has shown that forcing upon another’s homeland an alien culture has always created animosities that led to violence and most certainly always will.

Steve Novak is a Coeur d’Alene resident.