A recent terror attack at a mosque near Oslo raises important questions about the extent and range of radical right extremism and the Norwegian state response to it. On the 10th of August 2019, the young radical right extremist Philip Manshaus broke into the al Noor mosque in Bærum, 14 km south west of Oslo. He started shooting but was stopped by 65-year-old Mohamed Rafiq who held him while two others went to get help.
There were only three men in the mosque at that time of the day before eid when it would have been full. Before the 21-year-old Manhaus left home he had killed his step sister who was not ethnically white. Little is still known about the motivation for killing the sister.
Emergency services were contacted immediately but it took the police 20 minutes to arrive. Once there, they were slow to enter and even asked Irfan Mushtaq, a board member who arrived later, if he was the gunman. Mushtaq had been notified about the shooting by a joiner who worked on a roof nearby. When he arrived, one of the men was on the phone with the police, but Mushtaq took over. He was surprised that the police delayed entry to the mosque and were more keen on interrogating him about possible internal conflicts within the mosque.
