Up to 250,000 people gathered outside Oslo City Hall on Monday for a "rose march" in memory of the victims of Friday's bomb attack and massacre. While Anders Behring Breivik has admitted bombing Norway's capital and opening fire on a youth camp he has entered a plea of not guilty, saying he wanted to save Europe from Muslim immigration. [Photo by Emilio Morenatti / China Daily via Agencies]

In recent decades, developed countries in the West have seen a tidal wave of largely Muslim immigrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Some are fleeing from ethnic persecution; others merely wish to escape from poverty.

The shift might be problem-free if these migrants took steps to assimilate into the local culture. But many don't. Not only do they wish to maintain their linguistic and cultural traditions upon moving to the West, but they also feel the host society should adapt to them and not vice versa.

Britons were shocked when it was revealed that many of the radicals forming the ranks of Al-Qaeda and other fundamentalist terrorist groups were young men from Muslim communities who had been born, educated and, one expected, "Anglicized" culturally.

That this was not the case was seen as a real betrayal in some sectors of British society. The news did wonders for recruit to neo-Nazi and other rightwing political groups.

Anti-immigrant sentiment is currently being fanned in Britain by the revelation that many newly-created jobs are going to outsiders from all over the world – "taking the bread from the mouths of British workers." The government even issued an appeal earlier this year for companies to "employ British."

Thus, the religious and economic elements of immigration combined into a potentially dangerous cocktail.

The Muslim community in the West has not helped its case with its growing demands for governments to allow Sharia law to govern their behavior. In Australia, a recent investigation found newly-arrived Muslim immigrants, both legal and illegal, were practicing Sharia law within their community in direct violation of national laws.

It doesn't take too much imagination to conceive of a situation where other special interest groups will seek to opt out of the legal structure to run things they way they want.

The alienation caused by such a system – together with global terrorism – helped stoke up anger that Western cultural and social values are being destroyed. Breivik was arguing such as point.