Hege Storhaug Islam in Norway

A NORWEGIAN ASKS THE ISLAMIC COMMUNITY IN NORWAY: HOW ABOUT SOME SELF-EXAMINATION……?

SEETHING FOR SEETHINGS’ SAKE
[This essay originally appeared in Bergens Tidende and was translated from the Norwegian by Bruce Bawer. ]

Time for some self-examination?
 

By Hege Storhaug, Human Rights Service
The Muslims who have recently been demonstrating and agitating in Norway in reaction to the publication of a Muhammed cartoon in Dagbladet should be asking themselves: What is it about us Muslims that causes so much hubbub? Why don’t any other groups occupy as much space in the public square, in public debate, as we do? Why do we so often represent ourselves as victims, as having been offended, and react with aggression?
Sunday, February 14, marked the 21st anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini’s death fatwa against Salman Rushdie for writing the book The Satanic Verses – a fatwa that marked the beginning of the contemporary confrontation between Islam and the Christian world. As Kenan Malik notes in his book From Fatwa to Jihad, Peter Mayer, who was then the CEO of Rushdie’s publishing house, Penguin, understood instantly how important the publisher’s public reaction would be, insisting that the firm take the long view. To give in now, he recognized, would be only to encourage future acts of terrorism by people who, for whatever reason, objected to the contents of some book or other.
We’ve grown accustomed to the fact that in our society certain elements of the Muslim population, which make up about three percent of the total population, are all over the media. This situation amounts to a kind of permanent exception in which demands and aggression dominate the picture, along with major doses of victim rhetoric. No other group demands anywhere near as much attention or demonstrates so clearly that it is dissatisfied with our liberal values. What, people ask with concern, will our society be like when Muslims make up 10 percent of it, or 20 percent? How many demonstrators will they manage to muster at University Square in 2020, if something goes against them? Will the police be able to maintain order? What do the events we are witnessing now portend?
To witness the demo at University Square was to be reminded of the 1930s, when Vidkun Quisling’s Nazi group, the Nasjonal Samling, held mass rallies at the same spot. There was the same feeling of being in the presence of dark, aggressive forces. No humility; hardly any freedom of thought. Leaders in uniforms copied from the seventh-century Arabic Bedouin culture – a culture that represents the very opposite of humanism, human rights, democracy, and freedom.
What’s paradoxical is this: like other immigrants to Norway, Muslims have had all kinds of benefits served to them on a silver platter by the Norwegian state: full political and civil rights, free education, and health care. We even fund their mosques in the same way that we fund other houses of worship, despite the fact that organized Islam is as much a political phenomenon and a system of laws as it is a religion – a fact plainly illustrated in Oslo last weekend. But many of its adherents are not satisfied; they want more. Or, more correctly, they want less freedom and more Islam in our society.
 

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