A basic smattering of Islam 101 untainted by Western mores and values is enough to do the job.
What makes ordinary Norwegian youth support stoning of adulterous women?
Good book about Muslim extremists in Norway.
REVIEW: In the summer journalist Lars Akerhaug published a confession written on minervanett.no where he explained that he had gone from being leftist – “a political vision with no room for doubt” – to be tolerant liberal.
He had been active in residual AKP and anti-globalization, and repentance follow-known tracks: Suddenly he realized that life is diverse.
It’s not the world’s biggest eye-opener, but with Akerhaug it gives an advantage to understand young people seeking an intolerant world view in a petrified understanding of Islam.
So-called normal Norwegian youth enters groups will be stoning of adulterous women, public flogging and cutting thieves hands.
They rave about the restoration of the “caliphate”, legal polygamy and unlimited supply of virgins in paradise.
Arabic name in the morning gift
The book “Norwegian Jihad” portrays figures in the extreme Muslim community, with interviews, reports and source studies. We meet Arfan Bhatti, Mohammad, some ethnic Norwegian converts (who have been given Arab names in conversion) and some anonymous sources who either do not dare stand up or have decided not to participate in the book in anyway. Akerhaug does well in explaining this. Often people have three identities. A registry would help us to find our way in the forest of stereotypical names.
The text works are well documented and provides, despite its clear rejection, good representation of the logic of extremist reasoning. The transition from local conflicts to global jihad, with anti-Semitic conspiracy as the central ingredient, could nevertheless benefit from been further elucidation.
The author asks why there has been so little focus on Algerian extremists, when many of Algerians are represented in international conflicts.
Yes, it’s funny, but may be related to the leading powers of the West have never wanted to comprehend the complexity of the Algerian tragedy. And Algeria is a striking argument for trying to recruit rootless youth to fight against democracy.
Oil, gas, wine and goats
In Algeria, the conflict will find everything – oil and gas, fertile agricultural land used to cultivate French wine while goats graze in the barren desert landscape, a democratic election that was torpedoed because the people chose “wrong”, and subsequent bestial conflict in which France has supported the corrupt dictatorship.
Is this democracy offers? Yes, unfortunately it might look like.
But from there to dream of an eternal law of God which once during the Middle Ages was revealed in an Arabian desert cave, demanding mutilation of the infidels and the covering of girls are strange. Should not people rather go further than the back?
