Yeah, we’re just a bunch of worry worts for nothing.
Finnish ambassador to Turkey, Nina Vaskunlahti, sits down to an interview with The DailySabah (Turkish) promoting ”shared Turk-Finn values and friendship”. While many EU member states are against Turkish membership into the EU, Finland still remains a close supporter of the idea. I have been reporting on this for years (example, here, here and here).
Towards the end of the interview was the following question and answer (excerpted below) by the Finnish ambassador concerning ”islamofauxbia” and the ”the koran hour” broadcasted by Finland’s state public broadcasting company (radio & TV) YLE.
As Islamophobia is on the rise throughout Europe and Islam is seen as a threat, Finland public broadcasting is reading the Quran. What are the political motives behind this?
That is an interesting question. The timing of the program is quite amazing, as it had been decided two years ago to do a program about the Quran. Yle, the Finnish Public Broadcasting Company, wanted to make a series on Quran and Islamic culture, and it took all this time to do the necessary background work. The broadcasting of the program has now started. In the program, the Quran is read, and then the contents are discussed between Professor Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila (who has translated the Quran – Koraani – into Finnish) and Anas Hajjar, who is an imam and representative of the Islamic Society of Finland.
When I talked to Yle, they said some people in Finland see the Quran as “mythical,” and thus, they wanted to show that there is nothing mythical in it through discussing it for the masses.
Fortunately, Islamophobia is not a big issue in Finland. Finnish people in general are broad-minded. We are a small nation with a 5.3 million population, and we believe that in order to survive, you have to be open to ideas, other cultures and other people. Of course in Finland, like in every other country, there are people who are afraid of change, afraid of something different, but these people are a minority.
NOTE: This is how politicians and government officials view those of us who dare question their policies, we just ”afraid of something different, we’re afraid of change”. Really? Unbelievable (or perhaps not), this is how these bureaucrats hold us with contempt and disdain, we’re the one at fault, never them, and most certainly not those who are on the receiving end of their largesse (read taxpayer money) at the moment.
Being against a violent and intolerant ideology that is entirely alien to our way of life and value system, makes us ” afraid of something different”, ”afraid of change”. What a jerk, she needs to be yanked out of her position but we all know that will never happen.
“..Of course in Finland, like in every other country, there are people who are afraid of change, afraid of something different, but these people are a minority.”
She’s right you know. It’s only those bigoted islamophobes who are afraid of the change in the number of instances of rape of white women, wife bashings, FGM operations, anti-Semitic attacks, welfare budget blowouts etc etc that automatically arrive with an incease in the numbers of muslims in society.
Well KGS, were I to read the full article, that would be so many minutes of my life I had wasted. (That’s not to denigrate in any way all the effort you put into your work.)
In all seriousness though. . has this woman been on the wacky backy for the past ten years???
What other explanation could there possibly be???
I saved the reader much from mental pain in visualizing the exchange of saliva between the interviewer and interviewee, that’s why I focused on the most glaring disgusting remarks. 🙂
I wonder if the 3 Jewish tribes that lived in the Medina area of Saudi Arabia and helped Mohammed when he had to leave Mecca were Islamophobes and afraid of change. I wonder what ever happened to them?
I bet this guy is sure that the muslims burst out of Saudi Arabia in the 6-700’s with lots of gifts to win over the local Jews and Christians and they were so kind, considerate and understanding that the locals just had to change their religion to the Religion of Peace.
Some people will just never learn form history will they.
Islam has two faces, the benign face it prefers to show to the West and the militant face it openly displays in the Middle East. One face is true Islam, the other is a charade. According to the Koran, there are only two houses in Islam, the Dar el Salaam (the house of peace) and the Dar el Harb (the house of war). If you are a Moslem, you are in the Dar el Salaam, but if you’re of any other faith, you are an “infidel” in the Dar el Harb and Islam is at war with you. That doesn’t mean that every Moslem is a terrorist, no, but all terrorists today are Moslems and all Moslems believe that the whole world must become Islamic. Islam is not a tolerant religion, and would do the very things in Britain and elsewhere in the West, to Christians and Jews, that they do in Islamic countries. The fact is, that the Western Governments, wilfully ignore the fact that the rights of Christians or Jews are guaranteed nowhere in the Islamic world, and their basic human rights are consistently violated. In no place does Islam give to Christians and Jews the same rights they themselves demand in Judeo-Christian democracies.
well put Gerry!