Fjordman

Pro-Israeli Politician Gets Death Threats

Member of Parliament for the rightwing Progress Party, Ulf Erik Knudsen, was accompanied by a bodyguard during a debate arranged by the Immigration Council in the town of Drammen outside Oslo this week. The debate was about whether or not Islam could function as a bridge with Christianity:

He is an internationally certified bodyguard, hired by the party, Knudsen confirms. According to him, both the police and the security services at Parliament have been informed, since MPs for the Progress Party have received a marked increase in the number of death threats recently. Knudsen claims the threats are aggressive, but not specific in nature, saying that ”the next time somebody from the Progress Party takes part in a debate about immigration, the person will be taken care of forever”. – I don’t know for how long I will employ a bodyguard, but it is clear that the security precautions during this fall’s parliamentary elections will be extensive. Usually, it is primarily party leader Carl I. Hagen who gets special protection, but this may now change. Knudsen in particular is exposed to these kinds of threats for other reasons: - I have on many different occasions voiced my support for Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians. Last year this lead to a number of serious threats against my person.

Drammen has one of the highest percentages of Muslim immigrants of any Norwegian city, but being harassed for suspected pro-Israeli opinions isn’t a problem unique to Drammen. A municipally employed teacher in Kristiansand was prevented from wearing a Star of David around his neck. Kristiansand Adult Education Center, where the man works, ruled that the Jewish symbol could be deemed a provocation towards the many Muslim students at the school.

Lise Christoffersen from the Labor Party denounces what she claims is a ”nasty PR-stunt”:

I am sorry to see the Progress Party making a circus out of this instead of debating a serious issue. Maybe the next thing that happens now is that party leader Carl I. Hagen cries his crocodile tears to strengthen the image of the innocent and persecuted PP and the dangerous and aggressive immigrants. Christoffersen doubts whether the threats were genuine. – Who would want to seek out a place where there is a risk of an attack of any kind? Knudsen was even standing up instead of sitting, and thus making himself more vulnerable to potential attackers. Who would do such a thing if they were really threatened?

As a fellow Norwegian blogger comments, Christoffersen seems totally oblivious to the possibility that somebody might actually choose to stand up to threats and exercise their right to freedom of speech despite intimidation. The idea that the death threats may be real is not implausible. Militant Islamists like Mullah Krekar do reside in Norway. Besides, Norwegian police have already issued a mobile security alarm to Progress Party leader Carl I Hagen. They worry that he's a target for terrorists unhappy with some anti-Islamic remarks he made last summer. Hagen criticized Islam, and could see no similarity with the concept of moral and justice found in Christianity. Hagen also said that if Israel loses in the Middle East, Europe will succumb to Islam next, if Islamic fundamentalists have it their way. Christians should support Israel and oppose Islamic inroads into Europe. Members of Kristiansand Progress Party claimed that the Koran is similar to Hitler’s «Mein Kampf», and wanted Islam banned in Norway, but this did not get the support of more central party members.

Muslims in Norway reacted strongly to Hagen’s remarks, saying his statements “breaches UN’s human rights and the Geneva convention.”. Some launched a campaign to gain support for a stricter blasphemy paragraph. In an unprecedented step, a group of Muslim ambassadors to Norway blasted Carl I Hagen in a letter to newspaper Aftenposten, claiming he had offended 1.3 billion Muslims around the world. Pakistan’s ambassador in particular has interfered in unacceptable ways in Norwegian internal affairs before, trying to instruct and intimidate a Norwegian politician of Pakistani origin who dared to voice her support for banning Islamic veils from Norwegian schools:

A member of Oslo's City Council who was born in Pakistan but now holds Norwegian citizenship has twice been called to Pakistan's local embassy. Both times, Pakistan's ambassador to Norway questioned her political standpoints, and now Norway's foreign minister Jan Petersen has been told that she felt pressured. An embassy has nothing to do with what a politician on Oslo's City Council may believe." The calls from Pakistan's embassy came after Munir became the first known Muslim woman in Norway to support a proposed ban on the use of head scarves and other religious symbols for youth. She then became a target of criticism within the local Pakistani community. Newspaper Aftenposten Aften understands that Pakistan's ambassador, Shahbaz Shahbaz, noted in his second meeting with Munir that she still has family in Pakistan.

Leading Muslims in Norway have also defended suicide bombings, invited pro-Taliban and bin Laden politicians to the country, voiced "understanding" towards the murder of Dutch Islam critic Theo van Gogh and recommended polygamy, although this is against Norwegian law. Hagen was ridiculed by many for his remarks that he fears an Islamic party in Norway, although Denmark already has a problem with Muslim politicians who support sharia. Could it be that some of the Leftist multiculturalists are naïve, not that Mr. Hagen is racist and xenophobic? Perhaps we could learn something from our neighbors. A conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, recently about freedom of speech and research and the right to question religious truths took place under heavy police protection, as a Jewish teacher was attacked last year for reading from the Koran. The perpetrators, who looked like Arabs, remain at large. Moderate Muslims in Denmark experience harassment and death threats for their views. MP Naser Khader, born in Syria, has become a well-known pundit and unapologetic critic of some aspects of Islam:

"I know several people who've gotten involved in the debate and subsequently pulled out of it altogether. One woman called me, quite shaken, and said she'd been threatened. Maybe the rest of us are tougher, but the fact remains that freedom of speech is the breath of democracy - and if you take that away, then democracy dies," said Khader.

“If you take away free speech, democracy dies” says Khader. Too bad the Scandinavian political elite don’t understand this. As Helle Klein, political editor of Sweden's largest newspaper Aftonbladet, boasts: "If the debate is going to be about whether there are problems with immigrants, we don't want it". Welcome to Sweden, the country where the media don’t even pretend to champion freedom of speech, but openly brag about censorship. Klein gets support from leading Social Democrat and senior member of Cabinet Mona Sahlin:

A concerted effort that aims at educating Swedes that immigrants are a blessing to their country must be pursued, said Sahlin, stressing that her compatriots must accept that the new Sweden is multi-cultural, and that discrimination must end. "Like it or not, this is the new Sweden," she said.

Yes, this is the new Sweden. Never mind the rapes or the sharia or the museums that get death threats for showing art Muslims don't like. Just smile and think happy thoughts about cultural diversity. Is freedom of speech lost in Eurabian Scandinavia? Well, that depends. If you are a member of the Leftist – Islamic alliance, you won’t get death threats for subsidizing Palestinian terror conferences or giving support and raising funds for the Iraqi "resistance movement". Just don’t sell bathing shoes that insult Allah, or we may have to kill you.

posted by Unknown @ 11:21 PM 10 comments

Islamic law used by secular Swedish court

This case is some months old, but it didn’t come to my attention before now. In an open letter to Sweden’s Minister of Justice Thomas Bodström entitled ”No to sharia law in Sweden”, the International Campaign for the Defense of Women's Rights in Iran have issued a statement protesting a Swedish court ruling. The 23rd of November 2004, the newspaper Göteborgs Posten wrote about an Iranian man living in Sweden. He had married an Iranian woman, but was now reluctant to live with her anymore because of suspected infidelity. In the divorce case, the man was sentenced by the court, Hovrätten in Halmestad, to pay Mahr, Islamic dowry. The term Mahr comes from the Koran 4, 4 and is a basic part of the Islamic marriage contract, intended to be kept as some minimum of financial assurance by the woman in case of the man dumping her. The Swedish court declared that they adapted themselves to “Iranian law” in this matter. Since laws in the Islamic Republic of Iran are based upon Islamic religious law, it basically means that a secular, Swedish court thus judged according to sharia in this marriage dispute. Now, this may all sound cozy and multicultural and respectful of other people’s cultures. The question is: Do the people passing this ruling have any idea what kind of dangerous precedent they may be setting? As the women in this open letter write, according to Iranian and sharia laws, there is also the death penalty by stoning for adultery. Are Swedish courts going to “adapt to” Iranian laws in this case, too? Why didn’t they just rule as they would have done with a native Swedish woman? Muslim women come to Western nations such as Sweden hoping to get away from sharia. Yet some Westerners seem to insist on bringing it here, too.

For my part, I will add a few more questions: Where are Swedish “women’s rights” activists in all this? Sweden is after all the country where Feminism is something close to a national religion, and where every single politician has to declare himself a Feminist or commit political hara-kiri. If Swedes can worry about gender-segregation due to “stereotypical” toys such as dolls for girls, surely they can offer a few thoughts for sharia?

The answer is simple: It is the clash of Political Correctness: Multiculturalism vs. Feminism. The result: Sharia good, dolls bad. And who cares about Islamic oppression of women, anyway? Sure, Muslim men may be evil oppressors, but aren’t all males just as bad? After all, Swedish men are like the Taliban, as one leading leftist politician put it. And please don’t talk about Muslim gang rapes of Swedish women. That’s racist, you know.

Girl power! Now, I’m off to have some halal meatballs at IKEA.

posted by Unknown @ 12:43 AM 18 comments

Muslim Rape Epidemic in Sweden and Norway - Authorities Look the Other Way

(Note: Updates to this post here: The Norwegian Government - Covering Up Immigrant Rapes and here: Rapes: Nothing to do with Islam?)

Numbers released in January 2005 indicate a sharp rise in the number of rape charges in Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city:

Thomas Anderberg, responsible for statistics at the Malmö Police, says there was a doubling of the number of reported rapes by ambush in 2004, following what was already a decade of steadily increasing numbers of sexual crimes. - I think that’s great news, says Anna Gustafsson, head of the Domestic Violence Unit at the Malmö Police. She suggests that the increase is due to the fact that women who otherwise wouldn’t press charges for rape now choose to contact the police.

In other words, Gustafsson claims that we are dealing with a “technical” increase, not a real one. However, national statistics reveal that reported rapes against children have almost doubled in Sweden during the past ten years:

According to Swedish Radio on Tuesday, statistics from Sweden’s National Council for Crime Prevention show that the number of reported rapes against children is on the rise. The figures have nearly doubled in the last ten years: 467 rapes against children under the age of 15 were reported in 2004 compared with 258 in 1995. Legal proceedings continue this week in a case involving a 13 year old girl from Motala who was said to have been subjected to a group rape by four men. (Note: These four men were Kurdish Muslims, who raped the girl for hours and even took photos of doing so)

The number of rape charges per capita in Malmö is 5 – 6 times that of Copenhagen, Denmark. Copenhagen is a larger city, but the percentage of immigrants is much lower. And it’s not just the rape statistics that reveal a scary increase in Malmö or Sweden. Virtually every kind of violent crime is on the rise. Robberies have increased with 50 % in Malmö only during the fall of 2004. Threats against witnesses in Swedish court cases have quadrupled between 2000 and 2003. During the past few decades, massive immigration has changed the face of Sweden’s major cities, as well as challenged the viability of the welfare state. In 1970 Sweden had the fourth highest GDP per capita among developed countries with income about 6% above the OECD average. By 1997 it was at fifteenth place with an average GDP per capita 14% below average. Malmö has a heavy concentration of Muslim immigrants in particular. According to some estimates, it will be a Muslim majority city in no more then 10 years. Crime is rampant in the growing ghettos:

Becirov runs the Islamic Center of Malmö, on the outskirts of Sweden's third-largest city. Some immigrant neighborhoods in the city have (official) unemployment rates exceeding 50 percent. Swedish authorities have failed to lift up the area, and seem to be giving the Islamic Center of Malmö a great deal of leeway in attempting to do so. An article that appeared in 2003 noted that "a few" of the 6-to 10-year-old girls were wearing headscarves. On a visit in January 2005, fully 80 percent were covered in class--only a handful were not. In a fit of absent-mindedness, Sweden has suddenly become as heavily populated by minorities as any country in Europe. The percentage of foreign-born is roughly equivalent to the highest percentage of immigrants the United States ever had in its history (on the eve of World War I). Rosengård appears to be all-immigrant. The public schools have virtually no ethnically Swedish children. There are stories--familiar in other parts of Europe where immigrants from the Muslim world have recently settled--of students harassing Jewish teachers and defacing textbooks that treat Jewish themes. Crime is high.

Is it unfair and “racist” to suggest a link between the influx of Muslim immigrants and the growing number of rapes? Not if we compare with the situation in neighboring Denmark, where this trend has been evident for years:

Criminologist: immigrants are rape champions

If one leading expert is to be believed, the sharp rise in the number of rapes in this over the last 5 years is largely attributable to a group of unemployed and alienated immigrants. 'Over the last 5-10 years there has an increasing tendency to marginalise and alienate immigrants,' says Professor Flemming Balvig, a criminologist at Copenhagen University. 'As a result, many second generation immigrants have reacted against this through various types of criminal activity, including rape.'

Muslim rape concern

Alarmed at last week's police statistics, which revealed that in 68% of all rapes committed this year the perpetrator was from an ethnic minority, leading Muslim organisations have now formed an alliance to fight the ever-growing problem of young second and third-generation immigrants involved in rape cases against young Danish girls.

As Robert Spencer has demonstrated, rape can indeed be linked to Islamic teachings of Jihad, and even to the example of Muhammad himself, his Sunna. Above all, it is connected to Islamic notions of the role of women in society, and their behaviour in the public sphere. An Islamic Mufti in Copenhagen sparked a political outcry after publicly declaring that women who refuse to wear headscarves are "asking for rape." Apparently, he isn’t the only Muslim in Europe to think this way:

The German journalist Udo Ulfkotte told in a recent interview that in Holland, you can now see examples of young, unveiled Moroccan women with a so-called "smiley". It means that the girl gets one side of her face cut up from mouth to ear, serving as a warning to other Muslim girls who should refuse to wear the veil. In the Muslim suburb of Courneuve, France, 77 per cent of the veiled women carry veils reportedly because of fear of being harassed or molested by Islamic moral patrols.

Hijab, the Islamic veil, is thus not ”just a piece of cloth”. It serves as a demarcation line between proper, submissive Muslim women and whores, un-Islamic women who deserve no respect and are asking for rape. The veil should more properly be viewed as the uniform of a Totalitarian movement, and a signal to attack those outside the movement. Judged in the light of the Mufti who said that women who don’t wear it are asking for rape, how on earth can the veil be said to be about ”choice”? The freedom to choose not to be raped if you dress in a normal fashion in your own country? Is that what freedom is about in Europe in 2005?

Even though Sweden, unlike Denmark, has almost no public debate about immigration, frustration is very much present underneath the surface. 75 % of Swedes think that many people in their country “dislike” Muslims, more than in any other European nation surveyed. Even in Holland, which recently witnessed violent clashes with Muslims after the murder of Islam-critic Theo van Gogh, the rate is lower than in Sweden. But you’re not supposed to talk about such issues in Sweden. That would be “racist”:

Swedish laws prohibiting "hate speech" against racial minorities have been vigorously enforced. There have, for example, been a number of gang-rapes of Swedish women by Muslim immigrants. But Swedes must be careful what they say about them. On May 25, neo-Nazi Bjorn Bjorkqvist was convicted and sentenced to two months in prison for writing, "I don’t think I am alone in feeling sick when reading about how Swedish girls are raped by immigrant hordes." ["Jag tror inte jag är ensam om att må dåligt när jag läser om hur svenska tjejer har våldtagits av invandrarhorder"]

All in all, we must say that there is strong circumstantial evidence indicating that the rise in rape charges in the city of Malmö could very well be real, which puts the Malmö Police assertion that this is “great news” in a rather curious light. And the problem is not just limited to Sweden. It exists in Norway, too:

Rape charges in the capital are spiraling upwards, 40 percent higher from 1999 to 2000 and up 13 percent so far this year. Police Inspector Gunnar Larsen of Oslo's Vice, Robbery and Violent crime division says the statistics are surprising - the rising number of rape cases and the link to ethnic background are both clear trends. But Larsen does not want to speculate on the reasons behind the worrying developments. While 65 percent of those charged with rape are classed as coming from a non-western background, this segment makes up only 14.3 percent of Oslo's population. Norwegian women were the victims in 80 percent of the cases, with 20 percent being women of foreign background.

Europe: Tolerating Intolerance

An incredibly revealing article that tells us all we need to know about the multiculturalist fetish in Europe and some parts of North America, not to mention the need for change within Islam. Apparently, the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet reported that 65 percent of rapes of Norwegian women were performed by "non-Western" immigrants – a category that, in Norway, consists mostly of Muslims. The article quoted a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo (note: her name is Unni Wikan) as saying that "Norwegian women must take their share of responsibility for these rapes" because Muslim men found their manner of dress provocative. The professor's conclusion was not that Muslim men living in the West needed to adjust to Western norms, but the exact opposite: "Norwegian women must realize that we live in a multicultural society and adapt themselves to it."

In January 2005, Norwegian media reported that 2004 saw the highest number or rape charges ever recorded in the capital city of Oslo. Strangely enough, there was now no mentioning of how immigrants were grossly overrepresented in rape cases. Why not? Unless there has been a sudden and unexplained drop in the number of immigrants raping Norwegian women between 2001 and 2004, which is unlikely, the statistics should be at least as staggering in 2005 as they were before. If they are not revealed, it can only mean that “somebody” didn’t like the numbers presented in 2001, and decided to bury them. That “somebody” must be a person at the very top level in the police, maybe even in the government. If so, that is disquieting. What is even more disquieting is that the media are equally silent about this. How come no journalists are digging into the material? And where are all the professional Feminists, in a Scandinavian nation brimming with them?

The conclusion one may draw from this is that the authorities in Sweden and Norway know about, or should know about, a disturbing amount of Muslim immigrant rapes of native Scandinavian women, yet choose not to make this information known to the public. Perhaps it would be just too politically incorrect to reveal the negative effects of decades of naïve immigration policies. Perhaps it would also destroy too many multicultural pipe dreams among the intellectual elites, who have built their current careers and reputations on advocating how culturally and economically enriching this new population mix would be. So in the end, the safety of young Scandinavian women is sacrificed in order to keep the glossy image of a multicultural society intact. It is a chilling demonstration of an Eurabian continent that now appears to care more about not upsetting relations with its immigrant population than about protecting its own citizens.

posted by Unknown @ 5:00 PM 52 comments