Islam in Norway

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer offers the third and final part in his series of essays on the Left in Norway. In the current installment he examines the democratic deficit within the Muslim community, and the political establishment’s unwillingness to address this issue.

Previously: Part 1 and Part 2.


Islam in Norway
by The Observer

This is the third and final instalment in a three part series in which I examine left-wing media bias in Norway, the Left’s moral support for anti-democratic forces in the Middle East, and Norwegian Muslims, views on democracy and traditional Western values.

This final article will take a closer look at the Muslim community in Norway. We will try to paint a clearer picture of the values they represent, and find out how compatible these are with traditional Norwegian values. We’ll also examine whether there are any compelling reasons for Norwegian authorities to adopt a more critical attitude towards Islam.

In the first instalment, ‘Left-wing media bias in Norway’, I presented evidence that the media in Norway are biased in their portrayal of Islam, and that they are reluctant to write anything that could be construed as incriminating Islam following Islamic terrorist attacks, as opposed to the collective responsibility placed on the conservative, anti-immigration community in Norway following the 22/7 attacks in Oslo.

The enormous torrent of hate-filled rhetoric that was directed at the conservative community in Norway following the Oslo attacks constituted a complete change of tactics by the media. Traditionally the Norwegian media have always attempted to exculpate Muslims following Islamic terrorist attacks and they have always gone to great lengths to portray Islam and Muslim in a positive light after such attacks. This rule has been followed rigorously despite attempts by the Muslims themselves to find justification for such attacks, and despite numerous opinion polls indicating that many within the Muslim community condone such attacks. In Norway any attempts to link Muslims to terrorists attacks or to even hint that Islamic terrorists find validation in the Koran to carry out such attacks are feverishly dismissed as racism and ‘Islamophobia’ by the very same media which actively sought to smear members of the Norwegian conservative community after the Oslo attacks.

So let’s take a closer look at the Muslim community in Norway and attempt to determine whether there is any truth to the claim that Muslims living in the country are peace-loving, and that they embrace traditional Western values. In order to support or reject such a claim, it’s important to study the views and behaviour of the Muslims who live here, and to ascertain whether they change their views over time.

In this essay I intend to go back almost twenty-five years to find out whether such changes have occurred. We’ll also take a closer look at the values the leadership of the big Islamic organizations in Norway advocate, as they are the collective voice of the Muslim community. If we find strong evidence that suggest that they exhibit conflicting views on such issues as democracy and the legitimacy of terrorists attacks, then it’s reasonable to conclude that this is also the case with ordinary Muslims living in Norway.

The first Muslims arrive

Let’s go back to the beginning.

The first Muslims that arrived in Norway came in the late 1960s, and were young Pakistani males who showed up in Norway equipped with tourists’ visas and not much else. It soon became apparent that these Pakistanis had ulterior motives for coming here. They had not come to Norway for a holiday; they had come here looking for work. And after having circumvented the problem for some time, and no doubt after having been influenced by several harrowing newspaper reports over the miserable living conditions that these Pakistanis had to endure, it was the government of the time decided that these young men should be allowed to work for a limited period until they could afford to go back home to Pakistan.

However, events took a different turn, and the Pakistanis were eventually allowed to stay on permanently. In time they were also granted family reunification privileges. This was the catalytic event that started the growth of Islam in Norway. The second big wave came later on in the 1980s and 1990s, when Norway experienced another massive influx of individuals ‘fleeing’ from the Islamic world and wanting to settle in Norway under the pretence of being politically persecuted in their homelands.

But even though there has been a Muslim presence in Norway since the late 1960s, Norwegians weren’t really exposed to Islamic values until the late 1980s when Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on the author Salman Rushdie, and the Muslim community in Norway started to express public support for the fatwa. This caused many Norwegians to take a less favourable view of the religion and its practitioners. The democratic nature of the Muslim community — or the lack thereof — became even more apparent when the publishing company, Aschehoug translated The Satanic Verses into Norwegian. This decision prompted the Muslims to stage huge demonstrations in which thousands took to the streets in Oslo and demanded that the book be withdrawn from Norwegian bookshelves, and that anyone involved with the distribution of the book should be punished.

And as this newspaper article shows, the police in Norway decided to take these threats seriously:

Due to security concerns the book was printed at a secret location, and the police implemented various safety measures for the people involved with the publishing of the book. Because in the aftermath of the release unrest followed in several countries: threats, firebombing of bookstores, killings and violent demonstrations that ended in riots. In the period between February and May 1989 there were demonstrations in Oslo, Mumbai, Stockholm, Bonn, Bangkok, Karachi, Srinagar and Rotherham.

Here’s a chronological list detailing the events that took place in Norway:

Home-Grown Islamic Radicalism in Norway

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated an article from yesterday’s Dagbladet about official Norway’s recent alarming discovery: Norway is harboring lots of potential Islamic terrorists! Who knew?

The translator includes this note:

This concerns the problem of potential ticking time bombs of the Islamic kind. The Norwegian Parliament was briefed about this threat in a secret meeting earlier this month. Needless to say, the information at the ‘top secret’ meeting was leaked to the press. Surprise, surprise!

According to the article, several of the politicians present at the meeting were surprised to hear about the new imported terrorist threat, but they shouldn’t be. There have been countless warnings in the last three decades from patriotic Norwegians about the very real and dangerous consequences of the ludicrous practice of importing potential terrorist to Norway disguised as a humane refugee policy.

One also has to question the determination and willingness of the authorities in preventing a terrorist attack from these bearded savages, considering that the authorities have no qualms about handing out weapons licences to these maniacs, and that they see nothing wrong with letting these jihadists legally procure six weapons per head.

Norway, the country governed by idiots.

The translated article:

Parliament briefed about “Norwegian terrorists”

Leading Norwegian politicians have been briefed about potential Islamic terrorists in Norway during a secret meeting in the Norwegian Parliament

In a secret meeting on October 1, Minister of Justice Grete Faremo and Minister of Defence Anne-Grete Strøm-Erichsen briefed the Norwegian Parliament about the growing terrorist threat in Norway. Several potential Islamist terrorists were mentioned by name.

Sources who were present when the extended Foreign Affairs and Defense committee was briefed on the terrorist threat in Norway have told Dagbladet that the threat of a terrorist attack carried out by extreme Islamists have never been higher than it is today in Norway.

Dagbladet has been told that the ministers were accompanied by the top management from the PST and the Military Intelligence Service during the secret briefing. Representatives from the National Security Authority were also present when Faremo and Strøm-Erichsen briefed the parliament in great detail about the terrorist threat.

Secret briefing

Everybody who attended the briefing had to hand over their cell phones and other electronic equipment before they were allowed to be take part in the secret meeting. Several of the attendees were surprised when the ministers revealed the identities of individuals that the secret service believes could be potential terrorists.

Dagbladet is familiar with several of the names that the politicians were briefed about. During previous briefings names of potential terrorists have never been disclosed.

40 potential terrorists

According to the information given by the Police Security Service (PST), the Military Intelligence Services, and the National Security Authority (NSM), there are approximately of 40 individuals in Norway who are viewed as potential and dangerous terrorist. These men are based in Norway, but several of them travel to conflict areas abroad.

The group of potential Islamists terrorists consists of several different ethnicities

A handful of them are of ethnic Norwegian origin and have converted to Islam. The rest of them have different ethnic backgrounds. Some of them have Norwegian citizenship, others have for variety of reasons been granted Norwegian residency permits.

The Terrorist Supporters of the Left

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer offers the second part of his series of essays on the Left in Norway. In this installment, he examines the left-wing community in Norway and its sympathy for various terrorist organizations.

Part 1 is available here.


The terrorist supporters of the Left
by The Observer

This is the second essay in a three-part series in which I take a look at left-wing media bias in Norway, the Norwegian Left’s fraternizing with militant organizations abroad, and undemocratic elements within the Muslim community in Norway.

In the first instalment, ‘Left-wing media bias in Norway’, I looked at the Left’s stranglehold on the MSM in Norway, and how this stranglehold manifested itself in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Oslo on July 22, 2011. I also showed how the MSM tried to implicate parts of the conservative community in Norway for having emotionally contributed to these attacks.

In this essay I will take a critical look at the political Left in Norway and show that numerous individuals and organizations on the Left side of the political scale sympathize with terrorist organizations. I will also give examples of the Left’s eagerness to turn a blind eye to forces which engage in anti-democratic behaviour inside Norway.

The terrorist attacks in Oslo on July 22, 2011, were the biggest assault on Norwegian society since WW2. Needless to say, they had a huge impact on the national psyche. The left-wing community in Norway immediately demanded that conservative forces in Norway, and the Progress Party in particular, re-evaluate their political views on immigration and multi-culture, and distance themselves from what the Left labelled Muslim-hatred, once it was established that the perpetrator was a Norwegian non-Muslim ethnic male.

The Left claimed that these groups had paved the way for the atrocity. This massive broadside attack on the conservative community in Norway was wholeheartedly supported by the MSM, and it even had a distinct effect on political opinion polls that were carried out in the aftermath of the attacks. One of the consequences of this massive smear campaign was a significant drop in the support for the Progress Party which saw its support plummet to a mere 12 percent. At the same time the support for the Labour Party soared to well over 40 percent. This of course has political implications, as 2011 is an election year in Norway, and the political campaigning has started.

One thing that wasn’t debated at all in the MSM after the attacks was the widespread support within various political organizations on the Left, including the AUF (Arbeidernes Ungdomsfylking, Workers’ Youth League), for organizations which engage in terrorist activities. One is tempted to use a cliché to describe this total media silence on this issue in the days following the attacks and say that it was almost deafening. The subject was however raised by the media in Israel and it was raised on various conservative news sites in America, and in my personal opinion it was highly legitimate.

I can understand why Israelis who have had to endure terrorist attacks from their Arab neighbours for decades and who have lost significant numbers of their compatriots in this terror were eager to point out that the Norwegian Left have gone a very long way in condoning the behaviour of militant Palestinian terrorist organizations. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Maariv, on July 25, 2011, the Norwegian ambassador to Israel, Svein Sevje attempted to draw distinctions between the terrorist attack in Norway and the numerous terrorist attacks that have plagued Israel. In the interview Mr Sevje says that it is easier to understand that militant Palestinians resort to terror because of Israel’s ‘occupation’ of Palestinian land. Mr Sevje also claimed that peace can only be achieved if the Israelis engage in direct talks with the terrorist organization Hamas:

Norway’s ambassador to Israel drew distinctions between the Oslo and Utoya massacres and Palestinian terrorism.

Svein Sevje said in an Israeli newspaper interview Tuesday that while the Norwegian bomb and gun rampages that killed 76 people and Palestinian attacks should both be considered morally unacceptable, he wanted to “outline the similarity and the difference in the two cases.” Palestinians, the ambassador told Maariv, “are doing this because of a defined goal that is related to the Israeli occupation. There are elements of revenge against Israel and hatred of Israel. To this you can add the religious element to their actions.”

“In the case of the terror attack in Norway, the murderer had an ideology that says that Norway, particularly the Labor Party, is forgoing Norwegian culture,” Sevje said, referring to suspect Anders Breivik, a Christian native who is openly anti-Islam and anti-immigration.

“We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel,” he said. “Those who believe this will not change their mind because of the attack in Oslo.”

He added, “Can Israel and the Palestinians solve the problems without Hamas? I don’t think so.”

The views that the Norwegian ambassador expresses here are, to put it mildly, shocking and extremely disturbing. By drawing distinctions between Israeli terrorist victims and Norwegian terrorist victims he is indirectly legitimising the actions of terrorist organizations such as Hamas, which purposely targets civilians. Mr Sevje should also know that there are no such things as legitimate victims of terrorism, nor can there ever be such a thing. Victims of terrorism are by definition always innocent, and attacks that specifically target them can never be justified or excused. They has to be condemned in the strongest of terms. The ultimate consequences of Mr Sevje’s words is that anyone who is opposed to the current immigration policies of the Norwegian Government is somehow more justified, by using Mr Sevje’s own strange logic, in using terror against members of the Norwegian Government and its youth wing the AUF, because these two organizations have chosen to ‘forego’ Norwegian culture, a claim which of course is completely ludicrous.

The conservative community in Norway have been vigorously harassed in the MSM since the attacks for having ‘emotionally’ contributed to the Oslo attacks, despite the fact that they have never encouraged or condoned such measures. The conservative community have in fact strongly condemned it and never attempted to make any excuses or find any mitigating circumstances that could be construed as indirect support for the terrorist. But still they have been harangued for it in the MSM. Mr. Sevje on the other hand, who in this interview makes a distinction between Israeli and Norwegian terrorist victims are given the all clear by the Norwegian MSM, and the episode is allowed to pass ‘unnoticed’ in the Norwegian press.

Another thing that is disturbing in this interview is that Mr Sevje legitimises Hamas as a worthy partner for dialogue. He’s claiming that no peace can be achieved without Hamas at the negotiation table. Mr. Sevje ought to know that it’s completely unacceptable to enter into negotiations with terrorists. I wonder if Norwegian authorities would be willing to sit down and talk to Breivik’s accomplices, if such do exist, or whether they would be willing to accept land for peace in order to dissuade terrorists from future attacks on innocent Norwegian youths. I don’t think the authorities in Norway would even contemplate such a scenario. So why is Mr Sevje suggesting that the Israelis should have to do so?

Norway’s Not-So-Baby Boom

The population of Norway will soon reach the five million mark. According to our Norwegian correspondent The Observer, the Norwegian media acknowledge the major part that immigration plays in the current population surge, but fail to mention how much of the influx comes from Muslim countries.

He notes:

The article has a very positive tone, and the information presented in it is heavily sugar-coated. The fact that Norwegians are being taken over by foreigners is apparently a cause for celebration.

Nor is there any mention of “asylum seekers” or dope-selling Africans, only hardworking Eastern Europeans and Swedes. You may remember the article I sent you about a month ago which revealed that Mohammed is now the most popular boy’s name in three municipalities in Norway. As far as I’m aware, Mohammed is not a popular name in Eastern Europe.

The other day a newspaper article presented new information on Eastern European migrants. It turns out that in the last four years there has been a tenfold increase in migrants from that part of the world claiming unemployment benefits in Norway.

I don’t even want to think about a Norway that has population of six million, which the article tells us we’ll hit sometime around 2025. Heaven help us all.

I also notice that the article refers to the attractions of the Norwegian job market for foreigners seeking work, but says nothing about the lavish welfare benefits that lure so many Somalis and other culture-enrichers to the frigid north.

The Observer has kindly translated a report from Nettavisen:

Will you be the mother of Norwegian number 5 million?

Today the Norwegian Central Bureau of Statistics picked a date for when Norway will reach the five million mark. According to their predictions we’ll be able to welcome Norwegian number 5 million on March 19, 2012. The SSB has picked this date based on trends for the past 12-13 months, with a particular emphasis on developments after the New Year. But it is not certain that citizen number 5 million will be a newborn. It could just as well be an immigrant.

As net immigration accounted for more than 70 percent of the population growth in the first half of 2011, more than two-thirds, the likelihood that it is a new-Norwegian who gets to open the champagne bottle upon arrival is quite high.

Norway will be the second largest Nordic country in 15 years

Norway will also experience a population explosion that the other Nordic countries will be unable to keep up with. Soon we’ll be bigger than Denmark and Finland.

According to the Nordic Statistical Yearbook for 2011, the population growth in Norway in the next fifteen years will be three times higher than that of the other Nordic countries. By 2025, we will be close to six million, surpassing both Finland and Denmark.

At the top in Europe

Norway is one of the fastest growing countries in Europe at the moment. From 2010 to 2011 the population increased with 1.3 percent, the equivalent of 65,000 individuals, which is the second highest population growth ever recorded in Norwegian history, only surpassed by the previous period between 2009-2010

“This growth is a result of high immigration to Norway, and we expect that this immigration will continue, population researcher at SSB,” Helge Brunborg tells Nettavisen.

A Norwegian’s Thoughts on the Oslo Attacks

For the past two weeks our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has been pondering the meaning of what happened to his country on July 22. The result is this essay about the Oslo attacks, and the political blame game that occurred in the aftermath of the killings.


Some thoughts on the Oslo terrorist attacks
By The Observer

July 22, 2011 will be a day Norwegians will remember for the rest of their lives. It was the day when the ugly face of terrorism made its appearance and delivered a decisive and deadly blow at the heart of what used to be a good and safe country to grow up in.

Many people naturally assumed that it was the work of radical Islamists when they first heard of the attack. It made sense, since radical Islamists are behind almost every single terrorist attacks in the world today. But when it was eventually confirmed that the perpetrator was a non-Muslim ethnic Norwegian, many reacted with utter disbelief. They found it almost impossible to comprehend. How could a Norwegian do such a terrible thing? Surely Norwegians don’t behave in such a manner? Personally, I wasn’t all that surprised. What surprised me was that it had taken this long for something to happen. The tensions have been simmering for decades now, and it finally came to a boil.

In the aftermath of any catastrophe or traumatic event questions needs to be asked. Could anything have been done to prevent this disaster, and should we have been able to foresee these attacks?

These questions will be asked for years to come and different people will give different answers. Some will try to be as honest and truthful as possible, but other more unscrupulous souls will use this incident ruthlessly as part of their political strategy. The mostly leftist media in Norway have chosen this later path. The debate has been raging ever since the attacks, and left-wing journalists and left-wing political commentators have had a field day ever since they discovered the identity of the perpetrator. When it finally dawned on them that it was a Norwegian male with “right-wing extremist” views who was behind it all, they started pouncing on the conservative wing of the blogosphere with gusto unlike anything we’ve seen in Norway for a long time.

It doesn’t matter to the MSM that the right-wing community in Norway have never advocated violence, but rather spoken out about the dangers of an unrestricted immigration and asylum policy. But why should the media let facts get in the way of a good story? It’s not surprising at all. Everyone with of average observational ability knows that the media in Norway have given Islam a free pass.

The cowardly deference Norwegian papers bestow on the practitioners of Islam is mind-boggling. One could be excused for believing that the majority of journalists in Norway are in fact Muslims. But this is not the case. The typical left-wing journalist in Norway is a radical atheist. But the way he or she keep idolizing the practitioners of Islam has almost taken on a religious character.

The Norwegian media still continue to praise and make excuses for Islam, just as they have done following every single Muslim terrorist attack since 9/11. They don’t call for measures to be taken to root out undemocratic and extremist views from mosques in Norway the way they are demanding of the rightwing Norwegian blogosphere at the moment. They still praise Islam, even though the intelligence services in Norway have stated that Islam poses a far more serious threat to the country than any right-wing Norwegian extremist.

Nor was it a surprise that they would stoop this low, to unscrupulously use a massacre to try and stifle the debate on Islam and restrict freedom of speech in Norway even further. The right was finally starting to gain some ground in Norway by sticking to facts and trends. The only way the left could hope to discredit them was by the use of deceit and intimidation, and the left have taken to this task since the attacks like a duck takes to water.

But no one in the left-wing media or the left-wing political establishment has so far addressed the pink elephant in the room, which is of course the sacred multicultural project, the highly prestigious pet project of the political elites. No one seems to be willing even to hint that Breivik’s actions could perhaps be a direct result of the totalitarian and autocratic nature of the current immigration and asylum policies that are in place in Norway today. The Norwegian authorities, like in most Western “democracies”, have chosen to exclude the majority of the population from having any say whatsoever regarding the matter. Only the privileged few in the higher echelons of the political establishment get to have their say on this matter, and they’re all enthusiastic proponents of the scaling down of Norwegian culture and Norwegian majority population in Norway. If they have their way Norway will soon resemble a miniature version of the UN, where people from all corners of the globe will have an equal stake in the country. In his manifesto Breivik prominently mentioned his hatred for the political elites and their undemocratic facilitation of the multicultural society.

I certainly don’t believe the pathetic hype that the extreme leftist MSM is trying to sell to the masses that Breivik had been brainwashed by these right-wing bloggers, I think Breivik, like any sane Norwegian, was able to see the consequences of the disastrous Norwegian deconstruction policies first hand, and decided that he didn’t like what he was seeing. He would also have realised after a while that there was very little the average person in Norway could do to change these things. He probably also came to the conclusion that the political elites were acting in a very undemocratic manner when it came to implementation of these policies.

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Norwegian Bureau of Statistics

As reported in Tuesday night’s news feed, by 2040 half the population of Oslo will be immigrants, according to the Norwegian state statistics bureau.

In the essay below, our Norwegian correspondent The Observer casts a jaundiced eye on this and other aspect of the statistics bureau’s report.

The Observer includes this introduction:

This is my take on the recently published report by the Norwegian Bureau of Statistics (SSB), which predicts that Norwegians will become a minority in Oslo by 2040.

I believe that this will happen a lot sooner.

It’s also worth mentioning that in February 2012 the SSB predicted that the Norwegian population would increase from five to six million in a period of only 13 years (2012 -2025), but now they also claim that the population will increase by a mere 250,000 from 2025 to 2040, which doesn’t make much sense to me.

This is another reason to be highly critical of anything that the SSB publishes.

Lies, political correctness and the SSB

The report

By The Observer

I’ve decided to write this article as a response to a recent report published by the Norwegian bureau of Statistics (SSB) in which they present different population scenarios for Norway for the period 2011-2040. In the report three possible estimates are presented, a low estimate, a middle estimate, and a high estimate. The middle estimate, which SSB consider the most accurate, predicts that the immigrant population in Oslo will rise from 170,000 in 2012 to 387,000 by 2040 which will amount to 50 percent of the total population of the city. For the country as a whole the SSB estimates that the immigrant population will rise from 600,000 in 2012 to 1.5 million by 2040 which according to the report will amount to 24 percent of the overall population.

In the report, the term immigrant refers to persons born abroad and children born to immigrant parents, but not children with one immigrant parent and one Norwegian born parent. From the information presented in the report we can deduce that the total population of Norway will rise from 5 million (March 2012) to 6,250,000 in 2040. (1,500,000 * 100 / 24 = 6,250,000). The report also concludes that approximately 70 percent of the immigrant population in 2040 will have a non-EU background.

Like many other Norwegians, I don’t trust the SSB. I believe that it is a heavily politicized organization which acts as a branch of the political elites in Norway. This distrust is not unfounded, as the SSB on numerous occasions have proven to be incorrect in their predictions concerning immigration by presenting estimates that were too low. It therefore goes without saying that I have serious doubts about the accuracy of this report which I intend to examine more closely in the rest of this article. But before I press, I should mention that I’m not a statistician, nor am I a mathematician, which means that I can’t guarantee the numbers I’m about to present are a hundred percent accurate. I would also like to add that I don’t have access to the raw data that the SSB used to compile their report.

Terminology

My primary concern with the report is the methods of classification that were employed. For instance, the author has chosen — or probably more likely, been instructed by the leadership of the SBB — to identify immigrants as persons born abroad and persons born in Norway to two immigrant parents. Everyone else is classified as Norwegians. This is the biggest flaw in the report, and it’s a monumental one as it paints an incorrect picture of the size of the indigenous ethnic Norwegian population and the immigrant population, which should be the main goal of the report. The result of using such parameters is that a person born in Norway to two Pakistani parents is classified as an immigrant, but if this person marries a Pakistani and brings this person back to Norway their children will be classified as Norwegians. I believe that most ethnic Norwegians would chose slightly different parameters for determining who is a Norwegian.

The most obvious way to identify a Norwegian is by ethnicity. Norway has until recently exclusively been inhabited by Caucasians of Germanic stock, which is a white ethnic group. It is wrong to set this historic fact aside just because it is politically expedient to do so. Another important criterion is of course the cultural heritage of Norway. Many of those classified as Norwegians in this report have a completely different cultural heritage and many of them are in fact hostile to traditional Norwegian core values. A result of SSB’s rather imaginative way of classifying individuals is that people who have recently relocated to Norway from cultures that are completely alien to the majority Norwegian population, and who belong to completely different racial groups are considered to be just as Norwegian as the descendants of those whose ancestors have lived in Norway for the last 10,000 years. It may be the politically correct thing to do, but morally it’s incorrect, as it ignores the fact that there actually exists a unique Norwegian culture and a unique Norwegian ethnic group.

The main problem

And this leads us directly to the main problem with this report. The author foresees the immigrant population reaching 50 percent in Oslo by 2040, and for the country as a whole 24 percent. But in my opinion this raises more questions than it answers, because the report doesn’t give us a very clear picture of the cultural and ethnic composition of Norway anno 2040. We know from the report that there will be at least — provided that the report is accurate — 1,050,000 individuals with a non-EU cultural background residing in Norway in 2040 (1,500,000 * 70/100 = 1,050,000). But the actual number is going to be much higher, because of the way immigrants and descendants of immigrants are classified. There will be a large proportion of individuals with a non-Norwegian cultural and ethnic background classified as Norwegians, and thus the projections for Oslo and Norway become rather meaningless, as they don’t really tell us anything about the actual future demographic scenario for the country.

Jew-Hatred in Norway

A heated discussion has emerged recently in Norway about the strength of anti-Semitism in that country and other parts of Scandinavia. Rolf Krake has translated a couple of articles on the topic from the Norwegian.

First, from Dagsavisen:

Claims the hatred of the Jews is growing in Norway.

Anti-Semitism is growing in Norway, and Norway is the only country which is demonizing Israel to such a degree, claims the Author Manfred Gerstenfeld. Yesterday [25 Nov 2008] a conference on the specific theme was held in Jerusalem.

JERUSALEM (Dagsavisen): Never before have academics in Israel gathered to a conference to discuss something as uncommon: The anti-Semitism in Norway and Sweden. But yesterday it happened in Jerusalem.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, the chairman of the conference, claims that in the Norwegian media Israel gets vilified, criticized and scorned to such a degree, “as if the state was the representative of evil”, while other countries with a lot worse record scarcely get similar attention.

“I have never seen such a phenomenon, only in Norway, just Norway, is Israel to such a degree pointed out as the unique villain,” says Manfred Gerstenfeld to Dagsavisen.

Getting Demonized

Until recently Norway’s reputation in Israel has been associated with democracy, a well-functioning society, the Nobel Peace Prize, and not least the Oslo peace process. But now the rosy Norwegian picture begins to fade.

In all, 65 academics, diplomats and others gathered yesterday [25 Nov 08] at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and the accusations from the stage were very serious.

To back up his case Gerstenfeld provides a long list of cases, including the author Jostein Gaarder’s infamous contribution in Aftenposten [Norwegian mainstream daily] during the Lebanon war. Gerstenfeld is equally unimpressed with the contents of the criticism from Norway.

“To criticize Israel is of course legitimate, this is not what this is about. This is about such a biased focus that it has as an end result become a demonization, a dehumanization,” says Gerstenfeld, a Dutch-born environmental protection expert who in recent years has worked as a political correspondent.

Other criteria

- - - - - - - - -

Not long ago Gerstenfeld published a book called Behind the Face of Humanism, which raises the issue of the relations of Norway and Sweden with Israel. In the book he claims that in Norway the state of Israel is judged using criteria different from those used with other countries. It is exactly these which, according to Gerstenfeld, are the reasons for his accusations that anti-Semitism is growing in Norway.

Among the participants on the conference yesterday were Zvi Mazel, former ambassador to Sweden, and Ephraim Zuroff from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Zuroff added that Sweden still allows Nazis who participated in war crimes during the Second World War protection against extradition. Zuroff is in possession of a list of 21 such men who still live in Sweden.

New form of racism

Manfred Gerstenfeld is not surprised that a growing anti-Semitism is to be found in Scandinavia, in countries with outspoken anti-racist and humanistic traditions. He says he is well aware of the human rights work in Norway, but thinks that these traditions, paradoxically, have opened the way for a new form of racism.

“A common notion here is that non-white people always are victims. And if you say that, you remove the ability to take responsibility for your own life, to be responsible, which is a basic human characteristic. You make people less human, they have become inferior. And this becomes racism against non-white people whom you started out to help, he says.

Gerstenfeld says that it is first and foremost the case Africans, and not with Israelis, who are exposed to this kind of racism. But the Israelis in the Middle East are instead demonized “where they the greatest criminals against human rights, something they are not”, he says, and warns that this has opened a door to a new legitimization of anti-Semitism.

Anti Israeli

It is difficult to measure the degree to which Israel officially supports the accusations which have been expressed, but it is no secret that diplomats with the Israeli Foreign Ministry have claimed that it is Norway of all the countries in Europe in which the mood has become most anti-Israeli.

The Israeli Foreign Department was very restrained criticizing foreign minister Jonas Gahr Stoere who earlier this month published a book, in which it is claimed that he compares the Jewish settlers with Nazis. Recently the Foreign Department in Oslo arranged a conference which goal was to increase trade between Israel and Norway.

A translation of a second article from Dagsavisen:

Not true

There is no reason to claim that the Norwegian [public] opinion has become more anti-Semitic, according to research director Odd-Bjorn Fure at the Holocaust Center.

“It is unquestionable that opinion on the political level and among the Norwegian public has become more skeptical towards Israel in recent years. But to say it is an expression of anti-Semitism does not hold — It has got nothing to do with anti-Semitism,” says Fure to Dagbladet.

“The press on guard”

He points out that the increased criticism from public opinion is directed against Israel’s policies. “It is totally legitimate to criticize the Israeli state and the various Israeli governments when Israel breaches international human rights and practice a brutal reign of occupation, says Fure; he does not think Norwegian press can be accused of anti-Semitism [emphasis by the translator — it echoes the media propaganda which is the whole point].

“I would rather say on the contrary. The Norwegian press is on guard against anti-Semitism,” he says.

Fure believes that the Israeli side from time to time has made unjustified accusations of anti-Semitism.

“I don’t think it is the case with the current [Israeli] government, but in the government of Ariel Sharon you saw attempts to delegitimize legitimate criticism. You can claim that the Norwegian criticism of the Israeli government is currently one-sided, undifferentiated, and massive, but not that is anti-Semitic, says Fure.

No more sludge

He underscores that nevertheless opinions and expressions of anti-Semitism occur in Norway.

“In certain situations anti-Semitic sludge comes to the surface, when you mix together the actions of the Israeli state and the Jewish people. But that is not at all representative of general Norwegian public opinion, and I do not have the impression that it has increased the last years, says the research director.

In an article in Aftenposten [Norwegian daily] recently it was claimed by a Norwegian school pupil in Oslo that “Jew” was among the worst slurs in the social circle.

“I have heard the same from other places and this is a deep, deep cause for worry. I do not have any information about how common this is, but if one person is using it as a swear word, it is one of many who uses it as a swearword,” says Fure, who nevertheless points out that the usage of the wording is not reflected in the public sphere.

“But it is clear that this phenomenon demands a special vigilance in the light of history,” says Odd-Bjorn Fure.

Stemming the Tide

We’ve posted a lot of reports recently about the asylum crisis in Norway — see the bottom of this post for a list of the articles and translations.

Every day brings another news story relating to the unprecedented rate of migration from the Third World into Norway. The latest one comes from yesterday’s Aftenposten; notice that the government can only “try” to limit the influx of asylum seekers — no guarantee that it will succeed:

Government tries to limit stream of refugees to Norway

Faced with record numbers of refugees seeking asylum in Norway, the government on Wednesday announced moves to make it harder for them to stay in the country. Refugee sympathizers were shocked by the moves.

They include politicians from one of the government’s own coalition parties, the Socialist Left. It opposed moves to make it harder to win asylum in Norway, but party leaders said it was “impossible” to come to terms with its two other government partners, Labour and the Center Party.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg from Labour and his party colleague Dag Terje Andersen, the minister in charge of immigration issues, said it was “necessary to limit the number of asylum seekers who have no need for protection” in Norway.

- - - - - - - - -

He noted that while 6,500 would-be refugees arrived in Norway last year, around 15,000 are expected this year. The country of 4.5 million residents is having trouble absorbing them all.

Stoltenberg and Andersen presented a 13-point plan to tighten asylum policies. Cases will be handled, for example, on an individual basis and asylum won’t be automatic simply because an applicant comes from a troubled country.

Norway will also more closely follow other European countries’ asylum policies, and families will only be reunited if a successful asylum seeker undergoes four years of education or work experience in Norway.

The government also intends to send more asylum seekers back to the country where they first sought asylum. Most refugees already have applied for asylum elsewhere before landing in Norway.

‘Shocked’

The new policy has caused dissension within the government. “I’m shocked and think this is very uncomfortable,” said Rolf Reikvam of the Socialist Left. He referred further questions to party leader Kristin Halvorsen.

Halvorsen confirmed her party disagreed with the government’s new policy and said it would exercise its right to dissension when it needed to propose a law change on the family reunification issue.

“It was unfortunately impossible for us to agree on two points, one involving how children would be treated and another regarding how closely we’ll follow UN guidelines for refugees,” Halvorsen said.

She conceded the disagreement was “very serious,” but claimed her party colleagues weren’t demanding that SV leave the government because of it.

Previous posts about Norway’s asylum crisis:

2008		Aug		5		Evicted to Make Room for Asylum-Seekers
				7		The Asylum Crisis in Norway
				15		A Lethal Family Reunification
				18		Pleading Insanity
				18		An Invitation to Game the System
				23		Norway: Asylum Capital of the World
				25		Asylum Flood Encounters Popular Resistance
				26		Norwegian Lawyer Charged in Attack on Asylum Center
		Sep		2		The High Cost of Asylum
				3		Your Papers, Please?

Hat tip: The Observer

The Norwegian Government Surrenders to Muslims

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna. For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.


This weekend, Norway became first Western country to announce its recognition of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government. Norway was home to the original back-channel talks between left-wing Israeli politicians and the PLO which created the ill-fated Oslo Peace Process of the 1990s, and also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to PLO-leader Yasser Arafat.

The decision to fund the Hamas-led government was accompanied by cheers from the media, including newspaper Aftenposten which praised this as a “wise” move. Aftenposten in 2006 published an essay by Jostein Gaarder, author of the bestselling book “Sophie’s World,” which called the Ten Commandments “amusing stone tablets” and said that Israel has “raped world recognition and will have no peace before it lays down its arms.” The essay was denounced as anti-Semitic by many observers, but also received significant support.

During the Cartoon Jihad in 2006, Bruce Bawer, the author of the book While Europe Slept, described how Velbjørn Selbekk, the editor of the tiny newspaper Magazinet, had firmly resisted pressure by Muslims who made death threats. But then Norway’s Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion Bjarne Håkon Hanssen hastily called a press conference at a government office building in Oslo. There Selbekk issued an abject apology for reprinting the Danish cartoons. At his side, accepting his act of contrition and asking that all threats now be withdrawn, was Mohammed Hamdan, head of Norway’s Islamic Council, accompanied by a number of imams. As Bawer commented, it was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom, with the Muslim leader declaring Selbekk to be henceforth under his protection.

In a Friday sermon on February 3, 2006, Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, exhorted worshippers to show rage to the world in response the cartoons depicting Muhammad. The sermon was aired on TV. The following day, the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria were set ablaze by an angry mob. A few days later, a delegation led by Mohammed Hamdan of Norway’s Islamic Council and a senior pastor representing Oslo’s bishop visited Qatar to meet Mr. Qaradhawi. The trip recieved support from the Norwegian government. Qaradhawi accepted the apology that Velbjørn Selbekk had issued on February 10.

Walid al-Kubaisi, a Muslim dissident living in Norway, warned that Yousef Al-Qaradhawi was more dangerous and influential than Osama bin Laden, and that the Muslim Brotherhood, whose founder Hassan al-Banna Qaradhawi had followed when he was young, wants the West to submit to sharia. Kubaisi reacted strongly to the statement by Mr. Hamdan that he would now give Mr. Selbekk protection:

It frightens me that he presents himself as an authority that can grant or revoke protection. Does this mean that [Minister] Bjarne Håkon Hanssen thinks that the next time I feel threatened because of something I have written, I should contact the Islamic Council, not the police? Sadly, the government, in their eagerness to end the current troubles, have made the authoritarian forces stronger.

Kubaisi feared that Islamists would from now on just burn something every time they felt offended about anything, and expect to get their will.
- - - - - - - - - -
The status given to non-Muslim dhimmis who accept Islamic rule is technically referred to as “protected.” During the Cartoon Jihad, the left-wing government demonstrated in public that Norwegian authorities did not control the security of their citizens, and thus had to accept Muslim intervention to secure Norwegians’ safety. This amounted to the acceptance of Islamic rule according to sharia laws, a view which was subsequently strengthened by payments to Muslims both at home and abroad. Undoubtedly these payments were viewed by Muslims as jizya, the “protection money” non-Muslims are required to pay in willing submission (Koran, 9:29), as a sign of their inferior status vis-à-vis Islam.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi has boasted that “Islam will Return to Europe as a Conqueror.” The spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood was thus indirectly responsible for the attack on the Norwegian embassy; technically the attack could be interpeted as an act of war.

Hamas is by many viewed as the Palestinian branch of the MB. They even write this in their own charter. This means that the Norwegian government is now funding an organization that has caused physical attacks against their country. Admittedly, even the USA and Israel are doing so, too, but it is still embarrassing and worrying that Norway is part of this bribe scheme.

In the fall of 2006, Minister Bjarne Håkon Hanssen from the Labor Party called for increased immigration to Norway from Pakistan because this wuld be good for the Norwegian society. The majority of Muslims in Norway voted for the Labor Party in the 2005 general elections, which the left-wing coalition won by a very slim margin. Eighty-three percent of Muslims voted for Leftist parties.

There have even been calls for translating Norway’s national anthem to Urdu because this would be good for integration.

Kristin Halvorsen, the leader of the Socialist Left Party, began her election campaign in 2005 in the Pakistani countryside, praising all the “blood, sweat and tears Pakistanis in Norway have spent on building the country.” She is now Norway’s Minister of Finance.

The deputy leader of the party has announced that he wants to abolish private property rights. It is stated in the party’s programme that the United States constitutes the greatest threat to world peace. However, their calls to boycott Israel have had no affect on consumer attitudes.

Trond Giske, Minister of Culture and Church Affairs from the Labor Party, met with Mohammed Hamdan, the then head of Norway’s Islamic Council, a few months after the Cartoon Jihad and announced that government subsidies for the Islamic Council would be raised from sixty thousand kroner a year to half a million. That’s more than a seven hundred percent increase in a single year.

The government would also meet more frequently with the Islamic Council to “improve dialogue.” Its leader Hamdan smiled after having talked with Mr. Giske for about one hour. “We’re pretty pleased with the meeting. For us it’s important to improve contacts with the government so that we can get to know each other better.”

Mohammed Hamdan participated during a meeting with members of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas at Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament, in the summer of 2006. According to him, he was only an interpreter, but his brother Osama Hamdan is a member of parliament for Hamas in the Palestinian Territories. Since the Norwegian government decided in March 2007 to continue sponsoring the Hamas-led government, this can hardly be viewed as anything but a total surrender to Islamic rule.

Muslims can spot a good dhimmi when they see one. In Bergen, Norway’s second largest city, Labor Party politician Jerad Abdelmajid threatened that Muslims would take their Friday prayers in Torgallmenningen, Bergen’s central public square. This threat occurred because Muslims would be temporarily without a mosque after March 31. Thus, if the authorities didn’t provide them with a interim mosque until the new one was finished, they would disrupt the community with public prayer meetings.

In contrast to the Selbekk case, Mullah Krekar, the former leader of the Islamic terror group Ansar al-Islam, still continues to be permitted to live in Norway — even though he has

• pretty much openly threatened the country with terror attacks,
  
• has called Osama bin Laden “the jewel of Islam”
  
• and bragged that Islam will conquer Europe.

Krekar has written a book about himself, which was published William Nygaard – a man who was dhimmified when he was shot and almost killed in the early 90s for having published the Norwegian translation of Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses.

It was recently confirmed that the posts I wrote on my blog two years ago about Muslim rapes were indeed accurate. I continue to maintain that the Norwegian Minister of Justice — if not the entire centre-right government — should have resigned in 2005, when this scandal came to light.

In September 2001, the newspaper Aftenposten published statistics from the city of Oslo showing that two thirds of those charged with rape in Norway’s capital were immigrants with a non-western background. This means that a majority of rapes in Oslo are committed by Muslim men. In addition, the total number of rape cases continues to rise.

The numbers published in 2001 were publicly discussed in at least two of Norway’s three largest newspapers: Aftenposten and Dagbladet. A leading member of the Liberal Party (Venstre), Odd Einar Dørum, demanded all the numbers be put on the table: “A scumbag is a scumbag, regardless of skin color.” A few weeks later, Mr. Dørum became Minister of Justice, a position he retained for the next four years. However, any mention of these statistics disappeared.

Last year, 2006, the number of rapes in the Norwegian capital Oslo was six times higher (per capita) than they were in New York City. Such statistics are likely to worsen, as New York City has become tougher on crime, and Oslo continues to silence any discussion of the imploding issue of safety for women in their city.

Dr. Jens Tomas Anfindsen, one of two editors of the bilingual website Honest Thinking, in 2007 revealed that there was a police report from 2005 that confirmed the trends from 2001. He talked to former Minister Dørum, who denied that the government had hushed it down. Yet as Mr Anfindsen pointed out, the report was met with total silence from both the political elites and the media that year.

Why?

In 2005, when the country was about to have national elections, I wrote that the country’s Minister of Justice knew that the huge spike in rapes was intimately linked to immigration. He denounced this cultural degradation before being elected, but once in power, this official did absolutely nothing about the problem. In fact, he refused to acknowledge that it even existed during his four years in office.

Normally this would have led to calls for his resignation, or that of the entire government of PM Bondevik. When this didn’t happen, I suspect it was because both the media and the left-wing opposition parties championed Multiculturalism and wanted to keep a lid on “delicate issues” related to immigration. In addition, the left-wing parties currently in office actively courted the Muslim vote – no doubt a decisive factor in their narrow victory that year.

Statistics showing that immigrants, especially from Muslim countries such as Iraq and Somalia, were behind two thirds of the rapes in Oslo were published again by newspaper Aftenposten in 2007. It is good that these numbers were finally published. Muslim violence in Western countries includes far more than just rape. The fact that it is actually being discussed in Norway, rather than silenced, is a positive turn of events. This willingness to address the real problems makes Norway one of the better countries when it comes to public dialogue.

However, why did newspapers Aftenposten and Dagbladet as well as other media, refuse to cite the police report in 2005? This omission may have decided the outcome of the elections. Yes, they did publish the reports in 2001 and 2007, but what motivated them to let the subject drop completely in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 or 2006. After all, the numbers of rapes grew to unprecedented heights year after year.

Is it a coincidence that they finally published the numbers again after I had written several articles denouncing their silence , and that Honest Thinking had just written about it as well? I don’t know the answers, but I’m entitled to ask them to explain their silence. And if our media withholds such information from us, what other kinds of information are they withholding?

It would be unfair to say that there is no opposition to these insane policies. Erna Solberg, the leader of Høyre, Norway’s conservative (with a very small “c”) party, is a dedicated Multiculturalist who has proposed the establishment of an officially sanctioned sharia council in Norway. However, a new book by a former member of Parliament for Høyre, Hallgrim Berg, warns against Islamic plans to turn Europe into Eurabia. He discusses the growing anti-Americanism in Europe and maintains the United States is the only power in the world capable of securing freedom.

In 2005 the police issued a mobile security alarm to leader of the right-wing Progress Party, Carl I. Hagen. Hagen had criticized Islam, and could see no similarity with the concept of morality and justice found in Christianity. He also said that if Israel loses in the Middle East, Europe will succumb to Islam next. He thinks that Christians should support Israel and oppose Islamic inroads into Europe. In an unprecedented step, a group of Muslim ambassadors to Norway blasted Carl I. Hagen in a letter. Other politicians quickly caved in and condemned Hagen, including then-Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of the Christian Democrats.

In 2007, the Progress Party, which is one of the most pro-Israeli and pro-American parties in Western Europe, is on the brink of replacing the Labor Party as the largest party in the country. Ordinary citizens have beomce disillusioned with Multiculturalism and Muslim immigration. However, as elsewhere in Europe, the established political, cultural and media elites are firmly behind these wrong-headed policies.

In 2001, Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, told Dagbladet 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 that “Norwegian women must realize that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”

Meanwhile, Trond Giske, Minister of Culture and Church Affairs and the same man who provided Norway’s Islamic Council with a seven hundred percent increase in funds after the Cartoon Jihad, announced that 2008 would be an official Diversity Year, dedicated to celebrating Multiculturalism and “cultural diversity” in all sectors of society.

The more the state ideology fails, the more the state promotes its doomed tenets in public propaganda campaigns. China’s Chairman Mao would have been proud of Norwegian authorities.

I’m not, but then I am an ignorant Islamophobe.

Wanted in Algeria

A culturally-enriched fellow named Omar Cheblal, currently living in Norway, is wanted in his native Algeria for gunrunning and terrorist activities. Since he began enjoying the hospitality of his Norwegian hosts in 2006, Mr. Cheblal has joined a Salafist group that is notorious in Norway for threatening to kill politicians and Jews, vowing to establish an Islamic state in Norway, and sending its members overseas to train for jihad and fight in Libya and Syria.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated an article about the case of Omar Cheblal, and includes this introduction:

The article from today’s Dagbladet concerns a convicted criminal asylum seeker from Algeria. The individual in question, Omar Cheblal, is a member of the radical ‘Norwegian’ Islamist organization ‘The Prophet’s Ummah’. It turns out that Cheblal’s native country of Algeria has caught wind that he is hiding in Norway and they want him extradited so he can face criminal charges. It should come as no surprise that the Norwegian authorities are reluctant to deport him out of fear that he could face torture if he is sent back home. Or maybe they aren’t all that concerned at all. Maybe it’s just a charade.

The article claims that VG, the newspaper that broke the story, received information from anonymous sources claiming that the Algerian authorities have initiated proceedings against Cheblal in order to get him extradited from Norway. My guess is that these anonymous sources are Labor Party MP’s wanting to bring media attention to this particular case so that they can come across as capable and effective when Cheblal is deported and show the Norwegian public that they are capable of combating radical Islam in Norway. Confidential information is regularly leaked to the media in Norway by members of the elite. All the moral scruples about such practices fly out the window if they think that they will benefit from it.

The ‘Prophet’s Ummah’ has received lots of media attention lately and ordinary Norwegians are very vocal in their disgust over the authorities’ feeble attempts at stopping these bearded apes from making very overt threats against Norway, so it’s fair to assume that the politicians feel that they need to show some initiative and score some cheap political points.

However, it doesn’t bode very well that the police and the PST are on the case. Readers of GoV probably remember that a representative from the police in Oslo delivered a very cowardly and disgusting apology in a mosque in Oslo at the height of the unrest over the ‘Innocence of Muslims’ trailer. The fact that neither the police nor the PST has shown any interest in preventing members of this extreme organization from acquiring hunting licenses which will enable them to legally purchase hunting rifles is yet another indication that the intelligence community and the police in Norway are pretty much useless.

Another thing to consider is that for every Cheblal that is successfully deported, ten new ones arrive and are granted political asylum by a very naïve and cowardly government.

The translated article from Dagbladet:

Spokesman for Islamist group wanted in Algeria

Proceedings have been initiated against Omar Cheblal (46), a member of the organization “The Prophet’s Ummah”, with the intent of having him extradited from Norway.

Oslo (NTB): According to an article in VG [Norwegian tabloid newspaper] Cheblal was arrested in Morocco in the 1990s and sentenced to 15 years in prison for violating the country’s weapons laws. According to the Moroccan newspaper La Gazette, Cheblal was involved in smuggling weapons to the Algerian Islamist organization GIA.

After serving ten years in prison in Morocco, Cheblal was pardoned and released. Shortly thereafter he traveled to Norway, where in 2006 he was registered as a resident at the Vang asylum centre in Valdres. He then relocated to Oslo where he later that year was arrested in the possession of 15.6 grams of hashish. In court he confessed to selling one gram of the drug for Nok 100.

He has been unsuccessful in obtaining a permanent residence permit, but has managed to avoid being sent back to Algeria out of concerns that he could face torture there.

Extradition requests

A source with intimate knowledge of the case has confirmed to VG that Cheblal is wanted in his native country and that Algeria has requested that he be extradited from Norway.

“Algeria has requested that he be extradited as he is convicted and wanted in connection with a crime. I am not familiar with the details of the Algerian request,” the source says.

Cheblal refuses to comment on the information.

“I’m happy to talk to you about the Prophet’s Ummah, but not about that matter. This is supposed to be confidential information,” says Cheblal to VG.

The Latest Dhimmi News From Norway

Fjordman has translated this article from today’s Vårt Land. Following the translation is his commentary.

Editor Vebjørn Selbekk of the small Norwegian Christian newspaper Magazinet was scheduled to sign books at a bookshop in Oslo this Saturday. Now the book signing has been cancelled because the bookshop fears terror attacks.

Selbekk is topical with his book Truet av islamister (Threatened by Islamists) about the conflict that followed after the newspaper Magazinet reprinted Jyllands-Posten’s cartoons of Muhammad. But now there won’t be any book signing event, for security reasons. “I’m disappointed. This is prostration in front of forces we should not give in to,” Selbekk says.

Svein Andersen, the head of his publishing company Genesis, has during his 23 years in the trade never experienced anything like this. “The head of the bookshop said she was worried about the security of the employees and the customers, and that she unfortunately had to cancel the event. This is outrageous and frightening,” Andersen says, who thinks this is a blow to freedom of speech. “If Islamists are allowed to decide which books should be published in Norway, cookbooks with recipes for fillet of pork will be banned,” he says.

Comments by Fjordman

And why not? A person who visits kindergartens to read fairy tales experienced that, in stories by Asbjørnsen and Moe — the Norwegian equivalent of the Brothers Grimm — the word pig had been replaced with fox. When she discovered the same thing happening in another kindergarten, she wondered whether this was a new policy. In Sweden previously, the wording of several older books for children such as Pippi Longstocking has been changed to make them more “culturally sensitive.”

Bruce Bawer, the author of the recent book While Europe Slept, describes on his blog how Velbjørn Selbekk, the editor of Magazinet, had firmly resisted pressure by Muslim extremists who made death threats and by the Norwegian establishment. But then Norway’s Minister of Labor and Social Inclusion Bjarne Håkon Hanssen hastily called a press conference at a major government office building in Oslo. There Selbekk issued an abject apology for reprinting the cartoons. At his side, accepting his act of contrition and asking that all threats now be withdrawn, was Mohammed Hamdan, head of Norway’s Islamic Council, accompanied by a number of imams. It was a picture right out of a sharia courtroom, with the Muslim leader declaring Selbekk to be henceforth under his protection.
- - - - - - - - - -
In a Friday sermon on February 3, 2006, Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, exhorted worshippers to show rage to the world in response the cartoons depicting Muhammad. The sermon was aired on TV. The day after, the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria were set ablaze by an angry mob. A few days later, a delegation led by Mr. Mohammed Hamdan of Norway’s Islamic Council and a senior pastor representing Oslo’s bishop then visited Qatar to meet Mr. Qaradhawi. The trip recieved support from the Norwegian government. Yousef Al-Qaradhawi then accepted the apology that Velbjørn Selbekk had issued on February 10.

Walid al-Kubaisi, a Muslim dissident living in Norway, warned that Yousef Al-Qaradhawi was more dangerous and influential than Osama bin Laden, and that the Muslim Brotherhood, whose founder, Hassan al-Banna, Qaradhawi followed when he was young, want the West to submit to sharia. Al-Qaradhawi has boasted that “Islam will Return to Europe as a conqueror.” It should be mentioned that both Norway and Denmark are members of NATO, and that destroying an embassy is pretty close to an act of war.

In contrast to the Selbekk case, Mullah Krekar, the former leader of the Islamic terror group Ansar al-Islam, still lives in Norway, even though he has pretty much openly threatened the country with terror attacks, has called Osama bin Laden “the jewel of Islam” and bragged that Islam will conquer Europe. He has written a book about himself, which was published by a man called William Nygaard, who was shot at and almost killed in the early 90s for having published the Norwegian translation of Salman Rushdie’s book The Satanic Verses. A Norwegian NGO called the Freedom of Expression Fund supported the translation and publication of Osama bin Laden’s speeches.

Later in 2006, Minister Bjarne Håkon Hanssen from the Labor Party called for increased immigration to Norway from Pakistan because this wuld be good for the Norwegian society. The majority of Muslims in Norway voted for the Labor Party in the 2005 general elections, which the left-wing coalition won by a very slim margin. 83 percent of Muslims voted for Leftist parties.

There have been calls for translating Norway’s national anthem to Urdu because this would be good for integration. Kristin Halvorsen, the leader of the Socialist Left party, began her election campaign in the Pakistani countryside, and praised all the “blood, sweat and tears Pakistanis in Norway have spent on building the country.” She is now Norway’s Minister of Finance. The deputy leader of the Socialist Left party has stated that he wants to abolish private property rights.

Samira Munir, Norwegian politician of Pakistani origins and champion of the rights of Muslim women, later found dead at a suburban railway station outside Oslo in November 2005, claimed that there was widespread cooperation between the Socialist parties and the Muslim communities. “The heads of families and the mosques would decide how entire groups of immigrants would vote. They made deals such as ‘How much money will we get if we get our people to vote for you?’“

Trond Giske, Minister of Culture and Church Affairs from the Labor Party, met with Mohammed Hamdan, the head of Norway’s Islamic Council, a few months after the cartoons incident and announced that government subsidies for the Islamic Council would be raised from 60,000 kroner a year to half a million. That’s more than a 700% increase in a single year. The government would also meet more frequently with the Islamic Council to “improve dialogue.” Its leader Hamdan smiled after having talked with Mr. Giske for about one hour. “We’re pretty pleased with the meeting. For us it’s important to improve contacts with the government so that we can get to know each other better.”

Mohammed Hamdan participated during a meeting with members of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas at Stortinget, the Norwegian parliament, in the summer of 2006. According to him, he was only an interpreter, but his brother Osama Hamdan is a member of parliament for Hamas in the Palestinian Territories.

Meanwhile in Oslo, the number of rape charges during the summer of 2006 was more than twice as high as the year before. Both the authorities and the media have failed to give any explanation for this unprecedented rape wave, although they reported in 2001 that two out of three rape charges involved immigrant perps. Unni Wikan, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, in 2001 said 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 that “Norwegian women must realize that we live in a Multicultural society and adapt themselves to it.”

I think Norwegians are adapting quite well so far.

Norway: Asylum Capital of the World

The latest news about Norway’s asylum crisis comes from today’s VG Nett, as translated by The Observer:

No other country has seen a bigger increase in the arrival of individuals applying for political asylum than Norway.

Numbers released by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) shows that no other country in the world has seen a bigger increase in the arrival of individuals applying for political asylum than Norway.

The numbers shows that Norway is now on top of the list of countries that have had an increase in the arrival of asylum seekers, and that Norway is in a unique position so far this year compared with other countries, which have ‘closed the doors’ after several years with a steady increase in the arrival of asylum seekers.

- - - - - - - - -

In the first six months Norway received 5,765 asylum seekers, compared to 2,949 in the first six months of last year. The Netherlands comes in second with an increase of 2,732 asylum seekers in the first six months. Even big countries like Canada, Germany, Turkey and France have seen smaller increases than Norway, according to Aftenposten.

The biggest reduction has occurred in Sweden, with Great Britain, Greece and Spain following in the next spots.

Previous posts about Norway’s asylum crisis:

2008		Aug		5		Evicted to Make Room for Asylum-Seekers
				7		The Asylum Crisis in Norway
				15		A Lethal Family Reunification
				18		Pleading Insanity
				18		An Invitation to Game the System

Norway to Mullah Krekar: We Give Up!

Fjordman sent us a link to this article about Mullah Krekar, and included a thumbnail sketch of the Mad Mullah of Norway:

Krekar is an open supporter of Osama bin Laden, whom he has called the “jewel of Islam.” But according to the European Union, we cannot deport him. That would violate his human rights.

Mullah Krekar has been a thorn in the side of Norway for years. He has helped maintain jihad terrorism websites, advocated the killing of Australian soldiers in Iraq, and threatened retaliation if he is deported.

But he can’t be deported because he faces possible execution if he returns to Iraq. Like those Somali pirates who can claim asylum in the UK if they ever manage to get there, Mullah K. can remain safely ensconced in Norway no matter how bad a boy he is.

According to Aftenposten:

Krekar can stay in Norway

After months of quiet diplomacy, the Norwegian government has given up on efforts to send former terrorist-group leader Mullah Krekar back to his homeland.

Krekar, who has been under an expulsion order after being determined a threat to Norway’s national security, initially came to Norway as a refugee from Iraq in the early 1990s.

It later emerged that he was the head of guerrilla group Ansar al-Islam and he repeatedly violated the terms of his asylum by travelling back to northern Iraq to lead guerrilla activities.

Krekar is the only person in Norway ever to have been sentenced to deportation because he is a danger to the country’s security.

However, Norway has not been able to deport Krekar because he faces the death penalty in his homeland. Norway will not extradite anyone if they are under threat of execution when they are returned to their country of origin.

- - - - - - - - -

[…]

Mullah Krekar’s lawyer, Harald Stabell, is satisfied with the outcome. “An agreement for deportation would not have held up in relation to international regulations on human rights,” said Stabell to newspaper VG.

However, he notes that Krekar continues to be without rights in Norway and the deportation order remains in place.

[Labour and Inclusion Minister Bjarne] Hanssen confirmed the decision to let Krekar stay, but said: “With the proviso that I assume the police will protect Norwegian citizens from a person that is regarded to be a danger to the country’s security.”

This is a nasty little trap we have gotten ourselves into…

The West has to import lots of questionable Third-World immigrants for the sake of Multiculturalism, and to save poor refugees from persecution, and to make up for its own lack of willing low-wage laborers.

If our guests turn out to be criminals or worse, pointing out that fact is evidence of “racism”, and can cause the offender to be fired or prosecuted.

If a violent and dangerous criminal happens to be among the new arrivals, he can’t be deported because — surprise! — his prospects would be worse at home.

Then, presumably, he can get all his uncles, aunts, parents, grandparents, wives, children, and cousins into the country under the “family reunification” rules.

And then all of the above subsist at taxpayers’ expense on generous welfare payments.

Are we all lunatics, or what?

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
By the way — in the photo above, you’ll notice that Mullah Krekar appears to have the “Muslim stigmata”, the red bruise on the forehead that comes from the frequently repeated and extra-zealous banging of the head on the mosque floor during prayers.

Putting the Screws on Norway

We’re all familiar with the Islamic Protection Racket. It’s standard operating procedure for Muslims who live in the West. The process runs something like this:

Step 1:		A trivial incident — a cartoon, a video, a book, an interview with a prominent public figure — is inflated into a huge outrage against the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.
Step 2:		During Friday prayers, fire-breathing imams exhort the faithful to “defend the honor of the Prophet”.
Step 3:		Muslims in Jordan, Pakistan, and Indonesia take to the streets, burn infidel flags, and kill a few of each other.
Step 4:		Muslim countries institute a boycott against products manufactured by the offending Western nations.
Step 5:		Moderate spokesmen for Islamic groups appear on television and offer soothing words about peace and understanding, but… the violence of some of their co-religionists, regrettable though it may be, is understandable and hard to prevent, given the offense to their Islamic sensibilities.
Step 6:		Muslim ambassadors pay calls on heads of state and government in the Western countries involved, and insist that the host country needs to do more to understand Islam and promote constructive dialogue.
Step 7:		Officials in Western countries offer abject apologies and make concessions to Muslims, which usually involve massive “aid” programs to poor Muslim countries, all-halal menus in school lunchrooms, allowing women to wear burkhas on public transport, etc.
Step 8:		Muslim leaders proclaim that Islam is mollified (for the moment), and the world returns to a state of multicultural harmony.
Step 9:		Repeat steps 1 through 8 as often as necessary.

The other day I posted about a Mohammed-insulting cartoon that was published in a Norwegian newspaper. Now it seems that Norway has reached Step 6 in the good ol’ Islamic Shakedown: the Pakistani ambassador to Norway has issued some thinly-veiled threats (as translated by our Danish correspondent Kepiblanc):

Ambassador: Caricature is Terror

Pakistan’s ambassador to Norway calls the caricature in Adresseavisen ‘terror’ and fears that Norwegian lives might be lost as a consequence of it

[Photo caption: Visiting the king: Ambassador Rab Nawaz Khan was received by King Harald at an audience when he arrived in Norway 2006. Now Khan firmly opposes the drawing in Adresseavisen.]

Notice in the photo how much the ambassador resembles a Mafia don — or am I just prejudiced?

The article continues:
- - - - - - - - -

Earlier this week the newspaper published what is seen by many as a caricature of the prophet Muhammad. The ambassador fears the consequences when the drawing becomes more widely known in large Islamic countries, such as Pakistan.

“Muslim societies all over the world will be offended. This is an act of terror,” says ambassador Rab Nawaz Khan to TV2.

He thinks that the publication might stir up strong reactions and that people might lose control. Consequently, Norwegian lives might be endangered, he opines.

“Don’t forget that there are many Norwegian companies in Pakistan,” says Khan.

The embassy has handed over a formal note of protest to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (UD).

Spokeswoman Anne Lene Dale Sandsten of the UD says that the protest is taken seriously, but she declines to comment in detail about the ambassador’s claims. She fears that doing so might escalate the whole affair.

Kepiblanc included with his translation an afterword with some background on the situation in Norway:

Translator’s notes: Adresseavisen is a very old, historic term originating way back when newspapers were more like ‘bulletins’ or ‘journals’ combined with advertising. This particular daily is Norway’s oldest, situated in Trondheim — one of the best-known Viking settlements.

By the way, according to the newest poll in Norway, Fremskrittspartiet — Norway’s version of “The Danish People’s Party” — has surpassed the other political parties in Norway and is currently the biggest party in the country. It is strongly opposed to immigration, especially Muslim immigration. If Norway had an election right now, the party’s chairwoman, Siv Jensen, could become Prime Minister. Alas, the Norwegian Constitution doesn’t allow elections outside a fixed, four-year schedule.

Hat tip: TB.