Excuses are being made

The public Norwegian broadcasting company NRK ran for a couple of days ago a story about a Swedish-Jewish family living in Malmø, who now decided to move to Israel. The reason: An extreme increase in antisemitism among the Muslims, which now counts for between 25% and 35% of the total city population. NRK followed up with similar stories coming from Jews living in Oslo, all saying that the hatred against Jews is increasing dramatically.

This increase of antisemitism goes hand in hand with the contiued increase of the immigration of Muslims. The Qur'an states explicitly that all Jews should be killed. Muslim children are taught to hate Jews (and other infidels). This is all old news, most people are aware of these facts. Still, it seems that some otherwise well informed and educated people manage to ignore it and turn the Muslims who exercise these verbal and physical attacs into victims – as seen so often before.

The leader of the Norwegian Center agaist Racism, Kari Helene Partapuoli, suggests that the hatred comes from “among others, Muslim youth who take out their frustration by attacing an other exposed group”. In other words, this is by all means intolerable, but one can understand it, as these young Muslims feel overlooked, set aside and discriminated against by the majority. The same excuse was made after the violent demonstrations in Oslo, January 2009. The rest of the society were then constantly reminded that these youngsters are “frustrated” and “angry” because they felt like outsiders in the Norwegian society; they weren’t given the same oppurtunities as Norwegians; they felt forced to assimilate instead of intergrate; they experienced discrimination everywhere they went; they didn’t feel “heard”.

The matron of the Jewish congreation in Oslo, Anne Sender, says that the problem is very much connected to the Muslim society, and she should know, standing so to say in the middle of it all and recieving reports from Jewish parents about their harassed children. Yet, the Norwegian Minister of Education (Socialist Left Party) manages to say that this ”is not a Muslim problem, but a Norwegian one”. What she actually means by this is unclear, but I choose to interpret her as saying that the responsibility lies on the Norwegians, i.e. the larger society, and not specifically on the Muslim society. In other words, the Norwegians have to look into what they can do in order to cope with this problem. And I can hear the answer already: Dialouge.

As so often before, it is we who have to change, adapt, excuse our selves and invite to dialouge. Every integration debate always starts with the question ”what can we do in order to integrate immigrants better?” As a logical consequence, we are to blame when the integration fails and parallell (immigrant) societies form.

Respecting someone means not only tolerate their often odd views and opinions. It also means seeing them as thinking and sensible individuals with a mind of their own and with an ability to observe, process and act on whatever situation or subject at hand, and to reflect on the consequences of their actions. Removing the guilt from people who have done something wrong, with the excuse that ”you were frustrated and angry and wanted to be heard because we haven't treated you good enough”, is the same as disrespecting them; it’s a process of infantilization.

This situation can be seen as a part of the West’s self-afflicted guilt for all the evil and atrocities commited in the World, a process started in the decades after the WW II and the decolonisation, and especially driven forward by the so called ”generation of ’68”, who today is leading the multicultural project in Europe through their high possitions within politics, culture and media. Denounciation of our own culture and values are also parts of it. They throw out labels of racism and xenophobia towards those who oppose their project and have put the Human Rights on a pedestal, overlooking the fact that these same rights are being sinned against every time they defend the offenders. For, as Article 1 in the Declaration states:

All human beings […] are endowed with reason and conscience.

Why then deprive those who offend against others – in the name of Allah – of those capabilities?

Edit 28.03.10, 15.20: Norwegian and Swedish Jews are not the only ones experiencing a record high number of antisemitic attacs/incidents. The situation is just as bad in France, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. According to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, there hasn't been as many attacs on Jews since the Second World War. And of course, there are young Muslims behind almost every one of them. But of course, also the Jews are influenced by the political correctness, as one Diane Keyser, from a Jewish forum in Antwerpen, Belgium, says. "There's a small group of young people behind it. Other than that, we live [peacfully] beside eachother, if not with eachother."

Is it really a "small group" behind the over 100 attacs in Belgium (2009), over 100 attacs in the Netherlands only in January 2009, 924 attacs in the UK (2009) and 832 in France (2009)?