Islam in Europe

Another day, four more stories about the march of Islam in Europe.

1) Norway

Today it was revealed that 40% of schools in Oslo have a majority of children born to foreign parents. This is up from 34% last year.

The figures presented in the link seem to suggest that most Norwegian pupils at such schools wish to leave.

Is this surprising? Yesterday Pyjamas Media ran a story about Vahl Grade School in downtown Oslo. A female employee, a Pakistani Muslim, had been pressuring young girls (of around six or seven years old) to wear the hijab.

The girls she encouraged to cover themselves were ethnic Norwegians, who make up just 5% of pupils at this particular school:

She flattered the girls who didn’t wear hijab by telling them how pretty they would be if they only put on hijabs, and said that she could give them hijabs as gifts. The woman works for SFO (Skolefritidsordning or “School Free Time Arrangement”), which provides volunteers to take care of kids before and after school hours, and also works as a classroom assistant. In March she got the head of SFO to write the following note to the parents of two non-Muslim girls:

“Can X get a hijab from SFO on Tuesday, March 31, 2009?” The letter is dated March 30 and signed by the head of Norwegian SFO. HRS has the original letter. We also have a photograph of posters from the school building announcing prayer times for the children.

An employee at Vahl School explains the spread of hijabs at the school to HRS in this way:

“In first grade, about half of the Muslim girls show up in hijab. By the time they’re in third grade, pretty much all of the Muslim girls are in hijab,” says this person who wishes to remain anonymous.

So this woman, entrusted to care for young children, abused her position to try to impose her own backward values on them. What did her employer have to say?

The assistant principal at the school, Grete Wahlmann, obviously doesn’t understand what kind of force and pressure on children these matters can involve or, for that matter, what values hijab represents. She told the Adressa.no website: “This was just a small gesture from SFO. There were two little girls who wanted to dress up in pretty, colorful, and glittering hijabs, and therefore SFO asked if it was okay with the parents for them to give them to the girls.”

There we have it. Just taking advantage of the nature of young girls to impose alien cultural values on them. Move along, nothing to see here.

2) Greece

A while ago I wrote about the rioting of Muslims in Greece, incensed over a policeman's alleged desecration of a copy of the Koran.

This led to vandalism and a failed attempt to petrol bomb the Agios Panteleimonas police station in central Athens.

The crux of the issue was thus:

"We want the officer or officers involved to be prosecuted, and the government to issue an apology," protester Manala Mohammed, a Syrian national, told The Associated Press. "We want people to show us respect."

We now have a classic case of blackmail ongoing in Greece; if an apology is not forthcoming and the policeman is not sacked or put on trial, then 'communities' might lose control of their members.

"How can you control enraged 20-year-old Afghans who will hit the streets seeking to die in the name of Allah?" asked Naim al-Ghandour, president of the Muslim Union of Greece.

"This is creating hate in a country that did not have the reputation in the Arab and Muslim world of being an enemy," Mr. al-Ghandour said.

Mohammad Ateeq, the Iraqi immigrant at the center of the controversy, lodged a suit on charges of damage to property and religious disrespect.

He claims that the unidentified policeman insulted him, tore his copy of the Koran and proceeded to step on it.

"Greece is not Denmark," said Ahmed Muawiya, a member of the Greek Immigrant Forum, seeking to dispel fears of another conflagration like one that followed the 2006 global riots over Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad.

"But offending Islam is not a game, and this must not be viewed as just an immigrant issue," Mr. Muawiya said.

No, it's not a game - people end up dead. We know.

It doesn't look like the Greeks will get much spiritual leadership regarding the invasion and subjugation of their country, however:

Greece has been struggling for more than a decade with the illegal entry of mostly Muslim immigrants from the Arab world, North Africa and Central Asia.

An estimated 400,000 Muslims - including both legal and illegal immigrants - in the greater Athens area alone pray in 130 makeshift shrines in the absence of an official mosque in the Greek capital.

The church has donated a large plot of land for the creation of a Muslim cemetery and supports the creation of Greece's first mosque. It offers daily food handouts in central Athens, irrespective of creed.

3) United Kingdom

A software company in Scotland is creating a new game for the X Box called 'Rendition'.

In it, the player will control a Guantanamo Bay detainee who is trying to shoot his way out of the prison.

The company decided that this wasn't controversial enough, however; they called upon the expertise of Mozzam Begg, a British resident and former inmate at the US base in Cuba. As well as advising on the layout of the prison, he could also become a star as the game's central character which players will control.

The director of the company, the well known Scotsman Zarrar Chishti, said:

"We have had a lot of hate mail about this, mainly from America, saying things like, 'Don't dare put out a game that shows them killing our soldiers. But only mercenaries will be killed.

We are expecting an extreme reaction to the game in the US. But we think it will sell well in the Middle East."

4) Sweden

The majority of imams in Sweden wish for a Swedish education. Some of them believe that holding their sermons in Swedish will fight alienation and aid integration. There is also the issue of Saudi imams being offered to Swedish mosques free of charge, a practice which must be stopped to fight the spread of wahabism.

However, a report commissioned by the Swedish government suggested that this would be a very bad idea - because it is better that extremists control religious education than the Swedish state, which might attempt to 'steer' imams towards certain interpretations of Islam:

There is great skepticism and a belief that the State would take over the religious part of imam training and thus "steer" Islam's religious content.

Turkey is the country that sends most imams in Sweden, 47%. This is done through the religion Ministry, Diyanet, which sends imams to countries with large Turkish diasporas.