The Islamic Council and Gays, continued

This post is a follow-up on two of my previous posts, The Norwegian Islamic Council and Gays, and The Christian People's Party and Gays.

The most recent developments on this issue is that the leader of the Norwegian Islamic Council, Senaid Kobilica, has called upon the Norwegian Imams and asked them to be open to talking with muslim homosexuals. According to an interview with Dagsavisen, "the Islamic Council do not want homosexuals, whether they be muslim or not, to be living in the closet. They are living in Norway, a democratic country, and are free to come out." Also, he has pointed out that the Norwegian Islamic Council are against capital punishment for homosexuality in Norway, but do not want to involve itself with legislation in other states.

Although Kobilica still holds the view that it is incompatible to be a practicing muslim and also to be a practicing homosexual, this is uplifting, and it is a step in the right direction. It is also an example that the Islamic community very much is capable of debate on defining issues. Let's just hope the debate and developments continue in the right direction.

We should also remind ourselves that a similar debate has been going on and is still going on in the Christian Church community in Norway. There is still a strong resistance towards letting homosexuals occupy religious positions in the Church. To me, there is no principal difference between the Church and the Islamic Council in this respect, at least when it comes to their stance on homosexuals in Norway.

Being an expat with a student loan

Norway is a rich country. We got it good. Compared to people from many other countries, most Norwegians are fairly well off. Some would even say loaded. We have a high living standard and the wages we earn must be among the highest in the world. Naturally, those high wages also drive the prices up, causing the costs of living to be among the highest in the world as well.

When I decided to leave my cozy, protected life in Norway just over a year ago, I guess I did it at least partly because I wanted to experience something different. One thing is for sure - I did not do it because I thought I was going to earn more money than I did. Having ventured into the ruthless world of cut-throat capitalism without any obviously marketable skills, I now feel the effects of that particular choice.

Every three months, I get a nasty message in my online banking site inbox; "Your quarterly payment is now due." An ugly lump of hard-earned money must leave my rapidly diminishing bank account. That really hurts. Living in Norway, I didn't really notice those payments to the degree I now do, as my salary was almost double my current one. And also, living up north, I had a sizable write-off that the Government gives as an incentive for people to settle up there. So the proportion of my salary I now pay is several times higher. Not good.

I guess we are very lucky in the sense that everyone in Norway has got the opportunity to get an education, no matter the economic situation of our parents. But considering the size of the student loan that we have to amass to get that education, in a sense it kind of limits our choices when it comes to work later on. We have to find a reasonably well paid job to be able to pay off the student loan.

The Christian People's Party and Gays

The politician Ole Henrik Grønn in the Sarpsborg Christian People's Party (KrF) resigned his position with the party last week. His resignation is due to the stark criticism he has been at the receiving end for because of his sexual orientation. According to the leader of the local party, Marit Sverresen, Grønn's position in the party is incompatible with living in a relationship with another man.

As I stated in my August 17 post, The Norwegian Islamic Council and Gays, reactionary attitudes are not at all reserved for Muslims or any other religious faith. It is a sliding scale, of course, and barring certain people for membership in a political party is not the same as punishing them with execution. The similarities are nevertheless obvious.

If we want to force the Norwegian Islamic Council to hold certain views and values that we find politically correct, why not also impose the same on our political parties? Anything else is in my opinion pure hypocrisy.

The Bear and Us Revisited

With Russia's invasion of Georgia, we are again reminded of our neighbor's aggressive streaks. And those who thought that Post-Putin Russia would be much different are proved wrong.

Since the end of the Cold War, the military bases in Northern Norway have been steadily built down, and the number of troop stationed has been reduced. Suddenly that build-down might not seem like such a good idea. After having downsized our military capabilities, it will take a lot longer to rebuild them than the downsizing took. It will also potentially run into greater political resistance than if we had maintained them, and the signals it will send to our neighbors (i.e mainly Russia) will be very strong.

But the recent developments should illustrate that we do need a military defense. We can not show goodwill by abandoning the few means we do have to protect ourselves, and naively hope that our neighbor will behave as good in the future that it has so far. The Soviet days are over, and so is the Cold War, thank God. But Russia is still Russia, and it has shown an ugly urge to make up for lost prestige by bullying and intimidating its neighbors. And what's worse is that these policies have broad support in the Russian population.

Although we should never give up our efforts to maintain and further improve the good relationship we have with Russia, we also need to keep firmly in mind that our defense should be closely tied to NATO and the West.

Of course, the danger that we might get into a conflict with Russia is not imminent, and the difference between Norway and Georgia in this respect is vast. But the remoteness of war has been misjudged before; at the 100-year anniversary for our constitution in 1914, the Prime Minister Gunnar Knudsen described the international political sky as as clear as it hadn't been in many, many years. A few months later the entire world was thrown into the worst conflict the human race had seen. So even though the prospects for conflict might be remote, the risks of ignoring them are potentially huge.

The Norwegian Islamic Council and Gays

The Norwegian minister of social equality, Anniken Huitfeldt, threatened to withdraw the goverment financial support for the Norwegian Islamic Council last week, after the council showed itself unwilling to mark its distance towards capital punishment for homosexuality. The council is awaiting advice from the European Fatwa Council before they will take a stand on the issue of capital punishment for homosexuality. The Norwegian Islamic Council receives around half a million Norwegian Crowns (appr. 62.500€) annually in government support.

One might discuss the issue of whether the State should give any financial support at all religious institutions at all, even the State Church. Especially if the Norwegian state purports to be a secular state, that would be a relevant topic to discuss. And since we do subsidize the State Church, why not support other faiths, especially the ones that a large part of the Norwegian population belongs to? Personally, I am a bit skeptical to the idea that we should spend public money on religious organizations, whether they be Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or anything else, even when it comes to such small amounts as 500.000 NOK.

But since we do in fact subsidize religious institutions with government money, that leads to the question of to what extent it should be expected that the recipients of financial support aligns itself to what is acceptable viewpoints. You could argue that the Islamic Council is free to express whatever viewpoints it choose, as long as it respects Norwegian legislation. On the other hand, its viewpoints might influence the attitudes of its members, and that as long as they receive government support, they need to adhere to some basic values that we base our society on. In either case, to abolish any kind of financial support for such institutions would eliminate that problem altogether.

The issue of the Islamic Council's stance on homosexuality has raised a hefty amount of debate. Reading through the comments on some of the articles in various online newspapers, I must say that I am slightly taken aback by a large part of those comments. Judging from the comments, the level of antagonism towards the Islamic Council itself and towards Muslims in general seems to be quite high. Now, it's probably mostly those that are emotionally involved that bother to post their comments, so its fair to argue that those do not give a representative overview of the Norwegian people's general opinion. Nevertheless, it is clear that there is a great deal of animosity towards the Muslim population because of this issue.

I find it truly tasteless to express the view that homosexuality should be punished by death - just as much as it is tasteless to express the views that Jews should be annihilated, that women's rightful place is in the kitchen, or that people of different skin colors are of lesser intellect than whites. Still, not all, even most, of Norwegian Muslims hold the view that homosexuals should be stoned to death. And we also need to be aware that many Christians hold fundamentalist views on many issues, such as homosexuality. Religious texts are after all interpreted in the context of our society. If you read the Bible to it's literal meaning (or what you believe it's literal meaning to be), you could find many a place where it will be incompatible with our modern society. The same goes for the Quran.

That homosexuality is to be punished by death, or that women should be wrapped up in burkas, or that a sister who does something the brother does not approve of needs to be killed in order that the family not lose their honor is just abhorrent. But you could argue - and I do that - that such viewpoints are more the expressions and norms of a culture than the religion as such. It is perfectly possible to be a liberal and progressive Muslim, just as much as it is possible to be a liberal and progressive Christian. Still, there is no doubt that some in the muslim community hold views that are unmodern and barbaric.

The Western culture have some values that we should be very proud of, such as equality, freedom of speech, and tolerance for others that are different from ourselves. Those are values that we should stand up for and fight for. And we should try our best to spread and foster those values in our society. We can punish people who break the law, but to have the "wrong" values is not a punishable offense in itself - we cannot force people to hold the "right" values. That is actually one of our values - that people can believe what they will. We can - and should - try to convince others that our set of values on the whole are right and good, but that needs be done with reason, debate and open discussion, not by trying to deny others the right to hold values that we ourselves believe are wrong.

Rollo the Viking

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about Scandinavian Vikings and their influence on the British Isles. In that post, I mentioned the great viking Rollo or Gange-Rolf, without going into any detail about him. I'll pick up on that here. Given that Rollo is the ancestor of among others the present-day British royal family, he is arguably one of the most influential Scandinavians of all time. He was also one of the Norsemen causing the most trouble on the European continent.

The exact origin of Rollo is a matter of dispute, and has been subject to heated debate between Norwegian and Danish historians. According to some Danish historians as well as the Norman historian Dudo of Saint-Quentin, Rollo was a Danish viking, son of a certain King Erik. According to the Icelandic historian Snorre Sturlason, he was son of the Earl of Møre in Western Norway, Ragnvald Øysteinsson. As the good Norwegian I am, I will go with Snorre's account, although I acknowledge that it is probably impossible to settle the matter of his origin.

As many others of his contemporaries, Rolf was only a young boy when he participated on his first viking raids. Only 13 years old he would take part in raids on the areas eastwards, around the Baltic Sea. The young Rolf kept participating in these raids for several years, until in his early 20s his group did a raid in the Viken-area, i.e. the area around the Oslo-fjord. King Harald Fairhair had explicitly prohibited the Norse from raiding inland, and this raid led to Rolf being exiled from Norway. The fact that Rolf was the son of the Earl of Møre, Ragnvald Øysteinsson, one of King Harald Fairhair's closest friends and allies, did nothing to stop Harald from exiling him. Neither did the pleading of Rolf's mother to the King.

After being exiled from Norway, Rolf traveled to the Orkneys and the Hebrides. In 885 Rolf joined the attacks on the area around Paris under the Danish viking leader Sigfred. Sigfred and his company must have posed a grave danger for the settlements in this area, for they were being bought off and paid tribute several times to cease the raiding. However, the raids lasted for several years, and Rolf slowly made himself chieftain of these vikings.

Only in 911 were Rolf's forces defeated by Charles the Simple at the Battle of Chartres. Instead of turning Rolf away, Charles decided to make Rolf his ally. With the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Rolf pledged allegiance to the King, who gave him the areas that became known as Normandy. Rollo, as he was known from now on, would be Charles' first bulwark against any other vikings launching attacks on the Frankish areas.

Contrary to his pledges to Charles, Rollo did not stop his raids. From their base in Rouen, Rollo and his chieftains launched several raids on the surrounding area, constantly expanding their territory. In time they came to control a large area of what is now western France, their territory reaching as far west as the the river Vire. A few years before his death, Rollo passed on his fiefdom to his son William Longsword in 829.

Rollo must have been an imposing figure - according to Snorre, he was so large that no horse could carry him. Although Snorre no doubt was exaggerating this quite a bit, Rolf's physical size earned him the nickname of Gangerolf or Rolf the Walker. He also seems to have been a very proud person. According to legend, when he was to kiss King Charles' foot as part of the Treaty of of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Rolf flat out refused to do this. When Charles extended his foot to him, Rolf ordered one of his men to kiss it in his place. Rolf's warrior then lifted Charles foot up to his mouth, causing the king to fall over backwards.