Last night I went to a social gathering for Humanists. There was a new member there, an iranian woman, who took a few minutes to introduce herself and suggest that we should reach out to exile iranians and other immigrants, whom are often intellectuals and non-religious. It’s an interesting topic that I won’t spend more time on now, instead I would like to recount a funny anecdote she shared.

She is a teacher in one of the Stockholm suburbs that has the most immigrants. Her pupils are mostly muslims, with some christians thrown into the mix. And no, their parents obviously have absolutely no qualms about imposing labels on them. And the children propagate the labels happily, asking each other “Are you muslim? Are you christian?”

At one point, one of the children asked her, their teacher, “What are you?”. Something like the following exchange ensued:

Child: What are you?

Teacher: I’m sorry?

Child: What are you, are you muslim?

Teacher: No, I’m not a muslim.

Child: Are you a christian?

Teacher: No, I’m not a christian.

Child: But then what are you?!

Another child: I know what she is! She’s Swedish!

Oh, this is gold. It encapsulates one of Sweden’s greatest strenghts and faults in one. Religion has become such a marginal part of Sweden that it’s barely visible at all anymore. This is nice. But, it’s also the case that if you have any opinion at all on religion, you’re automatically too hardcore. Sure, people think deeply religious believers are a bit strange, but the converse is also true: If you take a stance against religion and other nonsense, you are a fundamentalist. Even simply calling yourself an atheist is a bit too strong.

No, the acceptable stance for a true Swede is … nothing. Don’t be a christian, don’t be a muslim, don’t be an atheist - just be Swedish…

sweden, atheism, religion

Images of Jesus and his virgin mother have been known to pop up in the most unlikely places, such as dirty sinks. The conspicuous lack of other deities on toasts and bathroom doors has been a source of some confusion for atheists - after all, if all gods are equally unlikely to exist, all of them should be equally likely to appear randomly!*

Fortunately a Swedish Muslim provides some comfort: Swedish Muslim finds Muhammad in a mango. Praise Allah!

“When I sliced the mango in two, ‘Allah’ was written in one half and ‘Muhammad’ in the other. It’s a miracle, a sign from Allah,” said Sheikh to the Metro newspaper.

Of course there’s always some stupid academic spoiling the fun:

“There are 14 recognized ways to create the word ‘Allah’. When you think about how many mangoes there are out there, it’s not strange that one of them has a pattern which can be interpreted to be the right combination of characters,” said Jan Hjärpe [emeritus professor in Islam] to Metro.

Seriously though. What kind of self-respecting god would write his name and the name of his prophet in a rotting mango? What kind of cheap-ass miracle is that? And what kind of believer will settle for something like that from a god who is supposed to be wise and merciful and all-powerful?

A ROTTING MANGO?!

I guess we’re lucky it wasn’t a picture of Muhammad in there, or the fruit merchant would certainly have sold his last mango.

Friday pic coming up. It does not involve mangoes.

* I’m lying. There’s no confusion. And I think most of my readers get that but am writing this footnote just in case: We’re not confused at all. People see what they want to see. It’s that simple.

islam, allah, muhammad, mangoes, miracles

The man just across from me on the subway is wearing a pair of old jeans with what I only hope is wine stains. He has thin, shoulder-length hair combed back from a receding hairline, and obnoxious, bristly sideburns framing an unshaven chin. His mouth seems to be missing a few teeth. From one hand dangles a Systembolaget bag, emitting faint clinking noises. In the other, he holds a flashy mobile phone that would have looked more at home in the hand of a Stureplan brat.

The first time he uses the phone, I’m not paying attention. I carefully raise a hand to block the ear closest to him, because he’s veritably shouting, and I already have a headache. The second time, I simply can’t help but overhear his end of the conversation.

“HI, TOMMY! … TOMMY? YEAH, IT’S ME. IT’S THE WOLF!”

I block my ear again and catch the eye of the woman in front of me - who has just been whispering into her own phone - and we both roll our eyes and smirk slightly.

“CAN WE MEET UP? YEAH I’M AT… LET’S SEE WHERE THE HELL I AM…” He looks out the window. “I’M AT MÄLARHÖJDEN. I NEED TO TALK TO YOU. CAN YOU COME DOWN TO FITTJA? … I CAN’T TALK ABOUT THIS ON THE PHONE… I CAN’T TALK ABOUT WHAT I DID HERE, THERE ARE TOO MANY EARS AROUND.”

Now I’m very nearly laughing. Other passengers have turned around to see who the shouting whackjob is.

“YEAH, COME ALONE, I WANT TO TALK IN PRIVATE… OK I’LL CALL AGAIN IN BREDÄNG.”

I consider pointing out to him that if he wants to discuss secrets on a subway, he might want to do it in a voice less … carrying. I decide against it - for all I know, he’s a violent person who can’t talk about how he beat someone to death with a wine bottle. At the next stop, I stand up and move back through the train. Amusing as he is, I really don’t want to risk tinnitus.

Zeno may have been on to something when he discussed how loud people are these days. Given that I belong to what he calls the iPod generation, I can’t say for sure because I don’t have anything to compare with. However, I’m not convinced it’s only to do with mp3-players and such. Sweden is a very quiet, private place, where being loud in public is generally frowned upon. Hence the people who are the loudest are usually either the kind who spend most of their time drunk, teenagers, or from a different culture altogether.

shouting

I’m currently sitting at the kitchen table at my parents’ place in the Swedish countryside, right next to a large window facing the sun and the forest. Sunlight through birch leaves is one of the prettiest things in nature. Also right outside the window is a wooden contraption on which three bird feeders hang (picture was taken in the midst of summer). This spring, my parents decided not to stop feeding the birds but continue all through the summer. It’s been a very rewarding experience for all involved.

The three feeders contain different things - peanuts, sunflower seeds and hemp seeds. We used to buy mixed seeds but they tend to contain a lot of oats, which only yellowhammers seem to like. Given that this is horse country, there’s much more oats to be found around the stables and hence yellowhammers aren’t particularly numerous guests of ours. In the winter we also provide fat, in balls or coconut fat slathered onto a nearby tree, as well as apples thrown out for the bigger birds.

The number and species composition of feeder guests has fluctuated over the year. In the winter, the regulars are a lot of great tits (by which I mean sometimes more than 20) and blue tits, as well as a couple of nuthatches, a few greenfinches, marsh tits, blackbirds and chaffinches, one or two coal tits, a common treecreeper and a very brave crested tit (according to the books, crested tits are not supposed to visit bird feeders). Then of course there’s the gang of eurasian jays that raid the place every once in a while. Once or twice a year we’ll get a flyby of the irresistably cute long-tailed tit.

As the spring progressed and we didn’t remove the food, we experienced a veritable invasion of chaffinches, with as many as 25-30 at a time hopping around on the ground around the feeder. Oddly enough, almost all of them seemed to be male. I have yet to discover an explanation to this rather odd phenomenon. They disappeared as spring progressed into summer. The great and blue tits also left, except for a couple of nesting pairs, but they their chicks insects and weren’t particularly interested in seeds. They were replaced in the beginning of the summer by siskins, which we can’t recall having seen here before.

Also, we had another invasion, this time of greenfinches. As the summer months have passed the flock of greenfinches seems to have grown, and now they can’t really be counted accurately anymore. Somewhere in the vicinity of 30 individuals, for certain, although they’re rarely here all at once. They especially enjoy the hemp seeds but will take sunflower seeds if the hemp dispenser is occupied.

An especially interesting and lovely-to-look-at guest we have had the pleasure of feeding this summer is the hawfinch. This is a bird which the books claim is very shy and difficult to get a good view of. Indeed I have only seen it a couple of times at the feeder in the winter, and then it’s only stopped very briefly and then left again. But this summer we have had no less than two pairs regularly turning up at the feeder and staying long enough for us to get a good look at their beautiful golden heads and gigantic, metallic beaks. We’ve also enjoyed the occasional visit from the visually low-key (but possessing a beautiful voice) dunnock.

Then of course there’s the sparrowhawk, which shows up every now and then regardless of season. We’ve seen several amazing acrobatic displays right outside our kitchen window as the sparrowhawk has taken advantage of the great concentration of small birds. We don’t resent it - all birds need to eat! And it is a very beautiful raptor.

Six great tits, one blue tit and a couple of greenfinches at the feeder

Now as autumn is rapidly approaching, the great and blue tits have returned (together with the new generation in their faded colours), the greenfinches continue to dominate, the nuthatches, marsh tits and coal tits continue their steady presence, and a mound of discarded seeds and shells has grown underneath the feeders. (Yes, this will be removed.) It has been a very rewarding summer. Each bird species has its own beauty and interesting set of behaviours: The greenfinches mostly bicker amongst themselves to get to the hemp seeds. The blue tits - even though they’re the smallest - will try to chase away anyone who gets too close to their perch on the peanuts. The nuthatches fly in, violently throw seeds and bits of peanut about as they grab the choice bits, and fly out again. The marsh tits are the last to flee when you approach the feeders, perching in a nearby bush and staring accusingly at you. The chaffinches always remain on the ground, seeming loath to actually approach the feeders. The coal tits move quickly and carefully among the rest, seemingly aware of their small stature.

These are obviously not all of the birds we observe in the garden and surrounding forest. There are usually at least two or three nesting pairs of pied flycatchers around in the spring, the trees are full of warblers, robins hunt insects in the rose garden, wood pigeons coo in the forest… and so on and so forth. But nothing gets you quite as close to wild birds as feeding them and setting up nesting boxes.

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Update, September 13: The great spotted woodpecker is back! Or one of them, at least. I didn’t get a good enough look at it to see if it was the male or female. They have been fairly frequent guests in the winter but have on occasion perused the peanuts during the summer as well.

Also, the greenfinches are increasing in number - I think there may be between 40 and 50 individuals here today. Probably some of them are moving south and have just merged with the “resident” flock temporarily.

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For my Swedish readers, here’s a list of the birds mentioned with their latin and swedish names:

Blackbird (Turdus merula): Koltrast
Blue tit (Cyanistes caeruleus or Parus caeruleus): Blåmes
Chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs): Bofink
Coal tit (Parus ater): Svartmes
Common treecreeper (Certhia familiaris): Trädkrypare
Crested tit (Parus cristatus): Tofsmes
Dunnock (Prunella modularis): Järnsparv
European jay (Garrulus glandarius): Nötskrika
Great spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major) Större hackspett
Great tit (Parus major): Talgoxe
Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris): Grönfink
Hawfinch (Coccothraustes coccothraustes): Stenknäck
Long-tailed tit (Aegithalos caudatus): Stjärtmes
Marsh tit (Parus palustris): Entita
Nuthatch (Sitta europaea): Nötväcka
Pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca): Svartvit flugsnappare
Robin (Erithacus rubecula): Rödhake
Siskin (Carduelis spinus): Grönsiska
Sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus): Sparvhök
Warbler (Sylviidae): Sångare
Wood pigeon (Columba palumbus): Ringduva
Yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella): Gulsparv

birds, birdwatching, bird feeding, ornithology

Because I seem to be suffering from an over-all writer’s block, and to make up for the missing Friday Pics, here is a cavalcade of photos that illustrate what sort of things have been taking up my spare time this spring.

Tiny tiny chickens:

Stockholm and beautiful spring weather:

Mountains of beekeeping supplies needing attention:

Planting of interesting varieties of elderberry and discovering beautiful critters:

The first true democratic assembly of the Swedish Humanist Youth Organisation:

Flowers and bees:

Please don’t give up on me. Next week I’m going to the World Humanist Congress in Washington D.C. That should yield some interesting blog topics and release me from my writer’s block!

bees, beekeeping, chickens, humanism, stockholm

This has got nothing to do with the regular themes of this blog, except that it’s about Sweden. Our selection procedure for Eurovision Song Contest - the “Melodifestivalen” or “Melody festival” - started a couple of weeks ago. I’ve missed both semi-finals that have been shown so far - we have four, and then a sort of extra final called “second chance”, where the people who almost won at the semi-finals get to compete with each other for a couple of additional spots at the actual final. But, thanks to youtube, I’m managing to keep up fairly well with the contest.

Why am I even interested? Most of the music is absolute crap. But then again, I’m a closet elitist bitch who likes to heckle people in my spare time (don’t tell anyone). Since my whole family is very musical we can watch it together and suffer. Nothing makes you feel as united as shared disdain for other people. There’s also another aspect to it: I like the way this is a huge event that the whole country, and later all of Europe, can relate to. For a little while we put away our political differences and just have some fun with really bad pop music. It’s rather like huge sports events, except I actually understand music, while sports will always be fundamentally uninteresting to me.

Of course, not all of the entries in Melodifestivalen or even Eurovision suck. Have a really quick look at this video (Swedish Television is cracking down on YouTube making them remove all the entries), and please note the huge audience even though this isn’t even our final:

I love the sound of these guys, reminds me of Scissor Sisters (of which I am as you can probably figure out a fan).

melodifestivalen, eurovision, rongedal

For those who think that Sweden being one of the most secular countries in the world means that it’s free of religious nutjobs, think again. Daniel Ocampo Daza reports from a lecture at Uppsala University instigated by Credo, an evangelical christian student organisation:

The speaker Anders Gärdeborn brought up little else but the same ridiculous arguments, misconceptions and misinterpretations, exaggerations, faulty logic and outright lies that you’ve heard over and over, just as I suspected knew. Gärdeborn comes from the fundamentalist and literalistic organization Genesis which claims to “work for a christian view of the sciences and for the biblical view to be heard in the schools and society“. The biblical view being that god created earth its creatures and all of the universe in 6 days.

/…/

As my professor pointed out to me as we were talking prior to the presentation: would the university allow for an astrologer or a holocaust-denialist to come and give a lecture at the university’s facilities unquestioned? Most certainly not. But under the banner of not discriminating against the christian students I guess it is entirely possible, which is telling of why we’re still dealing with this particular brand of counterscientific trash at this level.

science, biology, evolution, creationism

I’m sure a lot of you have seen the news earlier this month of female muslim med students in the UK not wanting to have to bare their arms, even though hygiene rules state that doctors have to be bare below the elbow. Now a female muslim was denied a job at McDonald’s in Angered (Sweden) for the same reason, and she’s taking it to the Ombudsman against Ethnic Discrimination.

She says, “Alla ska ha samma möjligheter till ett arbete. Det här är diskriminering och det är inget man ska hålla käft om” - “Everyone should have the same possibilities to get a job. This is discrimination and it’s nothing you should shut up about.”

Frankly, this is ridiculous.

It’s one thing if people don’t want to comply with arbitrary dress codes. They can bring it up with their employer and try to explain why their religious dress is important to them. But this is about hygiene. It is something that affects other people. Freedom of religion is and should be a human right, but only so long as it doesn’t harm other people. Freedom of religion should not be possible to invoke to cut off the foreskins on male babies, or deny your child a life-saving blood transfusion - and the same goes for med students who don’t want to show their arms. Religion simply doesn’t come into it.

Unfortunately there appears to be a previous case where a female muslim dentist was allowed to wear longer sleeves than the dress code prescribes, so this girl might actually win. Ugh.

islam, muslims, hygiene, freedom of religion

Nima Daryamadj is a columnist for one of Sweden’s major tabloids and has written a few very good ones on the subject of religion and spirituality. Here is a post from his blog that I have translated and am reposting with his permission. I don’t really think it requires more by way of introduction…

ETA: Apparently I had a brainfart and forgot to translate a word when I first posted this. Apologies.

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Last year in december I got in touch with Pernilla Ouis, ((lektor)) lecturer at Malmö Högskola. I was told that Save the Children had censored her research paper on sexual violence against girls in the Middle East.

Save the Children (SC) have offices in different parts of the world. The office that handles the Middle East and North African region is called SCS-MENA (Save the Children Sweden - Middle East and North Africa). In 2006, Ouis was a consult for SC and was commissioned by SCS-MENA to lead a research project to do a situation analysis in the countries of Yemen, Lebanon and Palestine. The analyses concerned honour violence, early marriage and sexual abuse of girls.

When the report was almost done, SC required certain parts of it to be removed, supposedly because they were not in accordance with SC:s core values.

On May 7, Moa Roshanfar from the regional office in Lebanon wrote the following:

/…/ The problem for us at Save the Children is that the text about violence creates a polarisation between different groups, between west and east, between western and muslim societies. We want to be a radical voice and challenge men’s violence against women and children, but not in a way that separates cultures from each other and may lead to us and them-thinking. Below follows a few concrete examples in the text that either need to be clarified or changed, that can be understood as offending, generalising and may be viewed as polarising. Often in the text the words “culture”, “traditions”, “communities”, “societies” etc. are used, it’s important to be clear on what is meant. /…/

Then she gives examples of polarising paragraphs:

“Since sexual relationships outside wedlock are associated with strong religious taboos in this Muslim setting, sexual abuse in the MENA region is a special problematic topic for children.”

If the research shows that muslim sexual morals makes it difficult for children to tell others about sexual abuse, why are you not allowed to say this?

“It was suggested to have separate FGD with male teenagers as well. The male opinions, perspectives and experiences are important since we are dealing with gender-based violence in patriarchal communities.”

Here it was problematic to say “gender-based violence in patriarchial communities”. As Ouis herself answers: To exclude that the Middle East is generally patriarchal would be a faulty analysis that I as a scientist would feel ashamed of. Of course it’s a patriarchal society!

Let’s take a break: Maybe Pernilla Ouis isn’t a scientist but a “scientist”? Maybe she’s a rabid closet racist who hates people from the Middle East and Islam? Maybe the report is part of a hidden agenda to defame these?

Ouis is an arabic name. Pernilla has been married to an arab, whose name she chose to keep even after the divorce. Additionally, she converted to Islam in 1986 and has been a muslim for over 20 years. Not exactly a description of a hater of Islam and the Middle East.

Those suspicions dealt with, where were we? More polarising sentences:

“Playing games and bicycling for example are not accepted for girls in many honour societies because of…”

Ouis: That girls in many honour cultures are not allowed to play like boys or ride a bike (for fear of losing their virginity/hymen) is an acknowledged fact. It’s an important piece of information. Why should it be left out? Girls have told us about this. Should their evidence be silenced?

The blame of sexual assault and rape is on the victim, not the offender; in honour cultures…”

Ouis: The guilt is on the victim in honour cultures (in our western society too, if a comparison has to be made!). All the people we’ve interviewed say this and their answers also show how they’ve internalised this thinking. Should I lie about this and keep it in the dark? Motivate this, please. Is lying in accordance with SC:s core values?

After this, it becomes even more absurd:

“The acts that can do so are various, but it seems that in Yemen only wearing a decorated, but still Islamic, dress or laugh in the street is…”

“…children suggested that the Islamic dress…”

Apparently it is problematic to call the clothes of yemenitic girls “islamic”, despite the fact that 1) it IS islamic clothing and 2) the girls themselves used that term!

The children in Yemen called their clothes “Islamic dress” and said that if it had even the smallest decoration it could be viewed as immoral. They were only allowed to wear black, from head to toe. Islamic clothing has different names in different cultures; sometimes it’s called abaya, jilbab or hijab (which means different things, but still), but the term “Islamic dress” is to me a neutral term. How could it be offending? It’s what the children said!

“…and not to be debated openly in public, since it damages the self-image of many Muslims…”

Ouis: Of course the self-image of Muslims is damaged by discussing sexual violence against children. Sexuality is important for the self-image of a society and it’s problematic to discuss openly. This is the case in the west as well. Why do you think certain countries in the Muslim world don’t report any cases of HIV? Well, because it damages their self-image, as the disease is viewed as shameful and connected to sexual immorality.

In her letter Ouis points out that she’s been a Muslim for more than half her life, that she has a unique inside and outside perspective, has travelled a lot, written and read a lot about Islam, is an active participant in the debate about Islam in Sweden and often gets invited to tv, radio and government institutions.

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The news were published yesterday in the newspaper Nima writes for. Today, Sanna Johnson from Save the Children responds in a different newspaper, claiming that Ouis’ report states that patriarchism and honour thinking is a problem exclusively in muslim societies.

Nima, who has read the report, states that this is not the case, which means that Johnson is either lying or incompetent. Given that Save the Children has expressly asked Ouis to lie by omission in her report, it seems the former isn’t so improbable.

Save the Children wants to find a way to criticise the individual instances of sexual abuse and honour violence without judging a whole culture. Essentially, they put political correctness and rampant “tolerance” before the advance of modern, secular thinking - equality. Given that their mission is to “creating real and lasting change for children in need”, it seems they’re really shooting themselves in the foot.

islam, save the children, sexual abuse, pernilla ouis, middle east

I’ve been interested in anthroposophy since I was a kid, probably because my parents took me along to the Rudolf Steiner Seminar in Järna quite a few times. Not that they were anthroposophists - we went to look at the gardens and browse their shop of various curious paraphernalia. While anthroposophy as a religion is, to be frank, batshit crazy, there is something to be said for the aesthetics. At one point in elementary school I wrote an essay on anthroposophy, for which I interviewed a woman working in one of their shops. I remember frantically taking notes, all the while thinking, “Oh my god. This woman actually BELIEVES what she’s saying?”

If you don’t understand why a 13-year-old would feel that way, you need to read up on anthroposophy.

Anyway, like most other people I have grown up thinking of anthroposophy as a sort of harmless hippie religion. More specifically, I never particularly minded waldorf schools, imagining that kids probably didn’t learn much but at least had a good time. It wasn’t that I took part of much waldorf propaganda, I simply never considered anthroposophy very threatening. However, lately I have begun reading a few blogs that tell a completely different story. One of them is zooey, who went to waldorf kindergarten and elementary school, and whose very personal account of these years I am reposting here. Photos by the author, edited by me.

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