Life Before Death

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.

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.

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?”

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.

The president of the Swedish Humanist Association is one Christer Sturmark, a 40-something man whom the media like to point out wears a pony-tail and a gold ring in his ear, and who is often referred to (by the same media) as an old IT guru. Be that as it may, he has brought the SHA to the forefront of public debate, leading to an amazing increase in membership and resources with which to battle religious fundamentalism, pseudoscientific woo and other things humanism opposes, as well as improving our own various ceremonial services and other activities. That the SHA has Sturmark to thank for most of this, I doubt anyone would contradict.

He is not entirely uncontroversial, however, and lately there have been a few elements within the SHA spreading what can only be seen as disinformation intended to hurt his reputation, regarding his personal life. I will not dwell on the exact nature of this discussion because it’s actually rather stupid. What is interesting though is what these people, when they have met with resistance from within the association, have done. A specific question has been raised: Are we allowed to criticise The Leader? Is the SHA in actuality a sect-like organisation?

This is obviously beyond ridiculous, and here’s why:

Christer Sturmark is not Our Leader. Nor is Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Cristopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, or any other prominent atheist or humanist you can think of. There are prominent thinkers within this loosely-held-together movement. There are prominent debaters, there are presidents of organisations, there are board members and there are people who are famous for other reasons who ally themselves with us (Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA fame being the obvious example in Sweden).

Many of us feel grateful to these people, for standing up for our worldview and beliefs, for taking the slings and arrows of the religious counter-attacks, and for developing and refining our worldview and the arguments for it.

But, and this is the important bit, they don’t tell us what to think or do. They don’t tell us what we believe. None of us went to a tent revival where Pastor Dawkins made us see the light and repent. There is no God and Sturmark is most definitely not his Prophet. Most atheists who were ever anything but atheists are self-converts - they thought about their worldview and realised it was wrong. Books and speeches by prominent atheists and humanists may have helped, but in the end, this is a thoroughly individualistic movement, which requires all members to make up their own minds. (In fact, the SHA has an age limit of 12, as we think it’s unethical to ally your children with a worldview organisation before they have had the chance to make up their own mind.)

Sturmark is an individual who happens to be the president of the SHA. I’m an individual who happens to be a member of the SHA. I do not think that just because he’s the president, his beliefs are more humanistic than mine, and that I ought to defer to him in everything related to our worldview. I do recognise authority where it is due, but this is not one of those cases. So yes, it is perfectly okay to criticise people like Sturmark, or for that matter the “Four Horsemen”. The fact that such criticism is often ignored, or sometimes vehemently disagreed with, does not reflect any sect-like tendencies, but rather suggests two things:

The first is that most atheists/humanists either agree with what these public faces of atheism/humanism think, or feel such a debt of gratitude that they feel obliged to defend them.

The second is that because of the very fact that these people aren’t Leaders, in the way that the Pope is the Leader of the Catholic church, there is no obligation on us (the members) to defend or denounce them.

The point here is that while for instance Ted Haggard’s behaviour was extremely important to the members of his church, because he purported to speak for a Higher Authority, such is not the case when it comes to Sturmark or other official leaders of the humanist/atheist movement. It may damage our reputation with other people outside the movement when our elected leaders make mistakes, but among us, we know that all humans are just that - human. Everyone makes mistakes, and if we made a mistake in electing a particular leader, so be it. Because we never claimed that these people are perfect representations of all it means to be a humanist, there is no need to act as though it’s the end of the world when they do something we don’t agree with - at least so long as they don’t claim to do it in the name of the movement.

My conclusion is that those within the movement who accuse us of cult-like tendencies are actually displaying the very same tendencies themselves, as they seem to suffer under the delusion that a person has to be without fault to be eligible to lead the movement!

humanism, atheism, sturmark, cults

There is a lovely interview with a member of the Swedish Humanist Association in SvD, titled “Att lämna tron var en befrielse” - “To leave faith was liberating”. Markus Anhage was formerly a very devout member of the Pentecostal church, a faith inherited from his parents.

The belief in God was as self-evident as the fil on the breakfast table. His family prayed and went to church regularly. But over Markus’ twelfth summer, something happened to his faith. He started burning, as they said in the pentecostal assembly. Every morning he got up an hour earlier to pray before he went to school. “God your will be done in heaven, your will be done in Sweden, your will be done at school. Let your kingdom come to me. Thank you Jesus for dying for me”, and so on.

Religion was everything to Markus, and consequently he was an outsider at school. The other kids bullied him and scribbled “hate god!” on his locker. But he wasn’t sad, after all, the bible said that christians should expect to be mocked for their faith. He saw the bullying as a receipt: He had the right religion.

Markus’ teenage years were mostly happy, but towards the end of high school he started experiencing doubts. How could there be so much evil in the world if God was good? He became depressed, and saw it as an attack from the devil. He refers to this time in his life as the “ambivalent” period. Eventually,

Markus heard that he could read about other religions, he would still find that christianity was the best one. For the first time in his life he read critiques of the bible, he devoured religious encyclopaediae from cover to cover, he studied philsophy and surfed muslim webpages. But instead of strengthening his faith, he lost it.

“I know that there are people, but I don’t know if there are gods. Therefore I focus on the humans. Science is limited and our intellects are limited. I have many questions and empty holes, but I don’t stick God, spirits or demons in them anymore.”

Two years ago his son was born with a heart defect, and needed a pacemaker when he was two years old. Markus couldn’t reconcile this with people’s claims of small miracles such as God helping them find an apple. He finally took the step and left his church. He describes the experience as physically liberating: It was suddenly easier to walk. No longer did he have to fear hell, no longer was he plagued by guilt over his human weaknesses. Finally, he was allowed to think for himself. But his wife is still in the church and he felt lonely. He joined the Swedish Humanist Association, looking for others like him, someone to talk to.

He points out that just like there are both wonderful and intolerant people in churches, there are both wonderful and intolerant people in non-religious groups. He wishes groups would intermingle more, instead of christians, muslims, atheists and others staying apart, refusing to communicate and try to understand each other.

To help people like himself get in touch with others in the same situation, he has started a network called Exkristen, “Ex-christian”.

Despite the very gentle tone of the article and the fact that Markus comes across as a very kind and tolerant individual who openly discusses the pain of losing his faith and how much better he feels afterwards, many of the comments to the article read as personal criticisms of his character and life choices. Especially against the choice of joining the SHA, which someone describes as a “religion devoid of feelings”. I have been subject to the same treatment when, about a year ago, I was in a similar article in the same newspaper. I was derided and accused of being a haughty and immature girl, thinking I know everything, and that “I’d probably come round as I got older”. I don’t understand why some people have trouble accepting that people might feel better without faith in an invisible friend, and why having strong opinions and a penchant for natural science translates into thinking you know everything. I don’t know any atheists personally who’d anonymously throw personal criticism in the face of religious people, but apparently the golden rule doesn’t apply if you’re religious and feel your faith’s being threatened.

It’s really depressing, especially given how few people are actually religious in Sweden. Thankfully, most of the commenters on Markus’ article seem to be nice, generous people who supports his decision and applauds him for being brave and open about it.

atheism, christianity, sweden, apostasy, ex-christian, humanism

Before I say anything else, I would like to point out that it is not at all weird for a Swedish person to be blogging on christmas day. The only thing special about today is that it’s a bank holiday - the actual christmas celebration took place yesterday. Which brings me to the actual topic of this post, a topic which seems to be very popular among secularist bloggers this time of year: Us godless atheists and our supposed difficulties with the holiday season.

The ridiculous figment “War on Christmas” aside, I’ve seen quite a few very snide remarks about atheists and humanists and how we obviously don’t celebrate christmas, and how we probably would like to forbid it altogether as the spoilsports we are. The fact that most of us celebrate christmas like any other person, and are not ashamed to admit this, is completely irrelevant to the people making these arguments, as they live in their own little imaginary world where atheists are all, if not the spawn of satan, then at least cousins of the grinch.

So how do I celebrate christmas? Eating with my family, like most other Swedes. Religion plays a very marginal role in Swedish christmas celebrations, mostly present in the form of music. In my family the only overtly religious tradition we follow is the lighting of the advent candles, the four candles of increasing height that can be seen at the back of the table in the picture. They’re lit sequentially on the sundays of advent, the fourth on christmas eve. But, for the most part, a regular Swedish christmas is a modernised pagan solstice feast centered on the consumption of vast amounts of a variety of seasonal food.

The crown of the “julbord” (literally “christmas table”, a seasonal variant of the smörgåsbord) is the christmas ham, a large ham which has been soaking in a solution of salt and sugar for ten days before you stick it in the oven. Then there should be meatballs, small sausages, various kinds of pickled herring, and so on ad infinitum. An interesting specialty is “dopp i grytan” (lit. “dipping in the pot”), where you take a piece of bread and soak it in a fat, salty broth and eat it with ham. Presumably back in poorer days, this was a way of making stale bread more palatable. Not all families prepare all dishes, of course, it’s all a matter of personal preference.

Then there’s obviously a lot of traditional sweets, cookies and other yummy things that should be present to make a christmas feast complete. This year I decided to make christmas sweets as a present to my family - depicted on the right is knäck, a kind of hard toffee with chopped almonds, resembling daim.

A slightly quirky component of a typical family christmas celebration is a reel of Disney cartoons shown every christmas eve at three in the afternoon. As far as I’m aware, most families with children will sit down in front of the television at this point and watch an hour of mostly the same cartoons as they saw last year, with a few changes (there’s a few perennials and then they show clips from the latest Disney movies, presumably to get us to buy them). My family still watches at least part of it, even though the youngest of my siblings is nearly 20 years old.

After the cartoons it’s time for the presents (although my family has developed the unconventional and blatantly, unabashedly materialistic habit of going christmas shopping together before the cartoons), which may be brought by Santa, or may be lying under the tree, which we decorate with most of the usual stuff.

In short, christmas in Secular Sweden is an advanced family dinner preceded by presents and disney cartoons. We celebrate not the birth of christ (which, if it happened at all, at least didn’t happen on December 25) but each other, by giving each other gifts and spending time together. It’s a time to indulge in what’s good in life, and you really don’t have to be christian to do that.

Merry Christmas everyone, and if that offends you, feel free to substitute “Christmas” with the holiday of your choice!

atheism, christmas, sweden

Svenska Hjältar (”Swedish Heroes”) is a yearly award to ten people whom in some way have proven to be heroes. This year, one of the winners is Sara Mohammad, who started and is the president of an organisation called Glöm Aldrig Pela och Fadime (”Never Forget Pela and Fadime”). Pela and Fadime were both immigrants from the middle east, and both were killed by their fathers for trying to live a normal life according to Swedish standards, rather than conforming to a lifestyle that according to the fathers would have preserved the family “honour”.

I write “honour” rather than honour because these actions are so revoltingly evil that I can barely grasp that it’s reality. That anyone could hurt and even kill their own child over something as stupid as choice of clothes or spouse is unfathomable. And it has nothing to do with honour.

Sara Mohammad, whose real name is something else, grew up in Iraq under similar conditions - beaten and threatened when refusing to marry an older man her brother had picked for her, she finally agreed, but managed to escape on the day of her wedding and eventually fled to Sweden. Here, she has devoted all her energy to helping women and men escape the same so called “honour culture” that imprisoned her and so many others. She lives in constant danger but cannot imagine doing anything differently.

To Aftonbladet she says:

The police have told me I should stay home and not attend public events, because of the threats. That makes me angry. If I stay at home and stay quiet, that’s game over. The government doesn’t really know what’s happening, they’re not doing enough. What I do has to be done.

Sara Mohammad is also a member of the Swedish Humanist Association, and in the jury as well as participating in the award ceremony on Sunday is high-profile SHA member Björn Ulvaeus.

sara mohammad, honor killing, sweden