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

NEFA foundation has published an Al Qaeda speech in which the Vilks caricature is mentioned. The pertinent section is this:

Others who had previously claimed to be neutral also have attacked the Muslims. An excellent example of this is the degenerate crusader country of Sweden, where they published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed portrayed as a dog… We are witnessing every single villain attacking us—from the worshippers of the cross all the way to the worshippers of the cows—we are witnessing our blood and honor being taken away. We are being stabbed in the back every time we try to stand up tall and fight to regain the price of our ancestors. We say now, to all of you—slaves of the cross and material possessions—that we are a nation blessed by Islam. You will learn how to kneel down in humiliation. You will learn how to officially apologize for your crime against our Prophet Mohammed. We know how best to force you to back down and apologize for your actions. We reserve the right to punish those who committed the crime. If you do not apologize, then your industrial giants will be attacked. Companies such as Ericsson, Scandia, Volvo, Ikea, Electrolux, and others will be legitimate targets. You have been warned… [Additionally], on this day forward, we call for the killing of the cartoon artist Lars who committed these despicable acts against our Prophet Mohammed. We announce a reward of $100,000 for anyone who kills that infidel criminal. The reward shall be $150,000 for anyone who beheads him as well. We also will give $50,000 to anyone who kills the chief editor of that newspaper. O’ Muslims, you shall seek this reward, ask for forgiveness, and kill these two infidels…

Read the full transcript here (pdf).

They claim to be under attack because someone drew a cartoon. And the retaliation is murder, terrorism. I really don’t know what to say. What’s wrong with these people?

mohammad caricature, al qaeda, terrorism, islam, lars vilks, sweden

So what was that about honey again?

Yesterday I spent some five hours at a small event at the local mall talking about bees and selling honey. The municipal government wants to encourage environmental thinking in its citizens and apparently, bees do that. So there I was, with a couple of associates, a small demonstration hive with live bees, various merchandise and a few different kinds of honey.

Now, when you’re participating in events like this, present in some sort of expert capacity and informing people about something you have plenty of experience with, there’s a rule that says that a certain portion of your audience know more about your own bees and honey than you do. And they love to tell you about it. This wouldn’t be too difficult to deal with if it wasn’t for the fact that some of them consistently, every year, accuse us beekeepers of putting table sugar in our honey.

One particularly grumpy man pointed his hand at our honey jars and said, “That one contains 10 % sugar cubes, that one contains 50 % sugar cubes, that one contains 90 % sugar cubes.” (He seemed to judge them by runniness, where the newly extracted, uncrystallized honey was the least tampered with; the solid, fragrant linden honey was the biggest villain; and the pale gold, creamy summer honey was somewhere in the middle.) When we unanimously and rather tersely stated that no, we don’t put any fracking sugar in our fracking honey because that would be illegal, he ignored us and blurted, “Oh yes, I know, I bought this jar of honey and two days later there were sugar lumps in it!”

Uh-huh, that’s conclusive evidence, that is.

This is what I told those who actually listened to us when they asked if the honey was “real”: Honey contains two kinds of sugar, glucose and fructose. How much of each depends on which flowers the bees have gathered nectar from. Fructose will always remain fluid, whereas glucose, once the honey is extracted from the hive, eventually crystallizes. How quickly this happens and how hard the honey gets depends on the relative proportions of the two sugars, as well as temperature and other factors. For example, rapeseed honey has a notoriously high glucose content and sometimes crystallizes in the hive before extraction - pure, it can get so hard you have to carve it out of the jar with a knife.

If you leave the honey unattended between extraction and crystallization, the glucose will form large, lumpy crystals at the bottom of a solution of fructose. The honey is essentially inedible at this point, at least it is considered such in Sweden. Which is why Swedish beekeepers never sell uncrystallized honey, but always take care to make sure the honey crystallizes evenly, by stirring or other methods. We desire fully crystallized honey that is completely free from crystals so large that they can actually be felt on the tongue - if the honey feels like sand or gravel on the tongue it’s sub-par.

Now, the area I live in has a very high proportion of immigrants. I haven’t seen any figures for a long time but it’s well over 50%. Most of them are from the middle east, a fair few from south america and a minority from africa and far east. In many of these parts of the world, there are several species of plants that yield honey with such a high fructose content that it never crystallizes (acacia and orange being the most common ones). Hence many of these people are used to honey always being clear and runny, and I suspect get rather suspicious when they see our opaque and creamy-to-solid honey. We have also heard anecdotes from various countries about how common it is for beekeepers to cheat and either mix sugar in their extracted honey, or give the bees sugar and then extract that from the hive.

In Sweden, doing something like that would be completely unthinkable. A beekeeper caught cheating in such a way would be immediately ostracised, if not lynched. We may not be that many, but we are extremely proud of our all-natural product and the fact that it isn’t necessary to add or do anything to it to improve the taste or increase shelf-life. (At the blogmeet earlier this week I was asked if we pasteurise our honey. I was really confused - firstly I don’t understand why it would be needed, and secondly heating the honey ruins it!)

27 sept 2008: In this post I explain what to do with unevenly crystallised honey.

honey, honeybees, beekeeping

… in Swedish Parliament should really be the title of this lovely piece of news (here’s the same in Swedish). In short, ambassadors from 20 muslim countries have been invited to a dialogue about Mohammad caricatures. The ambassadors will bring a list of “demands” to prime minister Fredrik Reinfeldt.

I tried to pick out a quote from the Egyptian ambassador from the article, but he says pretty much the same thing over and over again: It’s not us, it’s you. Sweden should make it unlawful to wound the feelings of sensitive muslims by drawing their prophet. Sweden should teach its youths that freedom of speech is only okay so long as you don’t piss anyone off (especially muslims). Sweden should deal with islamophobia with a permanent parliamentary committee. Obviously there’s not a word about muslim leaders standing up and calming their followers down.

Now, the meeting hasn’t happened yet, and when it does no press will be there, so I can’t say for sure that the prime minister and his associates will crawl around and try to placate these righteous men. For all I know, Reinfeldt is planning on finally thumping his fist into a handy table and saying, “You know what? This is Sweden. We have human rights. One of them is freedom of speech. We won’t give that up, ever. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to come here, you don’t have to read our newspapers or watch Swedish TV.” Yeah. He might do that.

But just in case, if you have a spine to spare, please send it to Sweden. I think we’re going to need them over the next while.

sweden, muslims, reinfeldt, freedom of speech

The Secular Muslim group SEMUS that I wrote about in a previous post have now backed off and decided not to publish Vilks’ Mohammad caricatures after all. The reason was that he also drew a caricature of a jew, after having been provoked by a journalist who claimed he would never dare to insult jews like he insults muslims. SEMUS are apparently afraid of legal consequences of publishing anti-semitic material. That reasoning would be fine, if anyone had at any point suggested they do such a thing. The jew caricature had nothing to do with the set of Mohammad drawings and were not to be part of any exhibition.

Meanwhile an Iranian top diplomat suggested that there’s a grand conspiracy behind publishing these drawings, a conspiracy designed to ruin the relations between Sweden and Iran. The Iranian president then decided it’s obviously the Zionists that are behind the whole thing.

Good lord, this is depressing.

The one interesting thing that’s come out of this mess for me personally is that I’ve been thinking about this Swedish word: “kränka” (v.), “kränkt” (adj.) and “kränkning” (n.). I’ve come to realise there’s no English equivalent that really corresponds. Despite the fact that English has a much larger vocabulary than Swedish, there are a few important concepts missing.

The verb “kränka” can mean violate, infringe or transgress. The way it’s most commonly used in Sweden, however, it means something more on the lines of insult, offend, hurt or outrage. And the way it’s bandied about in all worldview-related debate these days, you’d think that people have nothing to do other than feeling offended. Muslims are “kränkta” by Mohammad caricatures. Christians are “kränkta” by photos of Jesus in a homosexual context.

Moreover, the moment Humanists such as myself pipe up with claims like “children shouldn’t be forced to go to church on the final day of school” (as is often the case in Sweden, as many schools don’t have proper auditoriums to gather in) or “hotels, unless they have a christian profile, shouldn’t promote christianity before other religions by allowing gideon bibles”, christians will counter with “oh dear, the poor Humanists feel “kränkta” by a harmless end-of-school ceremony and a bible in a drawer, what next, will they want to change the Swedish flag because it displays a crucifix?”

Well, no. And as far as I’m aware, no Humanist ever used the word “kränkt” about themselves in this context. We tend to be a lot sturdier than that. In fact, the only people who seem to use the word are those who think that religion and religious practices should be awarded some special kind of respect in society.

I, of course, do not respect religion. I respect people’s right to think and believe whatever they want. But there’s no obligation for anyone to respect other people’s actual opinions. If someone feels “kränkt” by a drawing or something equally inane, well, that’s their right - and their problem.

mohammad caricature, insults, religion, respect

The circus around Vilks’ drawings continues. In a column in today’s DN points out that the caricatures aren’t really of Muhammad at all. In fact, they were intended to point out that the art community of Sweden’s really a hen house. Full of chickens.

Right next to the column, the picture of Mohammad as a roundabout dog is published.

Meanwhile, Minaret - the muslim culture journal - really has backed off and decided not to participate in anything to do with the drawings. Apparently, they are an attack on islam and all muslims. Muhammed Omar, editor-in-chief, even has the gall to compare it to anti-semitism. Nima Daryamadj rightly points out that there’s a bit of a difference between heckling a large group of people who were systematically executed in living memory and heckling this one guy who has been dead for the past 1400 years, and whom most of humanity doesn’t attach any particular significance to anyway.

islam, antisemitism, mohammad caricatures

Lately there’s been a bit of a fuss over a Swedish artist who had the gall to draw another Mohammad caricature. The drawing I’ve seen, portraying the prophet as a roundabout dog, is really rather ugly and I wouldn’t blame galleries for not displaying it for that reason, but obviously the issue is more complicated than that. The drawings have been refused by two art galleries and only the second claimed it was because of the art itself rather than security issues.

Now, one may have many things to say about that, but for most of us with a secular perspective, the main problem is that regardless of how ugly your drawing is, you should have the possibility to hang it on a wall in a gallery without suffering threats to your life (or the gallery). The artist, Lars Vilks, has suffered some threats after posting some of his controversial art online, and while it’s understandable that galleries would not want to take the risk that people get hurt … it shouldn’t have to be this way.

Anyway. Journalists aplenty have commented the whole deal and they all say “Oh yes, someone has to show these drawings, we have to protect freedom of speech!”, but the newspapers are all conspicuously free of Mohammad caricatures. Finally, the recently established group Sekulära Muslimer i Sverige (”Secular Muslims in Sweden”) together with the muslim magazine Minaret decided to arrange for the pictures to be shown, as well as inviting the artist to a “conversation”. Vilks agreed, and I thought, hurrah, this is truly wonderful news!

Except today on the radio, a journalist claimed that Minaret has backed off and decided not to participate after all. I have so far been unable to find any information to substantiate this claim but if it’s true, well … I really don’t have any comments.

The whole thing is just a testament to the sad state of freedom of speech vs freedom of religion in Sweden, and probably the rest of Europe.

islam, freedom of speech, mohammad caricatures