January 11, 2006

Swedish provincialism rears its head

For those of you reading this outside of Sweden you may not have entertained many thoughts as to the intellectual health of the body politic, the religious life or the cultural establishments of Sweden: its government, its institutions, its religious organizations, its media and its – more than often – state sponsored, systematic culture for the masses.



Sweden is a small country to the north of Europe. It has enjoyed about a century of economic prosperity due to early industrialism, an extremely stringent and close-knit class society and a large portion of what many see as cowardly isolationism, often called neutrality. This heritage is bestowed upon unprepared immigrants, who find that Swedish officialdom seeks to mold them as much as possible in a new and unfamiliar pattern of language, politics and class-based values, often extremely foreign to their own. Immigrants to Sweden are oftentimes more looked upon as necessary to mollify the national conscience, than as a social asset . A large proportion of those cleaning our boardrooms, toilets, offices, those who care for our elderly, those who drive our taxis and those who serve us our Friday evening pizza are immigrants. In this way Sweden is no different from any other modern Western country. What makes Sweden different is our constipated attitude to the wealth of culture and knowledge that our immigrants have to give us. Being a Kurd or an Iranian is a fine thing. We feel sorry for you. You don’t dress like us and surely don’t speak like us and we so very much want you to come around and start doing so. At least in other countries, the repression is patent. Foreigners get discriminated against and they know where it’s coming from. In Sweden the discrimination is syrupy sweet. Come, be like us. Integrate. We will support you, give you child support, send you to classes to learn about Swedish Christmas and the Midsummer holiday, but we really aren’t interested in what you have to give us. Not really. Not unless we can feel sorry for you for your backwardness and feel that we are somehow so much luckier than you are.

One consequence of this cultural European “localism” is a large number of both official and unofficial do-gooders in Swedish society. Since we all know what fair treatment and lack of bias entail, it is frowned upon to voice opinions other than those which are politically correct. If a well-known preacher were to preach a sermon on the dubious parentage of Jesus, on the fact that Mary was hardly thirteen and what we nowadays consider to be a child when she conceived her son and that she married Joseph when she was fourteen, we would hardly bat an eyelid. If the preacher went on to remind us that King David had a large number of wives and concubines, that he had the husband of one of his wives killed in order to marry her, we know that it's par for the course. That’s the way it was in those days, isn't it. And anyway David repented and found grace in the sight of the Lord. A few of us even learned that in Sunday school. No newspaper, no columnist, no TV reporter would ever consider this being something to write about. So what. It doesn't stir any emotions anymore.

But about a week ago, a Pentacostal preacher in Sweden, one of dubious renown, Runar Sögaard, preached a sermon in which he called Mohammed a “confused pedophile” because he had married one of his wives, A’isha, when she was nine years old.



The media response was enormous. Newspaper after newspaper, radio and TV, all of Swedish media pounced upon Runar (people whom we presume to “know” are called by their first names in the media in Sweden). Sögaard promptly got bashed with a fatwa,(Arabic: فتوى) a legal pronouncement in Islam, issued by a religious law specialist on a specific issue. In other words, Sögaards goose is cooked, if you get what I’m driving at. He’s now got a number of henchmen looking for him and the Swedish police have to give him special protection, whatever good that’s going to do.



The Swedish Muslim community is pissed off, so to say, and rightly so. It’s like a mufti calling Jesus a bastard. Not that that would rile up the religiously defunct Swedish intelligentsia anyway.

What excites the media in Sweden is that Sögaard used a no-no word to describe a person held in reverence by millions of people all over the world, a historical figure that represents the cultural identity of large numbers of immigrants that we in Sweden are supposed to accept as our brethren and whom of course we don’t. This is a gut reaction on the part of Swedish media and establishment. A comment like this mars the image we have of ourselves as well-meaning, intelligent, rational and enlightened world citizens.

Runar – unknowingly - really put his finger on a sore point. He may be a pathetic figure, but a provincial Swedish establishment has every reason to take a long, hard look at itself.

3 comments:

Gabriel said...

Come on, it's time for a new post now!

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