In the world of terrorism and killing, it’s stuff like this that at least buttresses (though doesn’t restore) my crumbling faith in humanity. I reported yesterday that Muslims in Norway vowed to form a ring around an Oslo synagogue on Sabbath (today) as a symbol of unanimity and protectiveness. According to Reuters, that actually took place. I was worried that it wouldn’t come off, or that only a few Muslims would show up, but the showing was, well, awesome:
More than 1000 Muslims formed a human shield around Oslo’s synagogue on Saturday, offering symbolic protection for the city’s Jewish community and condemning an attack on a synagogue in neighboring Denmark last weekend.
Chanting “No to anti-Semitism, no to Islamophobia,” Norway’s Muslims formed what they called a ring of peace a week after Omar Abdel Hamid El-Hussein, a Danish-born son of Palestinian immigrants, killed two people at a synagogue and an event promoting free speech in Copenhagen last weekend.
And here’s a photo that brings joy to my heart:
The photo was attached to a justifiably cynical tw**t from Jenan Moussa, a correspondent for Al Aan TV in the United Arab Emirates:
Can we prove Moussa wrong? Well, we can’t make the photo and story go viral by ourselves, but we could give it a tweak. Maybe you could put them on your Facebook page?
And a bit more about the “demonstration”—a demonstration in the best sense: of solidarity and amity:
“Humanity is one and we are here to demonstrate that,” Zeeshan Abdullah, one of the protest’s organizers told a crowd of Muslim immigrants and ethnic Norwegians who filled the small street around Oslo’s only functioning synagogue.
“There are many more peace mongers than warmongers,” Abdullah said as organizers and Jewish community leaders stood side by side. “There’s still hope for humanity, for peace and love, across religious differences and backgrounds.”
Norway’s Jewish community is one of Europe’s smallest, numbering around 1000, and the Muslim population, which has been growing steadily through immigration, is 150,000 to 200,000. Norway has a population of about 5.2 million.
h/t: Matthew Cobb
JAC, or may I see JerryCo ?, regarding your crumbling faith in humanity:
Do not despair.
Take heart from the opening lines of Bertand Russell’s essay “An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish”:
“Man is a rational animal-so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents. On the contrary, I have seen the world plunging continually further into madness. I have seen great nations, formerly leaders of civilization, led astray by preachers of bombastic nonsense. I have seen cruelty, persecution, and superstition increasing by leaps and bounds, until we have almost reached the point where praise of rationality is held to mark a man as an old fogey regrettably surviving from a bygone age. All this is depressing, but gloom is a useless emotion. In order to escape from it, I have been driven to study the past with more attention than I had formerly given to it, and have found, as Erasmus found, that folly is perennial and yet the human race has survived. The follies of our own times are easier to bear when they are seen against the background of past follies. In what follows I shall mix the sillinesses of our day with those of former centuries. Perhaps the result may help in seeing our own times in perspective, and as not much worse than other ages that our ancestors lived through without ultimate disaster.”
http://www.personal.kent.edu/~rmuhamma/Philosophy/RBwritings/outIntellectRubbish.htm
Nota bene:
“gloom is a useless emotion”
So is regret.
All the Muslims I know in my present wide circle of friends and acquaintances are of that kind, as were all the many, many Muslims I met and interacted with in my extended travels in Afghanistan, Pakistan and East Africa.
Shared on my Facebook page and on that of my husband (who has a following of 5,000 “friends” and over 1,000 “followers”).
My Facebook page is linked to my Twitter account, so all my posts are automatically “twittered”, although I don’t have many “followers” there.
Thumbs up! 🙂
What a joy to hear about a thousand Muslims symbolicly surronding and holding hands with Jews while protecting a Jewish Temple. Awesome and Heartwarming and inspirstional in this 72 yr old lifelong atheist since 7 when I rejected the truth claims of the Bible in my mother’s Methodist Sunday day school class in Lacey, Iowa, 1948. For those who say we can not feel or experience awe!! This is one to remember!!
<3 from Norway 🙂
Hopefully “for peace and love, across religious differences and backgrounds” also includes non believers, the dreaded atheist..
It is still a worthy thing ,especially give the supposed endemic anti-Jewish sentiment that Muslims are supposedly exposed regularly, and there probably is a bit of that going back the other way.
I don’t recall any of it “going back the other way.” In fact, on Passover, the ritual of spilling wine ten times, once for each of the ten plagues levied on the Egyptians, was specifically used to teach us to have empathy, even for those who (as we were taught) enslaved us and made our lives so hard and miserable. Wine represents joy, pleasure, and in spilling a bit of it for each plague, as the list of plagues was recited, we were denying ourselves pleasure on behalf of the Egyptians, in memory of their suffering. It was all quite explicit.
If you are in a position to know about these things I am more than happy to take it back.
I said that “back the other way” based on only a podcast by a reasonably prominent, opinionated ‘atheist’ libertarian.
Also a slight, theoretical, sense of balance.
I didn’t really think there was any comparison.
Very, very strong Jewish background, from birth, here. Over half a century of experiences, including Passover seders, around the USA and once in Israel. And, those experiences spanned orthodox, conservative (which means “middle of the road” in terms of Jewish observance), and reform, though my own leaning was not reform but between conservative and orthodox. I still go to seder at an orthodox synagogue, because, while I no longer believe there is a god, I appreciate the culture and history and the fact that Abraham (whoever he really was) got so close to the truth, so long ago, that he was really just a mere 1 god away from atheist! To me, that says something! And maybe that’s why there are and might always have been so many quietly atheist/agnostic Jews.
I’m not sure what you mean about Abraham, but it does seem to be true about the percentage of agnostic/atheist Jews. Hitch mentions it.
(Psst, stop hogging all the Nobel prizes)
LOL! Yes, about those Nobel Prizes — and Hitch, himself! His mother was Jewish and hid it from him, so that he might not be subject to even the most subtle forms of anti-semitism in England. He didn’t find out until well into adulthood — his 40s, I think. (I pegged him before knowing this, too, and pride myself on having pretty good “jewdar.”)
Oh, I nearly forgot: About Abraham, I understand the lack of evidence suggests to some that he never existed, but somewhere along the way, someone came up with the idea that all those gods didn’t make any logical sense — and was that close to proclaiming none of them at all made sense — but hit a mental wall, backed away a single step, and claimed there was only one god. So close!!! And, yet, so far…
I see. Yep, so far.
All were welcome to participate, and they did! Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and atheists, hand in hand.
Most Norwegian muslims are mainstream and most ethnic Norwegians aren’t religious (though not sure they would call themselves atheists).
Excellent!
And to think, this could be the default position if all divisive ideologies were dismantled.
… what a wonderful world.
Russell was a master of pertinent one-liners; and a master of pithy understatement.
Should have been a reply to the first comment.
This may be nothing more than propaganda.
The few photos of the event show no more than a handful of people linking arms to surround the synagogue. It appears that there may have been only enough people to make a single ring of people holding hands, perhaps a few dozen.
The Yahoo News account clarifies where the figure “1,000” comes from:
“A group of young Muslims, many of them teenage girls wearing headscarves, formed a symbolic ring outside the building to roaring applause from a crowd of more than 1,000 people.”
Why didn’t these 1,000 spectators participate in forming the ring? I assume that they were non-Muslim Norwegians, curious about what would happen.
Thus a few dozen Muslims are transformed, by the power of an essentially dishonest bunch of media companies, into a crowd of one thousand.
Why, that’s even more impression than Jesus’ loaves and fishes thing!
If it were 1000 people, did someone really count them? Or, is the 1000 number based upon how many people on Facebook indicated they would attend?
I mean, I hope it was that many people, but the pictures I’ve seen make it look like far less than 1000 – I’m talking 20 or 30 people.
It was at least 1.300, according to Norwegian police. I’m Norwegian and have been watching the event live on the news from start to end.
It was a HUGE success and the news about the event HAS gone viral, it’s in the news all over the globe 🙂
Thanks for that report, and I’ve very glad to hear the news. If there are photos in the Norwegian media, please send them to me.
🙂
There are thousands 😉
I suggest you google ‘Norway’ and ‘muslims’ in global news, last 24 hrs.
If you only want to see pics from Norwegian news you should rather use the search words ‘Oslo’ + ‘muslimer’ + “Fredens Ring”.
You can also check the event page, quite a few of the links are posted there
https://www.facebook.com/events/931252050249117/934748746566114/?notif_t=like
It was really beautiful. Entire Norway is deeply touched, we’ve all had tears in our eyes and throbbing hearts tonight 🙂
Thanks for letting me comment!
I just accidently popped in here after a general google search, I’m glad I did.
Hope I have been able to clearify a few misunderstandings and questions.
I am utterly proud of those kids, they’ve brought more hope and trust in to this world in one night than most politicians do during their entire lifetime. Now it’s up to the rest of us to catch the baton and carry it on.
Peace and byebye 🙂
Thanks for coming, and despite my cynicism I hope this does go viral. If nothing else it’s sends a great message to extremists that significant numbers of Muslims don’t support antisemitism.
Line, please don’t go — or, rather, if you must go, please come back often. Your input was most informative, and your company most pleasant. Thank you for your time and efforts, to show us what is happening in Oslo through your eyes, when we cannot be there to see. You have helped make this evening extra bright.
I was about to say the same thing. I hope Line sticks around.
That’s great!
According to Norwegian police, at least 1.300 people attended. Yes, there were young muslim girls as well as ethnic Norwegians there. Why shouldn’t it? The event was arranged by a group of young (youngest is a 17 year old girl) Muslims who welcomed all – Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists – to join.
The ring was supposed to surround the Synagogue, but the police could not allow that due to security reasons. Thus, most of the participants may have seemed like “spectators” for those with suspicious minds.
As a Norwegian, I have been following the FB event page and watching the event live on the news all night. You can believe me when I say it was a success beyond what anyone could even hope for.
Google global news the last 24 hrs with search words ‘norway’ and ‘muslim’ the last.
You may also check out the event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/931252050249117/934748746566114/?notif_t=like
This is very good news. Even if others, later, twist it for propaganda purposes, at least, it happened with good intentions.
I am curious, though: Were there no young men there, only young women (and the variety of others)?
There will always be some who will not allow themselves to believe in and enjoy good news. Poor people.
About 50/50 young women and young men I’d guess, like it normally is with that kind of events in my country. If it wasn’t 50/50, there were probably more young men than women. We have more single young muslim men than women in Norway, due to many asylum seekers.
This is exactly what I wanted to find out! Thank you! Please do come back from time to time. This is a great place for reasoned, polite discussion. (lots of really cool people here)
The photographers probably concentrated on the most obviously Muslim group which would be headscarf wearing women and not on the Muslim men or on the non-headscarf wearing Muslim women or the non-Muslims who also came. But it is good to see Norway lead the way.
Regardless of “Line’s” detailed description, it is generally a damned difficult thing to count a crowd, particularly if you’re in the middle of it. Unless you’re going to sit down with multiple near-simultaneous photos from high vantage points covering the whole of the area … i.e. you’re carrying out pre-planned surveillence.
Corollary : if you are planning an event like this, then if you want a vaguely accurate count, you’re going to need to allocate resources and task reliable individuals with trying to get that data. Yes, I have been tasked with that job on occasions. And then had the fraternal daggers in the back from people accusing me of siding with any one of 3 factions competing for control of the group. By bacteria! I do loathe, hate and detest politics, and the money-and-power hungry who adhere to it like flies to a steaming turd.
“By bacteria! I do loathe, hate and detest politics, and the money-and-power hungry who adhere to it like flies to a steaming turd.”
Well, inasmuch as “politics” comes from “hoi polloi,” “the herd,” politics is herd management.
Sub
sub
This is the kind of thing that must be done throughout the Muslim world. It has to be the future if they are to have one. And it will kill terrorist faster than any war.
Maybe there is hope for us stupid apes yet.
Bless their hearts. That took a lot of courage too.
http://www.vgtv.no/#!/video/108574/rabbiner-denne-ringen-bryter-ringen-av-frykt-og-hat
I don’t speak Danish (so not clear what is going on) , but why is a Jewish Rabbi shouting “Allahu Akbar”?
Because Allahu Akhbar means “God is great” in Arabic. Muslims, Jews and Christians believe in the same god.
He is basically saluting the muslims who arranged and attended the “Ring of Peace”, thanking them for breaking the ring of fear and hate. Also thanking them from the father of the jewish guard who was killed in the terrorist attack in Copenhagen last week; these Norwegian muslims bring hope.
Sorry, I meant Norwegian!
Don’t be, the rabbi speaks Danish 😉
He was born in Denmark, worked in Norway for many years, but has mostly been living i Israel since ’85. Not sure if he used to be some kind of head of the Nordic Jews, but he’s always been a known and well respected person also to non-Jews. Seems like a nice and friendly guy 🙂
Hence my concern in my comment above.
It is all very nice, and better than hatred but the fact is that, god is NOT great.
No matter who says it with what sentiment it is wrong
There is no god.
If there were, that abrahamic god is anything but good.
I don’t want to lose sight of that.
Depressingly, I bet you a pint of beer that I could walk into the vessel’s galley and without breaking stride find a table full of people who keep multiple assault rifles at home and would likely want to shoot you for suggesting such a heinous idea.
Deep South people – love them or whatever – they’re still on board.
And it is galley time, almost.
OK, stupid question: Aidan, are you American?
(I’m sure I should know the answer to that by now!)
[This’ll get me lined up against the galley wall to be shot. Again.]
Thankfully, no.
But I have visited there. And I have to work with a considerable number of Americans (and Norwegians, Dutch, Germans, Brits of all 6 stripes, French, Romanians, Indians, Columbians, Guyanians, Nigerians … I’ll have to get the safety officer to collaborate on a passport raid to count nationalities. Last time we tried it was about 40 nationalities out of 170 POB.
Phew, I thought that couldn’t be possible. Just must have mis-read your 4:21 post above as sounding like an American. I certainly never entertained the idea previously!
If you know what I mean by “I hope to get the wire brush first”, then you’ll know how I feel about being misidentified for an American.
If you don’t know the joke to which it refers … Billy Connolly did a good version. Spun it out for about 10 minutes as I recall. It’s not “nice”. But it is “good”. In a “bad” sense of “good”.
Awsome!
Because he knows that Muslims and Jews worship the same God, the God of Abraham, so his shouting “God is great” in Arabic makes sense and is a tribute to those Muslims protecting his Synagogue, in my opinion.
This is great. Humanity trumps religion.
I’m afraid I’ve become terribly cynical in my old age. When I first heard of this event having been proposed my thought was “of course Muslims will show up, not because they care about antisemitism, but because they care about islamophobia, and this is good pr”.
Sorry to hear that, Mike.
I firmly believe these Muslims are too young to have become that cynical.
It was a very hearttouching event, not a dry eye in the entire country 🙂
I hope you’re right. I’ve been in an even more cynical mood than normal lately.
I wanted to make it clear that I’m not saying that because I think Muslims are any worse than anyone else, and I’m sure some showed up because they care.
That’s fair.
Norway is still a small country on the outskirts of the world. Even though it’s changed tremendously the last decade, we’re still an honest, trusting people in general. That goes for the majority of Norwegian muslims as well.
This is nice and the people who organized it and participated are great.
That said, and I really hate to ruin the party, this doesn’t make a big difference, and my view of the world and Islam is the same as it was 3 days ago.
Of course nothing is going to change over night but ideas matter and these people acted on the idea that bigotry is unacceptable. I hope the momentum continues and that people feel safe enough to come out and say they feel this way. This is something that Humanists can help ensure.
I cannot see this happening, and I think that the trend among Muslims is on the opposite direction. Even if this does not remain an isolated act, and well meaning Muslims join this kind of things, we have all reasons to believe that they are a tiny minority. Of course, I am not suggesting that the majority of Muslims are violent. I am convinced that they are not. But just a few are ready to openly stand against Muslim-motivated violence, especially against Jews.
I really really hope that I am wrong and you are right.
I think it is a great move and must be encouraged. More tolerant, modern-world-compatible interpretations of Islam will not be born out of thin air and those so-called “Muslim intellectuals” are busy promoting themselves or attacking atheists or denying evolution!
So, by all means, let these young Muslims try. I am sure many other conservative Muslims will frown upon this act as non-Islamic. Let’s encourage them and help them in defining the “new Islam”.
Only time will show if this project succeeds or not, and right now, very few Muslims dare trying new ways for practicing their faith. These people belong to that few. So I am more optimistic than not.
Meanwhile, back at the mosque:
Ignominy shall be their portion [the Jews’] wheresoever they are found… The Holy Koran: Surah 111, v. 112
And thou wilt find them [the Jews] the greediest of mankind….The Holy Koran: Surah 11, v. 96
Evil is that for which they sell their souls… For disbelievers is a terrible doom. The Holy Koran: Surah II, v. 90
Taste ye [Jews] the punishment of burning.The Holy Koran: Surah III, v. 18 1
O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends. The Holy Koran: Surah V, v. 51
Fight against such of those [Jews and Christians] … until they pay for the tribute readily, being brought low. The Holy Koran: Surah IX, v. 29
Allah fighteth against them [the Jews]. How perverse they are! The Holy Koran: Surah IX, v. 30
They [the Jews] spread evil in the land …. The Holy Koran: Surah V, v. 62-66
[The Jews] knowingly perverted [the word of Allah], know of nothing except lies … commit evil and become engrossed in sin. The Holy Koran: Surah II, v. 71-85
And there is more where that came from.
So uplifting!
I am Norwegian and I really hope this is genuine sympathy from Muslims, but my inner cynic are skeptical
Some earlier news (In Norwegian)
Politician Abid Q. Raja (liberal Muslim) told that hate toward Jews, gays and the US was given in to Muslims (boys especially) by the mothers milk
http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikker/En-ubegrenset-ytringsfrihet-7005090.html
Lot of noise in the press after this, but finally a publicly known Muslim admitted what many had claimed earlier
This guy:
http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/jeg-gjorde-det-for-aa-provosere/a/23400290/
is of the organizer of this peace ring. Now, in 2009, he held a speech explaining why he hated gays and Jews, but of course it was just to provoke he said. Is he genuine now?, hopefully he is, but many of us are skeptical.
Schools and teachers in Norway report of widespread Jew hate ( and gay hate) from Muslims (again especial Muslim boys)
http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/det-nye-jodehatet-1.8106922
This reports that one in three Jews is exposed to hatred regularly, but only 5 percent of Muslims are exposed to hatred from others.
Bjorn
The organizer of the peace ring is stuck a bit between a rock and a hard place isn’t he.
Either he is genuine to his religion whose “holy” instruction book the Qur’an (which he is commanded to view as absolute and infallible) is replete with vilification of Jews.
Or, ruling out the former, he is genuine to 21st century Norway a (once) proud standard bearer of the secular humanist values of freedom, democracy, equal rights.
Or he is practicing Taqiya “a legal dispensation whereby a believing individual can deny his faith…” and Kitman “concealment; dissimulation by omission” as the prophet Muhammad himself did in his day by pretending to seek peace tricking his personal enemies into letting down their guard and exposing themselves to slaughter.
Well, hard to say what’s the real motivation behind this initiative. Hopefully it’s genuine, but if you could read the comments from Norwegians you will see that many are skeptical about the true motive.
I have several times to Muslim countries (Egypt, Sudan and Yemen). Generally I find the people in these countries to be very welcoming and friendly, but when you start to discuss things like freedom of expression, women’s right, gay right and the like it’s almost always “Of course we support freedom of expression, religion and………but………..”
It’s always a but……….
There’s a lot of debate about this in Europe now and it’s interesting to note that the harshest critique of Islam come from ex-muslims and secular Muslims
To paraphrase Richard Dawkins, ask your Muslim friends “What’s the penalty for apostasy?”
Yes of course people in those countries are welcoming, sincerely hospitable and friendly -often more so, culture wide, than “westerners” in their respective countries.
But this is precisely the conflating that the multicultural immigration fetishizing eurolefty/green Islam apologist parties do when they trot out their “oh how racist of you to deride the religion (of peace)of these nice people.”
Those nice ladies pictured in the “peace ring”, how would they vote if the introduction of Sharia (less unlikely by the day -see the UK)came up for a national referendum in Norway? Most of the 80 million Germans who enabled the third Reich in the 30’s and 40’s were “nice” people, not to mention Catholics, too.
Regarding your last point: Hamed Abdel-Samad, for example, son of an Egyptian imam who had a fatwa issued on him by an Egyptian cleric “he must be killed for being a heretic…if he refuses to recant”! is indeed one of Germany’s leading critics of Islam (sadly in a very thin but thankfully growing field.
These are legitimate questions to be asked, given the history of Islamic duplicity. But at least, they are not protesting Charlie Hebdo cartoons. They are not demanding persecution of the enemies of Islam or implementation of Sharia laws in Norway. Most importantly, they are doing something new, something that is even a bit of taboo in the eyes of many Imams and other Islamic authorities.
If the number of this kind of activism increases in Muslim communities, I hope it will lead to an internal discourse among Muslims and hopefully a new model for practicing Islam will emerge. If this happens, the character of this struggle will change in a profound way.
I know it’s a lot of ifs. But I have come to believe that this kind of project has a small amount of chance to succeed among Muslims living in the West. In middle east and elsewhere, the societies are too stagnated or repressed to be able to even think about such mammoth projects.
If “acts of kindness” are done to show off one’s religion, they hold no substance in any form that matters. Instead, if such acts were truly genuine, we’d see them being done NOT in the name of a religion but in the name of human decency. We would see these people either reforming/abandoning their faith or actively condemning those who take its violent parts literally. Such events don’t sanctify the brutality of the poisonous ideology of Islam.
On the one hand, I agree with you. On the other, change is growth is evolution, and it’s got to start somewhere. Time will tell.