"Kill Muslims" and "Norway is for Norwegians" were some of the graffiti messages that Ibrahim Salem (30) saw on house walls and entrances last week. Throughout the weekend several blocks on Welhavens street in the center of Oslo were painted over with graffiti. The messages were clearly racist. Foreign names on buzzers and postboxes were written over and painted with swastikas.
The area residents had gotten used to such racist hate messages, according to Ibrahim. He says that this has happened 20 times in the six years he's lived there. He asks to clean the walls, and the graffiti reappears after several weeks.
He in the past he was content with getting it cleaned up, but this time he's scared of the messages calling for murder. In the past they wrote things like 'go home', he says, but now come they come directly with threats. He says his 8 year old son was very scared when he read it. He doesn't dare be here anymore, so Ibrahim sent him to his mother who lives elsewhere in Oslo. Many of the children living in the area were also really scared.
Ibrahim reported the graffiti but feels he doesn't get much understanding from the police. The doors in several blocks are not hard to open. He says they don't sleep well at night, what if they come back and burn down the house?
Dagbladet hadn't managed to contact the police.
Elsewhere in Norway, recently some people tried to reproduce one of the Muhammad caricatures on the walls of a shopping center in Sandnes. It's the first time this has happened in the neighborhood, according to the center's manager Cato Helmersen. He hadn't seen the actual graffiti. He says graffiti is something that happens from time to time. There are different types, but they paint over it.
Source: Dagbladet (Norwegian), with pictures
13 comments:
If you suppress freedom of expression, frustrations will manifest themselves in other ways.
The idea that the cultural clash that politicians have imposed on the people can be managed by tightening down the lid on this pressure cooker ('hate' speech laws, etc) is insane. It will only breed resentment and make matters worse in the end.
Hi Chalons,
I would phrase that slightly differently: if you suppress freedom of expression of valid concerns (ie, political correctness), frustration will grow and radical answers will be seen as the 'only solution'. Allowing people to stand up and incite to murder religious or racial groups (ie, hate speech) will not calm down any feelings.
Racism is not something new in Europe, though, and not every racist graffiti is the result of political correctness.
It´s ugly but, Nothing to do with Race as in color of skin, I belive its Islamist immigrants they´re after.
The messages were clearly racist.---
i didn't know islam was a race.
...and painted with swastikas.---
i thought muslims loved Hitler and Nazis... after all, they killed many jews. remember - God bless Hitler? -
this is the worst Swastika i've ever seen.. it doesn't even look like a swastika in the first place.
http://gfx.dagbladet.no/pub/artikkel/5/53/530/530956/taggiart_1206822972.jpg
My guess is that the graffiti is the work of your generic brand of juvenile delinquent.
It's not a good thing and most unwelcome, but I suspect we'll be seeing much more of it if people's concerns continue to be dismissed and they are portrayed as villains for even raising concerns about the future of their communities.
Chalons, exactly right. Please use the same words the next time "muslim" youth "riot" about a perceived slight, or "celebrate" something that isn't celebratory, and we'll come close to a common understanding!
a common understanding?
with house guests from hell?
The best consideration rioting muslims could ever hope for would be the same empathy I give rioting anarchists - absolutely none.
Yeah, I had thought so, just wanted to hear you say it. Thanks for clearing that up!
By the way, I wrote about a common understanding between us two (I said "we", and I've never burned a car, nor celebrated a suicide bombing - have you?), but I'm guessing that's out of the question as well.
Jesus, It`s about time arabs grew a fucking spine, You chose a little what you want to be offended by yourself, if every muttering of some drunken lumpenproletar cunt is "the voice of the western worlds view" of muslims, spare me, This is a bullshit matter, not even worth the news story or anyones time, Start growing some thickness of your skin on both "sides". And please stop whinging about racism, since when is islam a race?
It's an extremely sad development to see that death threats are issued against a group of our population.
On the other hand we need to understand that this of course has nothing to do with racism - Muslims are not from one race, Islam is not a race but a ideology. It is better compared with statements like kill the Nazis.
That said I must say that although I condemn such threats, I have a clear understanding of the origin for them.
It is only natural to react violently onto violence. Islam threatens the life of us all on a daily basis. Muslims threatening our lives and our culture must understand that such a behavior cannot continue without consequences.
Intercultural tolerance is the key. Muslims need to change their attitude toward us and treat us with the same amount of tolerance and respect they expect from us.
Freedom of speech and cultural tolerance is not a one-way street, if Muslims expect our continued tolerance and to keep their freedom of speech and religion it is imperative that a radical change in behavior and attitude towards our culture occurs on their part.
Should this not happen I see a dark future for all of us, Muslims and democrats alike.
> It is better compared with statements like kill the Nazis.
Sorry to make clear that things are less simple than they seem, but "Kill the Muslim extremists" would be, "kill the Islamists" as well.
"Kill the Muslims" is more like "Kill the Christians", or "Kill the agnosts", or one you may have seen in the news recenty: "Kill the infidels".
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