(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
January 26, 2002 – five days after 26-year-old Fadime Sahindal was shot and killed by his Turkish-Kurdish father Rahmi Sahindal in Uppsala, Sweden – VG editor Olav Versto wrote a comment entitled "Honor killing in the name of God".
Here he stated that the murder of Fadime was about “the meeting between the modern, secularized Nordic culture and Islam and Muslim culture. There is a deep, almost insurmountable gap between these cultures ”.
The following year, Unni Wikan's book is published For the sake of honor: Fadime for reflection, where Wikan states the following:
"To establish a fact first: Fadime was a Muslim."
And with this type of post in the debate, there was a perception in the Norwegian public that "Muslim-Kurdish" Fadime was allegedly subjected to honor killings because she dared to become friends with "blonde, Christian and Swedish" Patrick.
- The media is the worst
But, writes Dag Herbjørnsrud and Stian Bromark in the new afterword for the pocket edition of Blank lies, dirty truths – launched on January 21, on the day three years after the murder of Fadime – this is not true.
For neither Fadime was a Muslim, nor was Patrick a blond Swede. One who is well acquainted with the Norwegian distortion of Fadime's reality – and who is happy with Herbjørnsrud's and Bromark's corrections – is the Norwegian-Turkish Fatma Suslu.
- Although it was emphatically stated in the Swedish media that Fadime was not a Muslim, the murder led to a Muslim debate here in Norway with people like Hege Storhaug and Unni Wikan. It is as stupid as sitting and discussing the shape of oranges to find the solution to the apple orchard being infected by pests, she says.
Fatma Suslu is a Muslim, single mother and raised in Frogner and Romsås with her Turkish parents and seven siblings. Today, she works at the Lighthouse Café at Oslo University College, where she has three years of education in public administration.
- Neither the media nor Muslims are based on knowledge. And the worst is the media, Suslu thinks.
- Cultural collision?
Based on knowledge, the story of the murder of Fadime is more nuanced than the tabloidized Norwegian public wants: First, Fadime's girlfriend Patrick Lincesjos – who died in a car accident in 1998 – can hardly be made a representative of "modern, secularized Nordic culture" .
- Patrick was not typically "Swedish and blonde". Patrick's father was from Iran. And it was Patrick's father, not Fadimes, who was a Muslim, explains Dag Herbjørnsrud, one of the authors behind Blank lies, dirty truths.
As a refugee from the mullah regime, however, Patrick's father was not a conservative Muslim, rather a liberal.
- In Sweden, he married a so-called Christian Swedish woman, Patrick's mother, continues Herbjørnsrud's co-author, Stian Bromark.
In the late 1990's, before Patrick's death in the car accident, Patrik's father and Fadime's father actually sat down together to try to agree on the costs of the planned wedding – and they could have these conversations in their common language, Kurdish.
The two fathers did not come from different parts of the globe, but rather from two areas that are relatively close to each other in the neighboring countries Turkey and Iran. Did I hear a "cultural collision", asks Herbjørnsrud, who adds that the relationship between the two fathers, according to Fadime's sisters, later broke down after an argument over the wedding payment.
Not Muslims
What about Fadime? Today, she is actually buried in Uppsala cemetery, following a burial in Uppsala Cathedral itself.
The Sahindal family comes from Elibistan in southeastern Turkey, a core area of opposition to the Sunni Islam of the Turkish government. Yes, in fact, the area has been perceived as almost "anti-Muslim".
According to Bromark and Herbjornsrud, every fourth Turkish Kurds have a different religion than Islam, and the Kurdish culture has the Zarathusthra faith as its original religious background. However, in Takiran by Elibistan, the Sahindal family's home district, the prevailing religion is Kurdish religion.
- This oppressed minority religion has no scriptures, no injunctions, and it puts man – not God – at the center. This is a non-deistic view of life, not unlike Buddhism, where, like the Baha'i faith, one emphasizes the unity between all religions, Herbjørnsrud explains.
- Solid interpretation
And this belief also had the Sahindal family. Immediately after her father killed Fadime, her older sister Fidan stated that they were Alevites. And on January 27, not many days after the murder, Fadime's brother-in-law stated the following to Dagens Nyheter:
"We are not Muslims. We practice an ancient belief, a kind of natural religion. But since we live in Sweden, we want her to be buried according to Christian traditions. ”
- Thus, Fadime also got to rest next to his Patrick, which is also located in Uppsala cemetery. Gøteborgs-Posten, Expressen and other Swedish media have also received the family's message that Fadime was not a "Muslim", but an Alevite – and that with a strong Christian influence, says Bromark.
Why are there so many in Norway who insist on the "fact" that Fadime should be "Muslim"?
- The solid "interpretations of Islam" here at home are perhaps not so surprising. The Fadime murder fit all too well into the domestic cultural debate after 11 September. The worldview from the TV screens could be confirmed if Fadime was dark-Muslim-Turkish and Patrick was blond-Christian-Swedish. The murder becomes so much more difficult to debate if "she" were to be a personal Christian with an Alevi minority background from a family without religious orders, while "he" had a Muslim father and family in Iran, Herbjørnsrud believes.
- Lack of knowledge
"Some people want to perpetuate this misconception about the Fadime murder in order to substantiate attitudes towards Muslims," Fatma Suslu agrees.
- At the same time, Norway is a young nation in relation to immigration. Norwegians therefore have little knowledge about immigrants and knowledge of what it means to be a Muslim, she adds.
The more she reads and learns about Islam herself, the more she says she understands that women's oppression has nothing to do with Islam.
- The murder of Fadime had nothing to do with Islam. Honor killing, forced marriage, circumcision; everything is culturally conditioned, everything has to do with male chauvinism, says Suslu.
And this lack of knowledge is not the only Norwegian media to blame, according to the Norwegian-Turkish woman.
- Islam and Muslims are two very different things. The problem is that Muslims simply lack knowledge of the Qur'an. Islam is based on knowledge, on tolerance, on living in peace with oneself and others, says Suslu.
- Lacks self-criticism
- One of the biggest sins in Islam is backbiting. Still, women like me backbite when we smoke, live alone, or go to parties. Islam is the first monotheistic religion that established the woman's right to divorce, the right to work, the right to own income, the right to drop breastfeeding. In the Qur'an, there is no distinction between sins committed by women and sins committed by men, Suslu continues, who can hardly bear to identify with Muslims anymore due to the judgmental attitude of many Muslims.
- All tradition and culture must be pushed away to understand Islam. My parents may not be right. I have to find out for myself what is right and wrong. And then I have to find religion through knowledge, not knowledge through religion, she says.
And with that, Fatma Suslu once again emphasizes the importance of knowledge, a knowledge that, in her opinion, is lacking both among Muslims in Norway and the Norwegian press.
- What both Muslims and the media lack is self-criticism. And then you get nowhere, she says.
- Unlawful scapegoat
The actions of Fadime's father can in no way be excused, both Fatma Suslu and the authors of Blank lies, dirty truths.
- But it hurts us all to make Islam an unjust scapegoat in the turbulent times we now live in, Bromark says.
The debate post of 11 September 2001 – with the demand that Muslims should distance themselves from terrorism – illustrates in his opinion a dangerous tendency in this respect.
The day after the terrorist attack on the United States, after the Madrid terror and after Al-Qaeda's threat against Norway, all times the Islamic Council in Norway sent out press releases that “dissociate themselves from terror, no matter who is behind it. Attacks on civilians are something that Islam does not allow under any circumstances ".
- How many non-Muslim Norwegians are aware of these clear statements, which could possibly reassure those who suspect the Muslim minority of just under 1,5 percent of Norway's population to be potential fifth colonists, Bromark asks.
