Monday, January 30, 2012

Muezzin in Sweden? No thanks!

Before I start: Muezzin is the person calling for the muslim prayer five times a day in muslim countries.


Some years ago I lived in an apartment in a small town in the south of Sweden. I had small children not always sleeping all nights. One morning, it was a red day in the calendar, I heard loud drums outside. I woke up to the drums in one ear and a terrified child screaming in the other. The clock was 7.30 and it was the first of may. The annual workers demonstration!
I hated it. They may demonstrate, but they do not have to disturb everybody else in the outskirt of the town while walking to the square.

What does this have to do with Muslims?

A lot! They are here in Sweden. That's okay, often they are refugees from what could have been their death in their home countries. I have no problem with helping them. Of course they shall be able to pray and hear an imam even in Sweden, just like the Christians have their masses. What I do not agree with the Muslims in Fittja, south of Stockholm is their effort to have a muezzin screaming (link is in Swedish to the original paper of the agenda for the meeting 26/1-12) to gather the prayers. But it is not the first time they have asked for this, according to the lokal TV-chanel ABC they tried 2009 too.
The example above is a good one for me. If you have a believe it should be your private thing, and you shall not disturb others with it. When you have loud speakers screaming “Time to pray!” you are obviously disturbing others, who are not believeing like them. Imam Abboud Sleiman in Karlskrona (Swedish link) seems to be of the same opinion. He said, 2009, when some people living next to the mosque in Karlskrona worried: ”The minaret is just a symbol, according to our religion you are not supposed to disturb others”.
guess one or two muslims will react and say “but the churches are disturbing with their clocks”. That's right, we have churches in Sweden, and have had so for more than 1 000 years. It is a long tradition, and the bells have been ringing since then. Indeed they too might disturb, even if the Christian paper Dagen says the opposite. That’s why some changes have been made in the law about ringing during night (another boring Swedish link for my englsih speaking readers. it is a court descision). Anyway, it is a huge difference here. This has never been a muslim country (hand hopefully it will never be it. Mixed ok, but no muslim laws here, and no muslim “female rights” either, or lack of rights).


The muslims may come back and ask for this the day that we will not read in the paper that 15 schoolgirls died in a fire, and 50 badly damaged, because they where not islamic dressed when they tried to run out from a burning school in Mecka, like I wrote about it in my post "Muslim men, cover your eyes!". The day we will read "New church opened in Mecka, now the church bells will ring on Sundays and the muezzins will call for salat  for muslims", then you may come back!
Something tells me that this will not happen. Just remember this Swedish article from DN, that I wrote about here in english.

If you want to live a pure muslim life with islamic rules and all muslim traditions, feel fre to move to a muslim country. If you instead want to live in a country where you may have freedom to pray, with nobody forcing you, and nobody wanting to cut the hands of your childrens hand when they have stolen a piece of candy in the shop, according to hudud and the quran 5:38, then stay with us and build something good. Just remember that our laws are made for the people, not for the religions. If it is “good” for the religion or the family, but hurts a person then it is forbidden. If a person not muslim makes a painting of your prophet, he has done nothing wrong because he/she is not a muslim. There are tons of pictures of Jesus. It is freedom of criticize politics and religion that makes you be able to live in Sweden. Use that freedom in the right way so that nobody tries to change it to less freedom. 


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