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.