Nyamko Sabuni, 37, has caused a storm as Sweden’s new integration and equality minister by arguing that all girls should be checked for evidence of female circumcision; arranged marriages should be criminalised; religious schools should receive no state funding; and immigrants should learn Swedish and find a job.There is no end of things to be surprised about in that sentence. There's the easy bit - Sweden has an "integration and equality minister". Huh? I'll have to research if this is a new development but it is not the important thing. The important thing is to listen what Nyamko Sabuni is saying. But first the obligatory nonsense that doesn't matter one little bit.
Supporters of the centre-right government that came to power last month believe that her bold rejection of cultural diversity may make her a force for change across Europe. Her critics are calling her a hardliner and even an Islamophobe.Now then, on to what might potentially be the big development here.
...she argues for a total ban on veils being worn by girls under the age of consent, which is 15 in Sweden.She's telling us something! She's telling us what the veil signifies - sexual maturity that makes the female, regardless of age, the property of males.“Nowhere in the Koran does it state that a child should wear a veil; it stops them being children. By putting a veil on a girl you are immediately saying to the outside world that she is sexually mature and has to be covered. It’s wrong,” she said.
In Sweden she is best known for her suggestion that adolescent girls should have compulsory examinations to make sure they have not been subjected to genital mutilation. “It would enable us to prosecute people carrying out the practice,” she said.She's telling us what happens to some very young Muslim girls, even in Sweden. It is sad that it requires a Muslim female "minister of integration and equality" to stand up and try to put an end to the women as property, genital mutilation, and forced marriages in a nation that has long prided itself for being at the forefront of women's rights. But at least it may be happening.
The fatwa has probably been issued and the hit men dispatched. Best wishes to her, she's braver than your average Euro minister, that's certain. The Dutch would have exiled her for being inflamatory enough to suggest that call for an end to genital mutilation. Don't want any trouble, after all.
2 comments:
I wonder, just speculating, is she safer from retribution now, than she would have been say, a year ago?
Buddy, safer from whom? How is she going to get along with the Democracy Minister (?) Jens Orback who just a couple of months ago said: "We must be open and tolerant toward Islam and the Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so toward us.” (And in what religion is such an impeccably silly act of faith possible?)
I suppose they have to start talking up integration because the nightmare alternatives are becoming clearer day by day as the old and failed liberalism fades from the scene. But one lady minister talking tough is not going to have much effect, god bless her.
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