Hey Swedes, how much truth to this?

[Carolus Rex]

Thanks Winston.

I have to check it later tonight, though (I'm off to visit my grandmother).

Carolus

[Winston]

You're welcome.

Grandmothers

[Last Conformist]

IIRC, the largest single group of immigrants is still the Finns. They're hardly much of a cultural threat.

[Bereta_Eder]

That's because Pekka is still in Finland.

[Winston]

With 2 million foreign born and descendants, I hardly think the Finns constitute the largest group.

But I agree they probably won't pose much of a problem, even with the knives and what not.

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by Winston
With 2 million foreign born and descendants, I hardly think the Finns constitute the largest group.

Too bad for you. The three most common countries of origin for foreign-born are, in falling order, Finland, Yugoslavia, and Iraq.

Linky

[Winston]

So be it.

Jedi.

But it's irrelevant anyway, since we all agree they aren't the ones causing trouble. After all, they are just Finns.

[Carolus Rex]

Well... What to say, what to say?

First, I haven't (yet) read all the nonsense that blogger is writing...

I just find this fear of Islam and "Islamisation" truly ridiculous... Citing what fundamentalists and zealots crave in response to someone "backtalking" their prophet and religion as a general tendency about how muslims think or behave...

The guy should read Islam A Short History by Karen Armstrong or a couple of Bernard Lewis' (former Princeton professor IIRC) books on the subject... The former is an informative description of its history; Lewis' (more recent) books deal with current affairs and problematise more...

Fundamentalist groups in power (ab)using religious sources to justify and implement their political/religious agenda i) is nothing new ii) is not unique for islam and iii) does not necessarily represent the will of most people in that country in general...

I've met 3 muslims that I've got to know pretty well. The first was in the PhD program; he was (is) a kurd that escaped from Iran... Yes, I had problems with quite a lot of his views (womens' role, homosexuality, and even masturbation, which was a sin to him... )...

To me he was disturbingly conservative and unforgiving (he once told me he would denounce his own children if they turned out to be homosexual )... We still got along, often discussed our differences, and shot a lot of pool together...

Value-wise we didn't have much in common and he wasn't a close friend, but we can still live together in the same country... Only a hundred years ago those same values permeated Sweden, and I'm pretty sure there were not many muslims here then... People and societies evolve, and they will continue to do so given the chance... If it's not the current generation, it'll be the next and so on...

The two other muslims I know are guys I met in Geneva. We lived in the same dorm... One is from Marocco and also has some (to me) dubious views on womens' sexuality... Also, he doesn't drink alcohol (which to a nordic person is quite suspect... ). He is a really funny guy, though, with a lot of humour and charm... The ladies really liked him!

The other is from Turkey and is one of the nicest persons I've ever met... To my surprise (and against my prejudices), he's completely "european"... Ok, he didn't eat during the day when it was Ramadam, but that was only to keep our north-african friend company during the night... Plus, he drank alcohol... BTW, the three of us also shot some pool together... Seriously, those guys were (are) fun company!

On the other hand, at the same dorm there was this swiss guy... Almost as conservative as my Iranian friend in the PhD program (he's from one of the most conservative cantons in Switzerland...)... He'd been in Sweden and studied a year, spoke swedish impressively well...

We had almost nothing in common and even less to say to each other... IMO he was a self-righteous and introvert person with no curiousity whatsoever about new phenomena in society... All he wanted was "things" to go back like they "used to be"... We never shot pool together...

Bottom-line: religion or race is not an issue as long as you can shoot a lot of pool together!

It is true that swedish integration policy has failed to some extent... I think the obvious symptom is the disproportional high unemployment rates among immigrants (and the ghetto-like areas we see in, for example, Malmö)... I think there are many reasons for this:

i) the language

Swedish isn't a global language (duh!) and admittedly difficult to learn. Without it, it's difficult to enter the (qualified) labour market

ii) the different economic conditions today

The time from the end of World War II until the late 1960s/early 1970's is known as the Golden Age. The economy was up, unemployment was low and there was excess demand for labour, satisfied by a "labour force immigrant wave" (mainly Yugoslavians and Finns).

Heck, you just presented yourself at the factory gates (or office doors) asking for a job and you were in! Today, the situation is quite different. Even for native Swedes with academic degrees, the labour market is a harsh mistress... Unemployment is (IIRC) about 8 percent (or around there somewhere), a record high for a country used to 2-3 percent...

iii) racism

Investigating journalists have applied for jobs using their real (foreign) names in one application for a job and using (made up) typical swedish names in another (for the same job; also when applying for different jobs). Yes, you guessed it: it was far more likely that they got contacted when they claimed to be a Svensson rather than an Al-Jahab...

Devising and implementing "good" policies to help people adapt to a new society with a completely different set of values is tricky business... So far, Sweden hasn't risen to the challenge... Narrow-mindedness will not make it any easier...

Carolus

[Carolus Rex]

Phew; it's in!

Just when I posted, my Mozilla Firefox crashed on me... I didn't copy the text first... Took a little while to write it; not sure I would rewrite it had I lost it...

But then again, nobody will read it anyway, so what's the difference!

Carolus

[Bereta_Eder]

that thing about the nice going but conservative guy reminded me of an antente i had with an albanian guy. we were both students abroad. so i didnt know he was albanian, he was just the new kid in class. so he intriduced him as albanian and i immideatly said, hey i'm greek! (you know balkanian comradery). so he said cool and we went for a cup of coffee. after making his complaints (justified) about some cases of mal treatment of albanian immigrants in greece and me telling him it was the same long ago when greeks went to germany we were really hitting it off. so he told me about simitis (then PM of greece) and how much he admired him and that he was certain he's good for greek albanian relationship. and i said cool (surprised he even knew who the greek pm was). then we talked abut all that stupid stuff that went on in the balkans at that time and it was really great. i was thinking, we're all the same people, so i threw on the table the idea that someday we should all integrate and get those bastard westerners off all our businesses and properties something to which he compltetly agreed to. and just as i was happy and glad and we were ready to start planning the albaniangreek integration he comes up and says something stupid like "do you see all those women here? western women they dress like sluts. the correct place for a woman is the kitchen". when i was satisfied that he wasnt actually joking but he really meant it, i had to cancel the integration.

[OzzyKP]

I was under the impression Scandinavia was one of the whitest, most homogenous places on earth. A little color got y'all scared?

[Last Conformist]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
I was under the impression Scandinavia was one of the whitest, most homogenous places on earth.

We used to be, but things have been changing rapidly in recent decades. Of the five people I work closest with, three are dark-skinned; unrepresentative, but telling.

[BlackCat]

Nah, you don't get free that easy.

I don't buy your pow's on racism. That is I guess that you may be righ, but it is not different from a jutland company denying hiring a zealander.

Any company in need of workers will hire what they can get - they would be stupid if they didn't.

[Carolus Rex]

Originally posted by OzzyKP

I was under the impression Scandinavia was one of the whitest, most homogenous places on earth. A little color got y'all scared?

Well... I thought (hoped) my post would reveal that not everyone agrees with that blogger's views...

Homogeneity and Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) is interesting... I think Finland and Iceland are the most homogeneous by far of the nordic countries...

Despite 1 of 10 being born abroad, my impression is that Sweden is still quite homogeneous... Of course, it's not like in the 1950s and 1960s, but...

Still, the concept (homogeneity) is strange to say the least... It implies that there is some genuine, true, one and only ethnic group that everyone else stems from (at least if you're a "real" swede)... A common (mis)conception among neo-nazis and racists, I believe...

Carolus

[Carolus Rex]

Originally posted by BlackCat

I don't buy your pow's on racism. That is I guess that you may be righ, but it is not different from a jutland company denying hiring a zealander.

You've been drinking again?

Yeah, that was just a couple of reporters doing an unscientific investigation... Don't know how general their "results" are, but I'm too much of a cynic to believe they were isolated incidents...

Carolus