...Norway's education ministry has approved an application for the capital city Oslo to get its first Muslim-only school, the country's English language online media outlet, The Local reported on Tuesday.
The school, which reports said would have 200 students when it is fully operational, is to be founded at the behest of the Association of Muslim Mothers.
According to the report in The Local: "...the school would teach its pupils Arabic and Islamic values as well as the standard subjects on the curriculum, replacing the subject of Religion, Philosophy and Ethics with Islam, Religion and Philosophy."
You can read the whole story - which passed me by at the time - here. I've been on Google to find out what has happened to the proposal, which was opposed by all Norway's main political parties, but can't find anything new since last April. With any luck, nothing came of it.
A few years' ago, a client of mine who worked for Norway's state broadcaster, NRK, told me the story of how he and his wife had removed their son from a state primary school in Oslo, where the majority of the pupils were from Muslim immigrant families. (I gave a briefer account of the story in this post about Ray Honeyford in June.) They did so when they realised their son was being taught by his fellow pupils that the main purpose of life was to gain revenge - up to and including violence - on those who had done you wrong. Of course, such an attitude may well have resonated in pre-Christian Norway a thousand years' ago, when Vikings were in charge - and may well still prevail in some parts of Christendom, such as Sicily - but it seemed a trifle out of place in the capital city of an extremely prosperous, achingly liberal, culturally homogeneous 21st Century democracy. My client - a burly, bearded, blond, socialist, atheist Osloite with a keen appreciation for Linie Aquavit - was utterly appalled. His previous tolerance for multicultarism instantly evaporated, and, because his first wife had links with the theosophy movement, his son was sent to Oslo's Rudolf Steinerskolen.
I don't know about you, but if I were some sort of official at the Nowegian Ministry of Education who occasionally watched television news or glanced now and then read a newspaper, I might be tempted to ask how the setting up of Muslim-only schools would help immigrants from volatile, impoverished Third World hell-holes the values and customs of the tolerant modern country which had so generously opened its doors to them. I'd also consider it my duty to undertake a painstakingly detailed and realistic examination of what exactly the shouty, headscarved women in the photo accompanying the article in The Commentator actually meant by "Arabic and Islamic values", and how the reinforcement of those values could possibly benefit indigenous Norwegians.
We've recently had an awful lot of politicians (Barack Obama, David Cameron, Theresa May, Nick Clegg) tetchily lecture us unenlightened groundlings that Islamist butchers have nothing to do with Islam. Some Muslim "leaders" in this country have even gone so far as to sign letters disassociating their religion from the grotesque violence being committed in its name around the world (although the sort of angry marches which routinely accompany any attempt by Israel to protect Jews against Arabic savagery have yet to materialise).
In spite of the spin, given how much damned apologising we Christians have had to do for past deeds committed by fellow-believers (we've even had to apologise for the slave trade, which Christians fought so hard to abolish, and which Muslims still routinely practice) I don't see why islam gets off that easily. I suspect the vast majority of Europeans and Americans feel that we need more convincing before buying into the current political meme that psychopathic gangster thugs raping, torturing and beheading utterly innocent men, women and children while bellowing "Allahu Akbar" are absolutely nothing to do with the religion they profess - after all, Islam (along with a loathing for democracy, decency, progress, civilisation, culture, kindness, prosperity, tolerance and the West in general) is one thing that binds these hearteningly multiracial forces together. If this is a religion of peace, I'd hate to imagine what some of its more enthusiastic adherents would get up to if it weren't
If Norway's no doubt uniformly left-wing civil servants find themselves paralysed when it comes to taking sensible decisions regarding their country's relatively enormous Muslim population (8%-10% in Oslo - yes, Oslo, for God's sake!) because of their feelings of guilt and confusion over the Norwegian mass-murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, they really need to snap out of it. Breivik wasn't the leader of a movement and he wasn't part of a conspiracy. He was a classic sad, inadequate psychopath acting entirely on his own. While it's perfectly reasonable to ask pertinent questions about Islam in light of the fact that almost every act of terror in the world is carried out by Muslims, it would be quite mad to look on every Muslim as a potential beheader: Ted Bundy was a keen Republican, but that doesn't mean every conservative is a potential serial killer. Similarly, just because Breivik was against multi-culturalism, it doesn't mean that any decision in favour of mono-culturalism implies a taste for mass-murder.
Finally, it strikes me - I'm sure it strikes many Norwegians, no matter how goofily liberal they might be - that those immigrants who want don't want their children exposed to the prevailing beliefs of the country in which they have sought refuge should seriously think about moving back to the sort of Islamic society where such beliefs are vigorously suppressed. I'm sure Norwegians would be jolly sad to see the newcomers depart so soon - but I suspect that, in time, they'd just about manage to get over the loss of all those Muslim mothers.
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