انا بارف ارابي

"An American man sits next to a Syrian woman in somebody's home. He wants to start a conversation, so he says: ساباحلخر" (maybe)


I'm trying to learn Arabic with Pimsleur's Arabic. It's difficult, and my attempts to write anything down is probably very wrong. But it's fun.

Today, John and I went to another political debate, this time at the Islamic Center in Malmö. It's a big mosque and some kind of social place for muslims here. One of the mail themes in Swedish political debate is integration, and integration in the labor market. The Islamic Center is at Rosengård, which is a part of Malmö with a large immigrant population. According to Fox News it's a war zone, where the police is chased my angry muslim mobs. Who knows what Fox News wanted to say. Who knows what Fox means when they're trying to show "fair and balanced news"? When I was there today for a kebab pizza, it seemed a lot more calm.

Islamic Center

Aug 31, 2006 - 3 Photos

The leader for the Islamic Center, Bejzat Becirov, introduced the whole debate with asking what the politicians thought of when they heard the word "muslim". Of course, this led to a semi-embarassing show of political correctness - where one after the other were talking about their muslim friends. Except Amar Sabri - who simply started by saying: "I am a muslim" and went on to talk about islamic tolerance and peace. A lot of people see the green parties as some kind of political branch of Greenpeace, but it is a lot more - and Amar Sabri's focus on integration, school, and peace shows that the Green party is not only for treehuggers. It a lot broader. He's even an engineer ;)

While the Green party also focuses on solidarity, equal rights between the sexes and ethnic background, as does for instance the Social democrats, the Greens focus on change and not just a blind pursue of economic growth. The dude from Socialdemokraterna was talking about how increased employment in Malmö has led to new shopping malls; people now have more money, spend more, and in turn give jobs to people in retail - it's a wonderful helix of increased consumerism! Yay. Maybe we need to chill out a bit. Maybe 'we' should vote a little bit more long term and opt for development that doesn't mean just more plastic stuff from China to everyone.

إن شاء الله