integration

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> January 20th 2015 In his book “Faith and Power” Edward Mortimer, the former foreign affairs columnist for the Financial Times, when writing about Rishid Rida, the great Islamic intellectual of the first half of the twentieth century, asked himself if Rida was “fundamentalist” since he was an admirer of the militant Wahhabi puritans of Saudi Arabia. “I do not think so”, concluded Mortimer, “although I must admit that the precise meaning of this word when used in the context of Islam eludes me.” At a time when the West is again aroused – because of the attack on Charlie Hebdo – by the actions of extreme Islamic fundamentalists we should note that it is astonishingly difficult to define fundamentalism either in Islam or Christianity. If it means “an effort to define the fundamentals of one’s religion and a refusal to budge from them once defined then surely anybody with...

/10/jonathanpower2.jpg”> December 9th 2014 “If all the world were like Sweden there would be no news to report. The last time that Sweden hit the front page was when its foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was knifed to death by a madman nine years ago on the eve of a referendum on Swedish entry into the Euro zone. The time before that was in the distant past.” – from a column I wrote just a couple of years ago. But now, to everyone’s surprise – both inside and outside Sweden – this quietness of the news has been unexpectedly overturned. A newly elected Socialist government, thanks to the vote of the Swedish Democrats, an anti-immigrant and anti-European party, couldn’t pass its budget and so the prime minister has called for new elections in March. Voters are wondering aloud what has happened to the famed Swedish stability and consensus-making. Sweden is probably...

Kuala LumpurIAIS-International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies & IIUM-International Islamic University of Malaysia Yes, Islam and Christianity are on old Buddhist lands; with Muslim-Buddhist clashes in Sri Lanka, Myanmar. Occident is the big space of the three Abrahamic religions Judaism-Christianity-Islam, with the secularisms of the first two, excluding each other. Indonesia-Philippines are in the Occident. Orient is a big space spanned by Buddhism, which does not exclude others, not even violent state power; hence more complex. There are pure Buddhist countries: Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam; and mixed Buddhist countries, with other non-exclusive world views: in China with Daoism-Confucianism, in Japan with Kami shinto-Confucianism, and in Korea with Confucianism and Christianity. The world religioscape started with

Introduction He was a tall man and a great man, a visionary, pacifist, civil resister, educator and philosopher. He took life more seriously than most and he could be playful and fun like a child. His life’s guiding principle was ”Engage in your time!” and while he wrote and talked a lot he also did it. His name was Aage Bertelsen, he was born in Denmark in 1901 and died on August 15, 1980. Bertelsen’s imprint on history is two-fold. First, with his wife Gerda he was a prime mover of one of the groups, the Lyngby Group, which organised the rescue of altogether 7.220 Danish Jews into safety in Sweden in October 1943 during the German occupation of Denmark – more here. The Lyngby Group – Lyngby is north of Copenhagen – got about 1.000 of these in safety by organising their nightly transport onboard small fisher boats over the Sound between Denmark...

Talk at the Nordic Peoples’ Parliament in Jondal, Norway Let us start with the crisis. It is not a world crisis but a Western crisis. The root is simple: the Rest is catching up, and partly overtaking the West; China is catching up, and partly overtaking the USA–recovering from the blow received around 1500 from the Portuguese and the English destroying 1,000 years of buddhist-muslim trade from East China to Somalia via the rest of Asia; ending in Macao-Hong Kong (there are no Chinese enclaves in Portugal-England). The West is outcompeted. The crisis is partly economic and partly a desperate Western effort, indeed Obama’s effort, to cling to hegemony.

Or how “high” politics are connected to the lives of Iranians even abroad I’ve come to know a young Iranian student here in Sweden. Fortunately he came before the discriminatory law that forces students from outside EU to pay for their studies while those from inside the EU can study freely. Kourosh – a name I use for the purpose of this article – is a very modest, diligent and polite young man. He has quickly learned to talk everyday Swedish. He sees his life in Sweden as a great privilege and an opportunity to go back to his native Iran and make it a better place. Since I have applied for a visa to go to Iran, I’ve been eager to meet with him and listen to what he can tell me about Iranian culture and about how life has been for his family. The father is a truck...

Den Transnationella Stiftelsen för Freds- och Framtidsforskning, www.transnational.org, har av Arvsfonden beviljats medel till projektet Som broar över mörka vatten. Projektet tar utgångspunkt i arbetssättet Pedagogisk Familjedokumentation och integrationsprojektet Frusna fötter. Pedagogisk Familjedokumentation har sedan fem år utvecklats av pedagogerna Miriam Salomons och Iréne Wistrand på familjecentralen Trädet i Västra Frölunda, Göteborg. Genom Pedagogisk Familjedokumentation, får föräldrar möjlighet att berätta ett stycke av sin levnadshistoria. Denna metod har visat sig vara särskilt viktigt för personer, som inte behärskar svenska språket och/eller bara har fragmentariska minnen av sitt förflutna. De har fått hjälp att i bild och ord strukturera, summera och dokumentera sina minnen vilket underlättat för dem att blicka framåt. Eftersom det kan finnas språkliga barriärer får bilder och andra minnesförmedlande dokument underlätta kommunikationen. Det kan vara utklipp, fotografier, gamla biljetter eller kvitton som organiseras och förevigas i ett album. Medan arbetssättet på Trädet varit inriktat på nyblivna föräldrar med småbarn använder...

BakgrundMånga medborgare, inte minst flyktingar och andra invandrare, har svårt att orientera sig i det svenska samhället. Den självklara kunskap man, som invandrare, bär med sig hemifrån fungerar inte längre. På främmande mark går man lätt vilse. Att finna sammanhang i tillvaron blir därför en daglig utmaning. Att höra till och delta i vårt gemensamma vardagsliv känns för många avlägset och möts man därtill av misstro blir vägen tung att vandra. Det som understryks hos främlingen är det främmande ursprunget, en egenskap gemensam med andra främlingar. När en generell egenskap är det vi först lägger märke till, förbigår vi samtidigt det som gör en person unik. Ömsesidig misstro motverkar integration och skapar klyftor mellan människor. Det uppstår ett ’vi och dom’.I denna situation är det komplicerat att vara förälder. Det är svårt att ledsaga sina barn i ett samhälle man inte själv är förtrogen med. Att barn lär språket fortare...