Many of them teenage girls


The Guardian reports on the peace vigil in Oslo today.

Norwegian Muslims organised a peace vigil in Oslo on Saturday in a show of solidarity with Jews a week after fatal shootings in Denmark targeted a synagogue and free-speech seminar.

As the mainly elderly Jewish congregation filed out of the synagogue after Shabbat prayers, a group of young Muslims, many of them teenage girls wearing headscarves, formed a symbolic ring outside the building to applause from a crowd of more than 1,000 people.

It’s good that many of them were girls, with or without hijab. It’s good to see girls and women out front.

…a traditional Shabbat ceremony was held in the open air with many demonstrators adding their voices to the Hebrew chants.

Norway’s chief rabbi, Michael Melchior, appeared visibly moved when he said it was the first time the ceremony had taken place outdoors with so many people.

Ervin Kohn, a Jewish community leader, said: “It is unique that Muslims stand to this degree against antisemitism and that fills us with hope … particularly as it’s a grassroots movement of young Muslims,” adding that the rest of the world should “look to Norway”.

Go young Muslims. Take over.

The initiative by Norway’s Muslim youth to link arms with Norwegian Jews in a circle around Oslo’s synagogue was an effort to denounce recent violence by jihadis against Jewish communities in France and Denmark.

Impetus for the vigil came from some young people among Norway’s Muslims, who make up roughly 3% of the nation’s 5.3 million population.

They wanted to demonstrate support for the country’s estimated 1,300 Jews, following one of the attacks in Copenhagen last weekend that killed a 37-year-old volunteer security guard outside the city’s synagogue.

In other words it was a demonstration, not a literal move to “protect” the synagogue. It was a symbolic gesture.

 

 

 

Comments

  1. johnthedrunkard says

    Now, if they could just get the Koran to unsay what it actually says…

    Demonstrations of public decency and solidarity are a grand thing. But they are NOT expressions of ‘true’ versions of religion X or Y. The same poising is lurking on the page for the next Fred Phelps and the next Ayatollah.

  2. Lady Mondegreen says

    But they are NOT expressions of ‘true’ versions of religion X or Y.

    But they’re not expressions of ‘not true’ versions, either.

    The old books say lots of problematic things, and fundamentalism is dangerous and we need to fight it. But fundamentalism isn’t the ‘true’ face of religion any more than flower children singing “Day By Day” is.

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