Hey how about this – Melody tweeted a link to a story about two women honored in Norway

 for their outspokenness across cultural lines. Both have immigrant backgrounds, from Algeria and Syria…

Oh! thought I, I might know one of them, and hastily skimmed down the page, and sure enough!

Sara Azmeh Rasmussen, who immigrated to Norway from Syria in 1995, has been carrying on her efforts to promote tolerance, improve the rights of persons regardless of sexual identity and criticize Islam over what she views as its lack of tolerance and repression of women and homosexuals. Rasmussen has been a frequent participant in demonstrations and commentator in the media, not least in newspaper Aftenposten.

I know her. When I was in Stockholm I went to a meeting of a group of atheist-humanist feminists who focus on women’s rights: Christer Sturmark, Sara Larsson, and Ulrika Magnusson of Fritanke, who published Hatar Gud Kvinnor? and were my hosts, and Lena Andersson, Eduardo Grutzky, a couple of other people whose names I have somewhere but don’t remember at the moment – and Sara Azmeh Rasmussen! She’s very, very cool. Everybody there was.

That’s seriously exciting.