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Yet these remained isolated voices. The consensus among Norwegian
officials and intellectuals was plainly in agreement with the diagnosis by
the head of Norway's Anti-Racism Center, who (despite Straume's insis–
tence that his concern was with "Islamic ideology," not race) called his
remarks "mentally deranged." Even the national leadership of
Straume's own party distanced itself from his comments. indeed, a few
days later it was reported that the Christian People's Party was in the
process of reaching out to Muslim voters, who, a Party official noted
proudly, shared many of the Party's core values in regard to "family and
morals." Muslims, he said, were streaming to the Party in impressive
numbers, even though, as non-Christians, they were barred from hold–
ing Party positions.
Then in January came a news story that shook up all of Scandinavia.
In Uppsala, Sweden, Fadime Sahindal, a young woman whose estrange–
ment from her Muslim family and refusal to submit to forced marriage
had made her a well-known media presence-and whose ethnically
Swedish boyfriend had died under mysterious circumstances in I998-
was murdered by her father. Upon his arrest, he readi ly admitted to the
crime and called his daughter a whore. The murder was hardly unique;
several such "honor slayings" take place every year in Scandinavia . For
Norwegians, the story's most striking aspect was the number of or–
wegian Muslims who, when asked by the media for their comments, did
not condemn the murder outright. More than one interviewee was of
the opinion that the father had done what he had to do. "I can't say it
was right and I can't say it was wrong," said an Oslo merchant. When
several public figures-including a former prime minister and Oslo's
police chief-turned up on the Norwegian TV program "Holmgang" to
discuss the murder, it felt as if the worm was perhaps finally turning in
Norway. Rarely, if ever, before in a Norwegian public forum had the
problems of Muslim integration been discussed so frankly. The slippery
rhetoric served up on the program by the Muslim community
spokesman was, for once, strongly rejected-and the person who took
the lead was (yet again) a brave young woman of Muslim background,
who repeatedly interrupted the spokesman's boilerplate to demand that
he stop lying and tell the truth. It was stirring to watch.
Since then, the intensification of the conflict in the Mideast has mud–
died the waters to some extent-not only in Norway but throughout
much of Western Europe, where the intellectual and media establishment
have long proffered a black-and-white image of Palestinians as victims
and Israelis as aggressors. Yet at the same time Mideast tensions have, if
anything, heightened Western Europeans' consciousness of Islam. In Feb-
