Who’s Nyamko Sabuni? She’s the new Swedish Minister for Integration and Gender Equality.
Sounds awfully PC, doesn’t it? But Sabuni is anything but. In fact, she’s already raised a storm of controversy in Sweden with her statements on the subject of assimilation.
Sabuni herself has impeccably PC credentials, a fact that probably infuriates her enemies, much as the African-American-ness of Condoleezza Rice or Bill Cosby infuriate their Leftist critics in a special way. Her father was a political refugee from the Congo to Zaire and then Sweden, jailed in his native country for opposing the government. Sabuni was twelve when she made the journey to Sweden with her family, learned the language, and thrived in her new environment.
Her father is Christian and her mother Muslim, but Sabuni herself was raised without religion (although Wikipedia’s entry on Sabuni has a different tale to tell than the NY Times on her parents–it says both are Muslim).
What has Sabuni done to ruffle so many feathers? Oh, just a couple of little things: called for a ban on wearing the veil for girls under fifteen, proposed that schoolgirls be checked for evidence of genital mutilation, criticized “honor culture” mentalities, and asked that arranged marriages and the state financing of religious schools be banned.
It’s hard to argue with the fact that the institution of such policies might indeed foster “integration and gender equality” in Sweden. Nor do they run counter to the prevailing customs of Sweden. But argument most certainly has been mounted; Sabuni is considered unsympathetic to the plight of immigrants (read: Muslim immigrants), despite her own status as an immigrant and daughter of Muslim[s].
Sabuni, who calls herself “Afro-Swedish, maybe,” answers her critics thusly:
We have a society that has failed to adapt to new times. We don’t offer people their rights, but we are also unclear about their obligations. So people end up in a kind of no man’s land, where they are neither Swedes, nor Turks nor Congolese.
Hmmm–with rights come obligations. And immigrants to Sweden should end up becoming–Swedes! How revolutionary is that?
{NOTE: Peaktalk wrote an interesting post on Sabuni back in October.]
Previously a lifelong Democrat, born in New York and living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself slowly but surely
January 13th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
“What has Sabuni done to ruffle so many feathers? Oh, just a couple of little things: called for a ban on wearing the veil for girls under fifteen, proposed that schoolgirls be checked for evidence of genital mutilation, criticized “honor culture” mentalities, and asked that arranged marriages and the state financing of religious schools be banned.”
Sounds like a feminist. Where is the international sisterhood on this?
Drinking at the bottle of multiculturalism.
God, we love our metaphors here dont we?
January 13th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
I hope she is not forced into exile
(again) like Hirsi Ali.
January 14th, 2007 at 4:36 am
Her father was a political refugee from the Congo to Zaire and then Sweden
Congo and Zaire are the same country, aren’t they?
January 14th, 2007 at 5:56 am
Congo is situated between Zaire and Gabon et Cameroon.
Sane people who have experienced the insanity and the corruption of the third world and have escaped, do not want to recreate the third world within their new sanctuary from insanity.
Sabuni likes the enlightenment of western democracy. Why should she sit back and watch it become another third world cesspool without trying to prevent it?
January 14th, 2007 at 6:58 am
There are actually two countries called Congo. Thew larger, better-known one has Kinshasa as its capital. It was the Belgian Congo until 1960. Its long-time dictator Mobutu Sese Seko changed its name to Zaire in the 1970s, but the name was changed back to Congo in the late 1990s. (Hmm… the artist formerly known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince is now Prince again…) The other, smaller Congo has Brazzaville as its capital. It was officially a French colony until the 1960s and is still a part of what is essentially France’s African empire. At the United Nations it’s known as the Democratic Republic of Congo.
January 14th, 2007 at 10:01 am
The only hope of West avoid a surge of refuges from the Third World is to normalize this asylum of insanity, one country after another. In many instances it would reqire re-colonization of them. Until this became possible due to radical change in Western mindset, the best policy is restrict economic migration from these countries, giving political asylum only to pro-Western dissidents. They would be valuable assets in subsequent recolonization and form future pro-Western political elite of their countries of origin.
January 14th, 2007 at 4:21 pm
The problem is not so much the “barbarians”, but those Westerners who do not believe in their own system, or, actually, in anything at all… Everything is “relative”… There is no evil and no good… Terrorists are the same as those who fight against them…