One of the reasons we were interested in coming to Norway (besides looking at the impact of the July 22, 2011 terrorism incident on the Norwegian people and on how they relate to Muslims), was that one of our former graduates, Kristel Tonstad, works here in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Kristel graduated from the Honors Program at La Sierra University in 2004 and has has had a long interest in international affairs and the Middle East. She came to meet us at dinner tonight and talked with us for quite a while about current affairs in Norway, the impact of the July 22 incident, and her own shared interests with us.
Earlier in the day today we had walked around downtown and came upon an area where a number of government buildings were boarded up and those that were still in partial operation had high security entrances. I was suspicious that this might be the area Breivik set off the bomb in 2011, but it looked like there was too much damage. We confirmed tonight with Kristel that this was the site of the bombing. Because there were only 8 casualties in Oslo, I hadn't expected the bomb damage to be so extensive. Kristel told us, though, that the reason the casualties were so low was that the bomb went off on a Friday afternoon in the summer, and almost no one is still at work after 3 pm on Friday afternoon in the summer in Oslo. The casualties would have been much, much higher if the incident had occurred in the morning and/or in another season of the year. I think this part of the story was lost in the American media. I know that after the carnage at the youth camp the bombing was secondary in most people's minds, but I was still shocked to see how extensive the damage actually was. It was clear to me that the bomb was much bigger than I realized. Also, although the foreign media immediately assumed the violence was from Islamic terrorists, Kristel said that locals knew right away that this had to be a local incident because the youth camp on the island where Breivik later attacked the young people was very much a locally-featured and locally-known event of the labor party. It was recognized as symbolic by the local community, but the international community would not have seen it as a significant target, because it was a feature of domestic rather than international politics. The report on the government and police response to the incident recently came out, and it reflected negatively on the preparedness of the government for such an event. There were a number of failures on a national and local level which allowed the event to be much more lethal and uncontrolled than it should have been. Kristel talked with us about the elections coming up in two weeks, and said that because of the report on the government failures, no one expects the current government to be able to continue, but there is a lot of uncertainty about who exactly will end up being part of a coalition government. There is a very anti-immigrant party as part of the ruling coalition in Denmark right now, and Norway doesn't have a party like this that is strong enough to get into power, but it's unclear exactly who will emerge as part of the next government and how that will affect the national stance toward immigrants and openness to foreigners.
I think hearing Kristel's memories of what she was doing and how she and people around her reacted at the time of the July 22 events helped the students to put them into a more personal perspective. We will meet with her again tomorrow afternoon and are looking forward to talking with a researcher here who studies the role of Muslims in the Norwegian community.
Today the students were assigned to choose one of three museums to go to. A number of them went to the Nobel Peace Prize Museum, which sounded very interesting. They reported back on what they had learned about the history of the prize, various efforts for peace in the world, and how the Nobel Prizes developed. Another group of students went to the Jewish Museum here, which is what my family did as well. The Jewish Museum is a history of the fate of the Jews living in Norway at the time of the Nazi occupation. As we've been studying religious minorities and how these groups are perceived by majority groups in Europe, it's been very interesting to compare what happened to the Jews in various countries and consider that in light of how the Muslim religious minority is perceived today. As in Denmark, many of the Jews of Norway took refuge in Sweden if they could get there, and the Swedes' openness to assisting these refugees was vital to their survival. Unlike in Denmark, though, the Norwegian Jews who were unable to escape to Sweden did not receive the widespread support of the general population, and in fact in many cases they were betrayed by neighbors. Clearly this happened in many places, but it has been interesting for us to discuss the various factors that contribute to creating situations in which people help those who they perceive to be different from them vs situations in which people turn their backs on others. I wish we had more time here to visit the Norwegian Resistance Museum and the Intercultural Museum. As we look at historical reactions to religious and ethnic minorities and the types of reactions we see to Muslims now, it's been interesting to see similarities and differences. Muslims certainly seem to be perceived as being "different" from previous stigmatized groups, but some of our reading has made clear just how similarly people have reacted to previous waves of Jewish and Catholic immigrants.
Having previously studied the French situation, we are able to look at ongoing events in France in new ways. We talked today about the defenstration (apparently a suicide attempt) of a young Muslim woman in the outskirts of Paris, after police harassment claiming she had filed a wrongful report of discrimination. We also discussed today reactions to Lady Gaga's new song about the burqa and the report of the UN weapons inspectors in Syria confirming chemical weapon use there. Although we have not had as many opportunities to spend a sustained amount of time with individual Muslims as we do in Turkey, the chain of people we've met and their reactions to and opinions about the situation of Muslims in Europe has definitely impacted us.
We are enjoying Oslo and our apartments are very nice and convenient to everything, and are also very close to where Kristel lives, which is nice.
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