Two and a half sacraments?

 

The Christian sacrament situation was even more complex than I expected. I had some kind of vague notion that while Catholics and Orthodox had exactly the same seven sacraments, Protestants only had two (or perhaps three). Except for the Salvation Army, which have none. 

But naaah. It´s much more complicated. Perhaps I shouldn´t be surprised. 

An apple a day keeps the doctor away

  

 

With all due respecc to religious people, this is why I can´t take much of religion seriously. The first clip deals with that South Korean guy again, Kim-something, the guy who claims to have the highest IQ in the world and uses this to promote Christianity on X. Note that the muckraker who fact-checked his claims is an atheist. Many media outlets who run with the story were Christian.

The second clip is about Sam Shamoun, an Assyrian Christian and cyber-celebrity who for some time have claimed to be a Catholic. Except that...ahem...he isn´t. Wut?! Entryism sui generis, or what? 

The two remaining clips is from a recent "debate" between Orthobros and Catholics on YouTube. Note that Jay Dyer (the bad boy of the interwebs) turned out to be the *moderate* guy in this truly bizarre conflagration!  

   

In the land of the bajariye

 

Previously posted on August 26, 2018. 

“North to Another Country” by Ulf Björklund is an anthropological study of the Assyrian-Syriac immigrant community in the Swedish town of Södertälje, just south of Stockholm. The book was published in 1980. Still today, Assyrians (the term used by the author) are a highly visible immigrant group in that town. The book contains both general information on Assyrian history, and more specific information on the 1970's immigration of the Suryoyo (Syriac Christians from Tur Abdin in Turkey) to Sweden. Both the reactions of the authorities, those of the general Swedish populace, and those of the Suryoyo themselves are described. With the exception of an incredible complex chapter on various Suryoye lineages, the book is surprisingly free from high-brow scholarly theory, and can therefore be perused with ease by the general reader.

While Björklund's sympathies seem to lie with the Assyrians, none of the actors emerge completely unscathed from his study. The Swedish authorities come across as incomprehensible, first attempting to stop Assyrian immigration altogether, but then extending a very friendly welcome once they had been given the status of “B-refugees”. Of course, the Swedish welcome came in the form of social workers, family pedagogues, language teachers and bureaucrats. While talking about “pluralism”, they also wanted to socially engineer the Assyrians to fit the mould of the Swedish welfare state. Another contradiction: despite this warm welcome, the Swedish authorities often attempted to stop Assyrians from moving to Södertälje, since their numbers there were considered too high. (Much housing in Sweden is publicly or cooperatively owned, making it possible to some extent to control migration within the country. The welfare system could also be used for this purpose.) Björklund makes the interesting observation that the pluralist idea of preserving the culture of the Assyrians is really a *Swedish* angle on the problem, which often led to severe conflicts within the Assyrian immigrant community when “ethnic” organizations recognized by the Swedish authorities should be formed. Perhaps the Suryoyo community didn't acquire a “real” ethnic identity until they reached Sweden?

In contrast to the authorities, ordinary Swedes were more forthrightly negative to the new-comers. During the 1970's, Södertälje was a stronghold of the “raggare” subculture, today often considered a comic anachronism, but regarded as a public nuisance at the time. Björklund's book starts with a tabloid headline referring to the “first race riot in Sweden”, between raggare and Assyrians in 1977. More regular Swedish Joes didn't like the Assyrians either. They often referred to them as “Turks”, believed that all of them were welfare cheats, and spun urban legends about what kind of welfare payments they received. Huge Assyrian purchases of fruit at a local market gave rise to the rumour that the Assyrians were receiving “fruit payments” from the local authorities!

However, it also turns out that the Assyrians themselves had pretty wild expectations of Sweden. Many really did expect free housing and large handouts. A popular urban legend in the Assyrian community claimed that the money paid to Assyrian immigrants weren't really Swedish tax money, but came from the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Sweden supposedly confiscated most of the money, thus cheating the Assyrians of their fair share. Therefore, Assyrians could be on public welfare without incurring a sense of shame (“shame” and “honour” being important in their community). They were simply taking back money that rightfully belonged to them. It's not entirely clear from Björklund's narrative whether the Suryoyo community in Södertälje *really* believed this, or whether it was a kind of “white lie” to avoid being shamed, perhaps by other Assyrian communities?

The author also mentions other clashes between Swedish and Assyrian values, such as the liberal Swedish attitude to sex, different senses of propriety (Swedes – paradoxically – being more prudent in public), the positive Assyrian attitude towards child labour and early marriage, etc. The Assyrians were also intrigued by the large amount of Tayye (Muslims) being allowed into the “Christian” country of Sweden. In general, Assyrians regarded Swedes as extreme “bajariye”. The term “bajari” is apparently difficult to translate, but in this context means something like “impure” or “immoral”.

A follow up study might be interesting…

Five stars.

Upploppen i Hjällbo

Inte ens jag (och jag är väldigt beläst) har hört talas om mhallami tidigare. Jag har uppenbarligen missat boken "Familjen"!  

Länkarna nedan går till en vanlig vänsterblogg som kommenterar upploppen i Hjällbo, Göteborg. Det finns mer material förutom det jag länkar till. 

Bloggaren, Anders S, menar att det inte rör sig om "klaner", utan om en delvis kriminell släkt som de mer laglydiga elementen inom mhallami helt enkelt tröttnat på. (Fast i en annan artikel säger han att det faktiskt är släkter.) 

Jag har inte fördjupat mig i händelserna i Hjällbo alls - har helt enkelt inte hunnit - så dessa länkar ska inte uppfattas som att jag nödvändigtvis "stödjer" bloggarens perspektiv (eller kraftigt tar avstånd från det). 

Mhallami i Turkiet, Tyskland, Libanon och Sverige

Det handlar inte om en gängkonflikt och inte heller om klankultur

Ali Khans inblandade i upplop och skottlossning i Hjällbo

Gangsters som ett sätt att förstöra förorter

In my hometown

“Ortodoxa och österländska kyrkor i Sverige” by Thomas Arentzen is a book about Orthodox believers in Sweden. It was published in 2016. It´s interesting to note that the work wasn´t published by any Orthodox Church, but by a Swedish government agency, the so-called Committee for Government Grants to Religious Denominations! Thus, we are really dealing with an official attempt to map the Orthodox Churches. The book is probably intended as a guide for bureaucrats handling faith-related issues. That being said, it may be somewhat useful for the general reader, too. The author is an Eastern Orthodox Church historian.

The book covers the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox (“Monophysite”) and “Nestorian” jurisdictions currently found in Sweden. Eastern Catholics are mentioned more in passing. There are currently about 400,000 Orthodox believers in Sweden, according to the author´s rough estimations. The figure seems to include people who are only “culturally” Orthodox, however. The number of officially declared members of such Churches is only about 163,000. Most Orthodox believers are immigrants. The largest Orthodox church body in Sweden is the local jurisdiction of the Serbian Orthodox Church. This surprised me – I always assumed it was the Syriac Orthodox Church. It seems this Church is currently split. If all the Syriac Churches are counted together, they indeed have more members than the Serbian Church in this god-forsaken country. Swedish Orthodox believers are in very short supply. “Svenska Ortodoxa Prosteriet” has only about 2,000 members and are administratively a branch of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Finnish Orthodox congregation in Sweden (with church services mostly in Swedish) has about 1,500 members and belongs to the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople rather than that of the Orthodox Church in Finland (!). I have to admit that the various bureaucratic struggles so often beloved by the Orthodox make my head spin…

Most of the information in this book deals with Church history, membership figures, and the already mentioned jurisdictional wrangling. The author briefly describes the liturgy of the various groups covered. He also, just as briefly, mentions traditional church holidays, many of an obviously “folkish” (pre-Christian?) character. The notorious revelations of Syriac Orthodox girl Samira Hannoch are mentioned only in passing, perhaps to respect her privacy. After all, this is a book published by a government agency. The author mentions a Syriac Marian apparition in Tensta, an immigrant neighborhood in Stockholm, but also mostly in passing. I admit I had no idea the Virgin Mary appeared in my hometown! Nor did I know that there was an Eastern Orthodox starets living in the forests of Dalarna... 

Thomas Arentzen´s book is somewhat dry, but if you understand Swedish and are interested in Eastern and Oriental Orthodoxy (or Nestorians), I suppose it could be of some interest.

The cross and the crescent

“Korset och halvmånen” (The Cross and the Crescent) is a book by Ingmar Karlsson, unfortunately only available in Swedish. Karlsson has worked as a diplomat in both Syria and Turkey. I haven´t seen the new edition of his book, but the original 1991 version is widely available in public libraries all over Sweden. It seems to be the only popularized introduction in the Swedish language to the thorny issue of religious minorities in the Middle East. It deals extensively with the Monophysite and Nestorian Christians, the Druze and with several “Ghulat” groups within Shia Islam. 

Karlsson valiantly tries to describe the esoteric messages of the Ismailites, Alawites and Druze (or what little was known about them in 1991), and he treats the various Christological controversies within the early Church with equal erudition. The most fascinating chapter deals with the Kurdish Yazidis, who have often been accused of “Devil-worship” (and therefore viciously attacked by the ISIS terrorists – a Yazidi recently got the Nobel Peace Prize). The weakest chapter in my opinion is the one about the Samaritans. But then, perhaps information about them was difficult to get by when the book was written? 

One thing that struck me when reading “Korset och halvmånen” is that many of the “minorities” mentioned are large enough to play important political roles – or at least well-placed enough to do so. Thus, Syria is controlled by a small clan of Alawis, while the Druze had a significant role in the Lebanese civil war. Today, many Yazidis have joined the leftist guerillas in northern Syria, while the Christian Question looms large all over the Middle East. 

I somehow suspect that Karlsson, or his publishers, will have to update this book again at some point in the near future…

In the land of the bajariye

“North to Another Country” by Ulf Björklund is an anthropological study of the Assyrian-Syriac immigrant community in the Swedish town of Södertälje, just south of Stockholm. The book was published in 1980. Still today, Assyrians (the term used by the author) are a highly visible immigrant group in that town. The book contains both general information on Assyrian history, and more specific information on the 1970's immigration of the Suryoyo (Syriac Christians from Tur Abdin in Turkey) to Sweden. Both the reactions of the authorities, those of the general Swedish populace, and those of the Suryoyo themselves are described. With the exception of an incredible complex chapter on various Suryoye lineages, the book is surprisingly free from high-brow scholarly theory, and can therefore be perused with ease by the general reader.

While Björklund's sympathies seem to lie with the Assyrians, none of the actors emerge completely unscathed from his study. The Swedish authorities come across as incomprehensible, first attempting to stop Assyrian immigration altogether, but then extending a very friendly welcome once they had been given the status of “B-refugees”. Of course, the Swedish welcome came in the form of social workers, family pedagogues, language teachers and bureaucrats. While talking about “pluralism”, they also wanted to socially engineer the Assyrians to fit the mould of the Swedish welfare state. Another contradiction: despite this warm welcome, the Swedish authorities often attempted to stop Assyrians from moving to Södertälje, since their numbers there were considered too high. (Much housing in Sweden is publicly or cooperatively owned, making it possible to some extent to control migration within the country. The welfare system could also be used for this purpose.) Björklund makes the interesting observation that the pluralist idea of preserving the culture of the Assyrians is really a *Swedish* angle on the problem, which often led to severe conflicts within the Assyrian immigrant community when “ethnic” organizations recognized by the Swedish authorities should be formed. Perhaps the Suryoyo community didn't acquire a “real” ethnic identity until they reached Sweden?

In contrast to the authorities, ordinary Swedes were more forthrightly negative to the new-comers. During the 1970's, Södertälje was a stronghold of the “raggare” subculture, today often considered a comic anachronism, but regarded as a public nuisance at the time. Björklund's book starts with a tabloid headline referring to the “first race riot in Sweden”, between raggare and Assyrians in 1977. More regular Swedish Joes didn't like the Assyrians either. They often referred to them as “Turks”, believed that all of them were welfare cheats, and spun urban legends about what kind of welfare payments they received. Huge Assyrian purchases of fruit at a local market gave rise to the rumour that the Assyrians were receiving “fruit payments” from the local authorities!

However, it also turns out that the Assyrians themselves had pretty wild expectations of Sweden. Many really did expect free housing and large handouts. A popular urban legend in the Assyrian community claimed that the money paid to Assyrian immigrants weren't really Swedish tax money, but came from the World Council of Churches in Geneva. Sweden supposedly confiscated most of the money, thus cheating the Assyrians of their fair share. Therefore, Assyrians could be on public welfare without incurring a sense of shame (“shame” and “honour” being important in their community). They were simply taking back money that rightfully belonged to them. It's not entirely clear from Björklund's narrative whether the Suryoyo community in Södertälje *really* believed this, or whether it was a kind of “white lie” to avoid being shamed, perhaps by other Assyrian communities?

The author also mentions other clashes between Swedish and Assyrian values, such as the liberal Swedish attitude to sex, different senses of propriety (Swedes – paradoxically – being more prudent in public), the positive Assyrian attitude towards child labour and early marriage, etc. The Assyrians were also intrigued by the large amount of Tayye (Muslims) being allowed into the “Christian” country of Sweden. In general, Assyrians regarded Swedes as extreme “bajariye”. The term “bajari” is apparently difficult to translate, but in this context means something like “impure” or “immoral”.

A follow up study might be interesting…

Five stars.