Norwegians Find Life in Islam
“I think people need that, guidelines and rules and consequences in the form of punishment or praise,” 26-year-old Norwegian woman named Elsa, who didn’t want to be identified, told Aftenposten, NewsinEnglish.no reported on Monday, June 8.
“Something to believe in.”
Offering an insight into the Norwegian Muslim community, Aftenposten newspaper launched a series of reports over the weekend about Islam in Norway.
According to researchers, the number of ethnic Norwegians who reverted to Islam increased from around 500 at the end of the 1990s to around 3,000 today.
Though still representing a tiny percentage of the Norwegian population, the growth rate was regarded as significant, as is the perceived reason behind it.
“Converting to Islam is perhaps the most extreme form of youthful rebellion today,” Anne Sofie Roald, a professor in religion, told Aftenposten.
Islam, Roald noted, is a religion that can require a lifestyle for converts that’s “extremely different from the life they’ve lived earlier.”
Reverting to Islam more than 30 years ago, Roald cited the larger Muslim population now in Norway and its heightened visibility as factors influencing Norwegians who are looking for a religious alternative.
Those reverts usually launch into their new lives as Muslims wholeheartedly, she said in agreement with researcher Olav Elgvin of the University of Bergen.
“In general, many converts become ‘more Catholic than the pope,’” Roald, who reverted to Islam in 1982, told Aftenposten.
“The reality can be that the ideas about limits set by religion can be more appealing than the limits themselves.”
Norwegian Muslims are estimated at 150,000 out of the country’s 4.5 million population, mostly of Pakistan, Somali, Iraqi and Moroccan backgrounds.
Source: On Islam
