Courtyard and parliamentary chamber” “

Eight months lived together with an Afghan family to report on how people live in Afghanistan after the war, when the spotlight of the media has been switched off: that’s the experience of the Norwegian journalist and writer Asne Seierstad , as recounted in her book “The Bookseller of Kabul” which documents the condition of women and the family in Islamic countries. Now in her early thirties, Asne Seierstad has received a number of national and international awards for her reportage from the war zones of Kosovo, Chechnya and Afghanistan. She was elected the best Norwegian television journalist in 1999, best writer of 2000 by the monthly Elle; she received the Free Speech Award as the best war reporter in 2002 and special mention by the Jury of the 9th Ilaria Alpi Prize in 2003. SirEurope met her and discussed with her Islam, the condition of women, emigration and family policies. From a courtyard in Kabul, as you describe it in your book, to the European cities in which many Moslems live: is that not a recipe for fundamentalism? “For the fundamentalist, it makes no difference whether he lives in Kabul or in Norway. There is, unfortunately, a tendentious reading of the Koran that is read only in some parts, while others are passed over in silence: for example, the parts in which women are praised and placed in a condition of equality with men. Norway is a free and open country in which women have enormous scope for freedom. Many women have been elected to Parliament. There are also well integrated Moslems”. For example? “There any many Pakistanis, some of them in Parliament. Their children attend public schools and try to integrate themselves ever more closely in Norwegian society. But there are also other groups of Islamic religion who deliberately segregate themselves, and do not spare criticisms of Norwegian life-style, which they call “godless and badly organized”, despite enjoying all the rights of citizens, including the right to state welfare”. Have there been responses to these criticisms? “There have been protests by some sections of the Norwegian population who have reminded these groups that it was their own free choice to come and live in Norway and that there is still time for them to leave. What is claimed of them is not that they should adapt themselves in everything to the Norwegian life-style, but that at least they should respect it. It’s clear that such positions may also give rise to episodes of racism”. How are Islamic communities organized? “First of all they have their own schools. Or rather they have the chance of choosing a Moslem school, whose curricula must be approved by the Norwegian state; a necessary precondition to receive state funding. More than systematic agreements with such communities, contacts with them are maintained at various levels, with the Imam, or with groups of parents with whom the problems linked to the new generations and the family are tackled”. Norway is investing heavily in the family. How did you find it living in an Afghan family? “In Afghanistan social control occurs within the family. It’s the father who decides everything: if the children have to go to school or work, if the women have to wear the burka or not, and if and with whom they must marry. It’s an archaic system. It makes no difference if the government grows in democracy if everything in the family remains as it was. Every attempt at emancipation must come to terms with the censorious eye of the neighbour…” Too harsh a situation to be accepted by a European… “In Norway there are family policies that place the country at the top of the league table for childbirth rates, with 1.9 children per family. Women in particular are helped during maternity: they can remain at home for one year on full salary, and are eligible to be re-enrolled in their former job once this period has expired. But if they decide not to do so, and continue to look after their child at home, they are still eligible for a guaranteed monthly sum of 600/700 euros. The same possibility is offered to the father”.