The morality police are coming! Muslims in Norway's media discourses (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate) |
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| Authors: | Sindre Bangstad |
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| Institution: | Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He is currently researching ‘vernacular concepts of the secular’ among young Norwegians of Muslim background and is writing a monograph about new Muslim public intellectuals in Norway. His email is sindre.bangstad@sai.uio.no. |
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| Abstract: | In early 2010, a series of reports appeared in the influential liberal‐conservative Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten drawing attention to what appeared to reporters to be a self‐appointed, de facto Muslim ‘morality police’ attempting to use harassment to exert social control over non‐hijab‐wearing women of immigrant background and gay men in the district of Grønland in the inner city of Oslo. What came to be known in Norway as the ‘morality‐police debate’ demonstrated the extent to which the figure of the Muslim male as an embodied threat to Norway's presumed relative gender equality and lack of homophobia had come to be embedded in the country's media and political discourse. This article suggests that the debate can tell us much about why certain tropes central to Norway's anti‐Muslim discourses have gained such currency across the Norwegian political board in recent years. |
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