"Keeping the meat safe": Taslima Nasreen on the burqa

I shall unloose --
From the small jeweled
Doll he guards like a heart --

The lioness,
The shriek in the bath,
The cloak of holes.
[Purdah, by Sylvia Plath]

The following article by Taslima Nasreen was first published on January 22, 2007 by OutlookIndia.Com. You can download it from her website here (clicking that link will go directly to the pdf).

In February of 2010 a newspaper in the state of Karnataka, India, published a translation of the article in the Kannada language (the article was originally written in English). This was done without Nasreen's participation or even her knowledge.

The publication of the unauthorized translation of the article led to several days of bloody rioting by Muslims in the districts of Shimoga and Hassan. At least two people died in these riots and many more were injured. Rioters also burned vehicles and threw stones at buses and shops (source).

Let's Think Again About The Burqa
The Quran does prescribe purdah. That doesn't mean women should obey it.
TASLIMA NASREEN

My mother used purdah. She wore a burqa with a net cover in front of the face. It reminded me of the meatsafes in my grandmother's house. One had a net door made of cloth, the other of metal. But the objective was the same: keeping the meat safe. My mother was put under a burqa by her conservative family. They told her that wearing a burqa would mean obeying Allah.

Women too have sexual urges. So why didn't Allah start the purdah for men? Clearly, He treated them on unequal terms.

And if you obey Allah, He would be happy with you and not let you burn in hellfire. My mother was afraid of Allah and also of her own father. He would threaten her with grave consequences if she didn't wear the burqa. She was also afraid of the men in the neighbourhood, who could have shamed her. Even her husband was a source of fear, for he could do anything to her if she disobeyed him.

As a young girl, I used to nag her: Ma, don't you suffocate in this veil? Don't you feel all dark inside? Don't you feel breathless? Don't you feel angry? Don't you ever feel like throwing it off? My mother kept mum. She couldn't do anything about it. But I did. When I was sixteen, I was presented a burqa by one of my relatives. I threw it away.

The custom of purdah is not new. It dates back to 300 BC. The women of aristocratic Assyrian families used purdah. Ordinary women and prostitutes were not allowed purdah. In the middle ages, even Anglo-Saxon women used to cover their hair and chin and hide their faces behind a cloth or similar object. This purdah system was obviously not religious. The religious purdah is used by Catholic nuns and Mormons, though for the latter only during religious ceremonies and rituals. For Muslim women, however, such religious purdah is not limited to specific rituals but mandatory for their daily life outside the purview of religion.

A couple of months ago, at the height of the purdah controversy, Shabana Azmi asserted that the Quran doesn't say anything about wearing the burqa. She's mistaken. This is what the Quran says:

"Tell the faithful women that they must keep their gaze focused below/on the ground and cover their sexual organs. They must not put their beauty and their jewellery on display. They must hide their breasts behind a purdah. They must not exhibit their beauty to anybody except their husbands, brothers, nephews, womenfolk, servants, eunuch employees and children. They must not move their legs briskly while walking because then much of their bodies can get exposed." (Sura Al Noor 24:31)

"Oh nabi, please tell your wives and daughters and faithful women to wear a covering dress on their bodies. That would be good. Then nobody can recognise them and harrass them. Allah is merciful and kind." (Sura Al Hijaab 33: 59)

Even the Hadis --a collection of the words of Prophet Mohammed, his opinion on various subjects and also about his work, written by those close to him-- talks extensively of the purdah for women. Women must cover their whole body before going out, they should not go before unknown men, they should not go to the mosque to read the namaaz, they should not go for any funeral.

There are many views on why and how the Islamic purdah started. One view has it that Prophet Mohammed became very poor after spending all the wealth of his first wife. At that time, in Arabia, the poor had to go to the open desert and plains for relieving themselves and even their sexual needs. The Prophet's wives too had to do the same. He had told his wives that "I give you permission to go out and carry out your natural work". (Bukhari Hadis first volume book 4 No. 149). And this is what his wives started doing accordingly. One day, Prophet Mohammed's disciple Uman complained to him that these women were very uncomfortable because they were instantly recognisable while relieving themselves. Umar proposed a cover but Prophet Mohammed ignored it. Then the Prophet asked Allah for advice and he laid down the Ayat (33:59) (Bukhari Hadis Book 026 No. 5397).

This is the history of the purdah, according to the Hadis. But the question is: since Arab men too relieved themselves in the open, why didn't Allah start the purdah for men? Clearly, Allah doesn't treat men and women as equals, else there would be purdah for both! Men are higher than women. So women have to be made walking prisons and men can remain free birds.

Another view is that the purdah was introduced to separate women from servants. This originates from stories in the Hadis. One story in the Bukhari Hadis goes thus: After winning the Khyber War, Prophet Mohammed took over all the properties of the enemy, including their women. One of these women was called Safia. One of the Prophet's disciples sought to know her status. He replied: "If tomorrow you see that Safia is going around covered, under purdah, then she is going to be a wife. If you see her uncovered, that means I've decided to make her my servant."

The third view comes from this story. Prophet Mohammed's wife Ayesha was very beautiful. His friends were often found staring at her with fascination. This clearly upset the Prophet. So the Quran has an Ayat that says, "Oh friends of the prophet or holy men, never go to your friend's house without an invitation. And if you do go, don't go and ask anything of their wives". It is to resist the greedy eyes of friends, disciples or male guests that the purdah system came into being. First it was applicable to only the wives of the holy men, and later it was extended to all Muslim women. Purdah means covering the entire body except for the eyes, wrist and feet. Nowadays, some women practise the purdah by only covering their hair. That is not what is written in the Hadis Quran. Frankly, covering just the hair is not Islamic purdah in the strict sense.

In the early Islamic period, Prophet Mohammed started the practice of covering the feet of women. Within 100 years of his death, purdah spread across the entire Middle East. Women were covered by an extra layer of clothing. They were forbidden to go out of the house, or in front of unknown men. Their lives were hemmed into a tight regime: stay at home, cook, clean the house, bear children and bring them up. In this way, one section of the people was separated by purdah, quarantined and covered.

Why are women covered? Because they are sex objects. Because when men see them, they are roused. Why should women have to be penalised for men's sexual problems? Even women have sexual urges. But men are not covered for that. In no religion formulated by men are women considered to have a separate existence, or as human beings having desires and opinions separate from men's. The purdah rules humiliate not only women but men too. If women walk about without purdah, it's as if men will look at them with lustful eyes, or pounce on them, or rape them. Do they lose all their senses when they see any woman without burqa?

My question to Shabana and her supporters, who argue that the Quran says nothing about purdah is: If the Quran advises women to use purdah, should they do so? My answer is, No. Irrespective of which book says it, which person advises, whoever commands, women should not have purdah. No veil, no chador, no hijab, no burqa, no headscarf. Women should not use any of these things because all these are instruments of disrespect. These are symbols of women's oppression. Through them, women are told that they are but the property of men, objects for their use. These coverings are used to keep women passive and submissive. Women are told to wear them so that they cannot exist with their self-respect, honour, confidence, separate identity, own opinion and ideals intact. So that they cannot stand on their own two feet and live with their head held high and their spine strong and erect.

Some 1,500 years ago, it was decided for an individual's personal reasons that women should have purdah and since then millions of Muslim women all over the world have had to suffer it. So many old customs have died a natural death, but not purdah. Instead, of late, there has been a mad craze to revive it. Covering a woman's head means covering her brain and ensuring that it doesn't work. If women's brains worked properly, they'd have long ago thrown off these veils and burqas imposed on them by a religious and patriarchal regime.

What should women do? They should protest against this discrimination. They should proclaim a war against the wrongs and ill-treatment meted out to them for hundreds of years. They should snatch from the men their freedom and their rights. They should throw away this apparel of discrimination and burn their burqas.

Banning the Burqa, and Other Good Ideas

We are told that: "Muslims follow a religion of peace, mercy and forgiveness that should not be associated with acts of violence against the innocent." Therefore, it is unfair to characterize Islam as a whole as violent, intolerant and oppressive, for this is only true of certain strains of Islam variously referred to as "fundamentalist" or "extremist".

Fine. Let us only direct our attention to those subsets of Islam that are undeniably violent, intolerant, and oppressive. Like, for instance, those Muslims who impose on women a state of subjugation worse than slavery, and as part of this subjugation force women to wear the so-called "burqa".

Wait, what's that you say? Banning the burqa violates freedom of religion? Really? But Islam does not require women to wear the burqa. Only certain interpretations of Islam do. Just as certain interpretations of Islam call for "acts of violence against the innocent."

If we are to believe that Islam as a whole is not oppressive, then why is it that Muslims as a group band together and rally to defend the most repugnant "interpretations" of their religion, such as the burqa, in the name of "freedom of religion" (a concept utterly foreign to Islam anyway)?

But perhaps there are good reasons to not ban the burqa. Telling people what they can and cannot wear is, after all, an inherently objectionable idea. Ayan Hirsi Ali, one of the world's fiercest critics of Islam, says that banning the burqa "misses the point" (link), and maybe she has a point. Ali says it's far more important to educate people about why the burqa is such an odious symbol of oppression, than it is to be sucked into culture war debates over regulating things that are normally (and properly) left up to individual choice.

Although I am a big fan of Ayan Hirsi Ali, I think I'm going to have to disagree with her on this one. The burqa ban is a blunt instrument, and sometimes that is exactly what is needed. It's like that old anarchist saying: "Any tool can be a weapon if you hold it right."

People in Europe are afraid of Islam. Why? Because they are all evil racists and/or mindless Christian fundamentalists? No. Because they are all high-minded humanists steeped in the ideals of the Enlightenment? No.

People in Europe are afraid of Islam because they have, over many decades, come to know Islam up close and personal. They have seen the real effects that Islam has had in their societies and they do not like it. They have come to understand that more Islam means less freedom.

This isn't the case of the boy who cried wolf, or of someone shouting fire in a crowded theater. The wolf is real, and the theater is on fire. Both freedom of expression and freedom of religion are already being eroded thanks to the spread of Islam in the West.

In the United States, anyone who has a mind to is perfectly free to buy and read and express open admiration for Mein Kampf; the Communist Manifesto; the writings of Ayn Rand; the Turner Diaries; David Ray Griffin's Debunking 9/11 Debunking; The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; Naked Lunch; Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging; the Captain Underpants novels; A Clockwork Orange; the Left Behind novels; Lolita; Che Guevara on Guerrilla Warfare; Mao's Little Red Book; the writings of Subcomandante Marcos; Sex, Orgasm and the Mind of Clear Light: The Sixty Four Arts of Gay Male Love, etc, etc, etc ....

And in the United States, anyone who feels so moved is free to buy any or all of the above named books and then set them on fire and film the whole thing and upload it to youtube and no one can say anything other than, oh my do you really think you should do that? But if you burn the Koran all bets are off. Why? Because Islam is different, evidently. But if Islam is different then it deserves to be treated differently. But lets not even go that far. Lets just say that certain aspects of Islam are clearly deserving of being treated differently, like those aspects of Islam that are blatantly violent, intolerant, and oppressive. Like the burqa. And Sharia. And the whole killing apostates thing. And the demand that the Koran be treated (by non-Muslims) with special respect not accorded to any other book or writing . . . .

Pastor Terry Jones: Outsider Performance Artist?

“What I learned was that...
if you leave it up to the audience,
they can kill you.”
Marina Abramović

British art historian Roger Cardinal coined the phrase "outsider art" in 1972, as an English language equivalent of the French term art brut, first used by Jean Dubuffet in 1945, who was especially influenced by collections of artwork from patients being treated in mental hospitals.

For more on the history of the terms art brut and outsider art, see these two links:
Art Brut Story (at the Art Brut Education Kit website)
Outsider Art (at the Tate Museum website)

Although there were earlier antecedents, "performance art" came into its own starting with artists like Yoko Ono and Allan Kaprow in the 1960s. To my mind, performance art is ill-served by any and all attempts at definition. But it lends itself to description: a group of people, their naked bodies painted with polka dots, gather on the Brooklyn Bridge, and burn the American flag. That particular piece of performance art was performed in 1968 by Yayoi Kusama and friends, and it was called "Naked Happening Orgy and Flag Burning." (Back in the day, works of performance art were called "happenings".)

For more on performance art, check out Yayoi Kusama's website, or the article James Franco recently wrote for the Wall Street Journal on performance art.

Now, when I think of outsider art, I think of things like the strangely beautiful work of Henry Darger. And when I think of performance art, I think of the masked hoop dancer and art student, Mona Qaddoumi aka ShpongledHoops, or John Cage seated, unmoving, on a piano bench for four minutes and thirty three seconds.

But what if you were to combine outsider art with performance art? What might that look like? Well, this would be a good time to recall that much of the original inspiration for the idea of outsider art came from mental hospital patients.

Enter Pastor Terry Jones. This crazy son of a bitch didn't just burn the Koran: first he put it on trial. He even managed to find a Sufi Imam from Texas, Mohamed Elhassan, who was willing to act as the "defense attorney" during the trial, although Elhassan later claimed that he had no idea that Jones planned to finally carry through on his earlier threats to burn the Koran.

But of course that is exactly what Terry Jones did.

But was it art?

Marina Abramović described her 1974 performance, Rhythm 0 like this: "I was standing there in the middle of the space, with this table with objects. I put the objects on the table very carefully chosen, because the objects were for pleasure, and there was also the objects for pain ... and objects that can bring you to death .... In the beginning the public was really very much playing with me. Later on they became more and more aggressive. It was six hours of real horror. They would cut my clothes, they would cut me with a knife close to my neck and drink my blood, and then put a plaster over the wound. They would carry me around half naked, put me on the table, and stuck the knife between my legs into the wood. And even somebody put a bullet in the pistol [a gun and one bullet were among the objects she had put out on the table] ...." (source)

Abramović also later said of Rhythm 0: “I felt really violated: they cut up my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the audience. Everyone ran away, to escape an actual confrontation .... What I learned was that... if you leave it up to the audience, they can kill you." (A Daneri, et al., Marina Abramović, Charta, 2002.)

сумасшедшие видео России

Премьера! Потап и Настя - Чумачечая Весна
("Chumachechaya Spring" the new world-wide smash hit sensation by Potap and Nastya. This is one of the most perfect music videos ever made.)


Нюша - Выбирать чудо
("Choose a Miracle" by Nyusha. Two words: Scary Clowns. Two more words: knock knock.)


Все включено - Девочка Столичная
(I believe this song has something to do with Stolinchnaya.)


Ёлка - Прованс
(Damn, can she sing. And does she look like Bette Midler and/or Mayim Bialik, or what?)


QUEST PISTOLs "Клетка" (клип)
(More Ukrainians singing in Russian. Psychedelic, man.)


Indiyskoe Disko
(a winning combination of eye candy costumes, psychedelic set designs, and bollywood-esque choreography)


Russian Rock
(This is the Russian band Слот (Slot). Check out the pipes on the lead singer.)

The Soft Bigotry of the New Islamic Apologetics

Pity the poor Afghan Muslims. They are unable to control their murderous impulses. They are unable to reason. They have to be protected from what people around the world honestly think about their religion. They cannot be expected to do what everyone else is expected to do: to understand that sticks and stones may break my bones, but a mustachioed nutjob in Florida burning the Koran on youtube will never hurt me.

Afghan Muslims cannot be expected to do what Catholics are expected to do every time Kathy Griffin refers to Catholic priests as "kid fuckers." Nor can Afghan Muslims be expected to do what Rush Limbaugh, and Glenn Beck, and Sarah Palin are apparently able to do: to somehow resist the urge to go on a killing spree every time they are insulted by people who disagree with them.

And what about Pastor Terry Jones and his followers? They are subjected to relentless public ridicule, and even public hectoring from the President of the United States and General Petraeus. And yet they have not been accused of a single act of violence of any kind that has caused even the slightest injury to another human being. Well, I guess you just can't apply the same high standards to Afghan Muslims that we apply, without hesitation, to the drooling fanatics who look up to Terry Jones as a religious leader!

Someone please correct me if I am wrong, but the logic of those who blame Terry Jones for the violence in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Muslim world seems to be this:
(1) everyone knows that Muslims are irrational savages incapable of self-control
(2) therefore if you make Muslims mad you are responsible for any ensuing acts of violence committed by them

Please know that I am definitely not of this opinion. I am of the opinion that Afghan Muslims are capable of rational thought and self-control, or at least as capable of rational thought and self-control as Terry Jones, Rush Limbaugh, etc. Therefore when Afghan Muslims decide to hunt some people down and murder them in cold blood as they beg for their lives, those Afghan Muslims, and no one else, are responsible for their own actions.

We would live in a much better and infinitely more peaceful world if all bigots and fanatics everywhere chose to express themselves through "hate-speech" and symbolic acts of desecration against inanimate objects, like copies of the Koran.

And at the same time we live in a world that is less free, less diverse, and less interesting when our freedom to voice our opinions on the subject of religion is dependent on which religion we happen to be talking about.

"UN staff were hunted down and slaughtered"

Here are two reports based on eyewitness accounts.

1.
Inside the Massacre at Afghan Compound
By DION NISSENBAUM And MARIA ABI-HABIB
Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2011

Excerpt:

Friday, thousands of people gathered in Mazar-e-Sharif's revered Blue Mosque. Speaker after speaker denounced the Quran-burning, which for Muslims is abhorrent because Islam teaches that the physical book is holy.

"Stand up against the enemies of the Quran with your pen," one of the men shouted from the podium, videos show. "Stand up against them with your voices. Stand up against them with weapons. It is everyone's right to stand up against them and make a jihad."

The protesters then surprised police by pouring into the street and marching toward the U.N. office, more than a mile away. At one point, according to videos reviewed by the Journal, the badly outnumbered police tried to use a six-foot wood beam to hold back the crowd. The protesters easily surged past.

Only about 60 police were deployed, and they appeared uncertain how to respond. Initial attempts to disperse the crowd by firing warning shots appeared only to inflame the demonstrators. The besieged U.N. staffers headed to two safe rooms intended to shield against intruders and bombs.

They phoned for help from the nearby military bases of German and Swedish forces, according to a person briefed on the situation. The U.S.-led military said the situation "escalated rapidly" and that a swift-reaction team didn't arrive until after rioters were gone.

Once demonstrators flooded the compound, a dozen Afghan police guards—the first line of defense—dropped their weapons, said Brig. Gen. Esmatullah Alizai, the provincial police chief. "They were surrounded and confused," he said.

Inside the compound, a small contingent of Nepalese Gurkha guards working for the U.N. faced a conundrum: They were under U.N. orders not to open fire on demonstrators. The videos show one guard feebly trying to wave an elderly demonstrator out of the compound.

Nearby, videos show, demonstrators used bent metal rods to smash a row of white U.N. SUVs.

Among those attacking the U.N. vehicles was a young religious student from a small village not far from the city. The student said in an interview that he and one of his friends found a propane tank that they shoved under one vehicle and set off an explosion.

Nearby, the student said, two Afghan policemen were hiding with a foreigner behind a tanker. When one of the officers shot and injured a young demonstrator, the student said he saw a chance to disarm him.

"Grab his weapon," the student said he shouted to his friend, who wrestled a Kalashnikov assault rifle and used it to shoot the unarmed foreigner.

Inside the building, other attackers targeted one of the safe rooms. The door proved little protection against the mob. As intruders penetrated the safe room, Pavel Ershov, a Russian diplomat who speaks fluent Dari sought to protect three staff members by distracting the assailants, the U.N.'s Mr. de Mistura said.

"Are you Muslim?" the assailants asked Mr. Ershov, according to one diplomat briefed on the attack. Mr. Ershov lied and said he was, the U.N. said. The assailants tested him by asking him to recite the traditional profession of belief in Islam, which begins, "There is no God but Allah."

When he successfully completed the test, his life was spared. Still, he was dragged into the street and beaten badly, according to a local shopkeeper who said he participated in the assault.

The attackers searched the darkened bunker with a lamp and discovered Lt. Col. Siri Skare, a 53-year-old Norwegian military attaché—the former fighter pilot—seconded to the U.N., along with Joakim Dungel, a 33-year-old Swede who had been working in the human-rights office for less than two months, and Filaret Motco, a 43-year-old Romanian who headed the mission's political section.

As Lt. Col. Skare attempted to flee the bunker, she was intercepted by the Afghan demonstrators who had set the car on fire. She was shot with the rifle commandeered from the police officer, one of the men said. Lt. Col. Skare died of her wounds. Messrs. Dungel and Motco were killed elsewhere.

Four Afghans—men also described as "insurgents" by Gen. Alizai, the police official—were also killed. Video footage of demonstrators leaving the U.N. compound shows two men carrying Kalashnikovs and one showing off a large, blood-spattered knife.

As the attackers focused on the four U.N. workers who had been hiding in the first safe room, diplomats said, three or four others, including the German newcomer, were sheltered in a safe room in another building. They survived.
[Yaroslav Trofimov, Zamir Saar, Michael Allen and Betsy McKay contributed to this article.]

2.
UN staff were hunted down and slaughtered in Afghanistan
By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor
The Telegraph, April 4, 2011

Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy to Afghanistan, gave the shocking details about the actions of the mob, which was protesting at the burning of a Koran overseen by the American pastor Terry Jones.

Mr de Mistura blamed Mr Jones for provoking the violence which led to the killing of seven UN employees on Friday, and which spread throughout Afghanistan over the weekend. Twenty-two people have lost their lives since protests erupted in Mazar-i-Sharif on Friday, including two policemen who were killed in clashes in Kandahar on Sunday.

Speaking on his return to Kabul from Mazar-i-Sharif, Mr de Mistura said he had been shocked by what he had seen. His staff had been shot and stabbed to death as they tried to flee in terror through a dark building from a marauding mob.

They had retreated to a bunker after some of the 3,000 protesters overran the compound, killing four of six Gurkha guards. He believed the killings had been carried out by up to 15 insurgents carrying handguns, who had infiltrated the mob.

The UN staff were hiding in complete darkness in the bunker when the protesters found them and forced open the door.

The head of mission, Pavel Ershov, spoke to the attackers in Dari, a local language, to distract them from his staff hiding behind him. They had attacked him, but stopped after he told them he was a Muslim, Mr de Mistura said.

"One was pulled out alive because he pretended to be a Muslim. He spoke the language and tried to draw their attention on himself. For a moment, he hoped that they would think there was nobody else there," he said.

The attackers shone a torch inside the bunker to find the other foreign UN staff, pulled them out one by one and killed them, he said. They shot dead three of the staff, and then slit the throat of one of them. "They were killed when they were running out of the bunker," he said.

President Barack Obama condemned Mr Jones's actions, but said they did not justify the attacks. The desecration of the Koran was "an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry", but "no religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and there is no justification for such a dishonourable and deplorable act," he said.

There were fresh protests throughout the country in Jalalabad, Parwan and Kandahar yesterday, where two police officers were killed and 20 people were injured. On Saturday nine people were killed and 80 injured in gun-battles following protests in the city.

A Taliban statement accused Afghan police of shooting unarmed protesters.

Muslims in Kerala, India, burning textbooks that they don't like (in 2008):


A book burning in Pakistan in 2008:


Muslims burning Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses in Bradford, England, 1989:


Another photo from the Bradford book burning in 1989 (from this WSJ article):

More on belief in reincarnation in Europe

In 2006, the European Values Study released the data that had been gathered during 1999-2000 (link). This was the "third wave" of an ongoing project begun in the late 70s "aimed at exploring the moral and social values underlying European social and political institutions and governing conduct." (link)

In his analysis of the EVS 2000 data, Erlendur Haraldsson, professor of social sciences at the University of Iceland, posited three different, complementary, explanations for the persistent and pervasive belief in reincarnation in Europe: (1) the survival of pre-Christian beliefs, (2) the importation of non-Christian beliefs (from outside of Europe), and (3) individuals arriving at the idea of reincarnation independently:

It is easy to point to three factors that may have had an impact on how relatively widespread the belief in reincarnation is.

First are pre-Christian beliefs in Scandinavia as well as other parts of Europe. The ancient Nordic poems in the Poetic Edda were first recorded in writing in Iceland in the 13th century but stem from the pre-Christian era (Sigurðsson 1999). From their contents we can assume that the Scandinavians believed in reincar- nation. E. g., in the poem Helgakvida Hundingsbana it is stated that the female hero Sigrun was Svava reborn. In a commentary in the Poetic Edda we read: it was the belief in olden times that men were born again, but that is now called old women's superstition (Hollander, 1928, p. 237).

There are even cases where arguments were made as to why a certain person was believed to be another person reborn. Some of them resemble rare cases of children who claim to remember a former life (Stevenson, 2003; Haraldsson, 2001, 2003).

Pre-christian literary sources from other parts of Europe tell a similar story. Plato discusses “metempsychosis” in several of his works (Phaedo 81c-82b, Phaedrus 248c-249b, the Republic 617d-620e, and Timaeus 41-42, 90c-92c.). Caesar writes in his book on the Gallic Wars (which took place in present-day France) “The cardinal doctrine which they [the schools of the Druids] seek to teach is that souls do not die, but after death pass from one body to another” (Caesar, Book VI, 14). Roman historians refer to a similar belief among the Germans (for example Appian of Alexandria: 1987-89). Celtic poems from pre-Christian Ireland contain stories of rebirth (Chadwick, 1955-56; Meyer & Nutt, 1897) similar to those in the Poetic Edda. These sources give us reasons to assume that belief in rebirth was common in Europe before Christianization.

Secondly, from the 18th century onwards Western and Asian scholars and religious leaders introduced Hindu and Buddhist religious scriptures and philosophies to Europeans and they received considerable attention (Zander, 1999). This was particularly the case in the 19th and 20th century when societies and movements were established in Europe that made the doctrine of reincarnation an integral part of their teaching.

Thirdly and lastly, some people may, when brooding on the question of whether some part of their nature survives death, intuitively have found reincarnation a plausible concept or possibility.
[p. 177]

The full title of Haraldsson's paper is quite a mouthful: Popular psychology, belief in life after death and reincarnation in the Nordic countries, Western and Eastern Europe (Nordic Psychology, 58, 171-180). The pdf for this article is available for download at Erlendur Haraldsson's website, which is very much worth a visit!

One of the things that Haraldsson draws attention to is the fact that the prevalence of belief in reincarnation is even more striking if it is considered specifically as a subset of beliefs about life after death. In many cases, close to half (or in some cases, even more) of those who profess belief in an afterlife believe in reincarnation. In the fifteen Eastern European nations surveyed, those who believe in reincarnation consistently made up more than half of all those who believe in life after death with only four exceptions: Croatia, Romania, Poland and Slovakia.

My own (very tentative) conclusion looking at both the third and fourth waves of the EVS is that the two most striking results are those for Iceland and the Baltic states, which were the last two great bastions of European Pagandom. Iceland, in particular, follows a completely different pattern of belief with respect to reincarnation compared to other Nordic countries, which tend toward the middle (in the cases of Sweden and Finland) or the lower end (Denmark and Norway) of the spectrum, while the Baltic states fit the pattern of Eastern Europe, only more so. No generalizing based on "Nordic" countries, or "Germanic" countries seems to be applicable here. If we also add in Great Britain and Russia then we find that these "Northern European" nations (Iceland, Great Britain, Russia and the Baltic states) contrast sharply with the countries of (continental) Scandinavia, as well as with Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.

Here are the data:

-------------------------------------------
1/3 or more believe in reincarnation
-------------------------------------------
Lithuania 42.8%
Iceland 41.1%
Estonia 37.5%
*Switzerland 36% (using data from 1990)
Latvia 33.4%
Turkey 33.1%
----------------------
between 1/4 and 1/3
----------------------
Belarus 32.5%
Bulgaria 32.4%
Russian Federation 31.7%
Portugal 29.9%
Ukraine 29.2%
*Britain 29% (using data from 1990)
France 28.5%
Romania 28.0%
Greece 26.0%
Luxembourg 25.2%
----------------------
betweem 1/5 and 1/4
----------------------
Poland 24.2%
Croatia 23.8%
Sweden 22.3%
Netherlands 22.2%
Ireland 22.2%
Austria 21.7%
Spain 20.1%
----------------------
between 1/6 and 1/5
----------------------
Hungary 19.6%
Slovak Republic 19.6%
Finland 18.4%
Italy 17.8%
Denmark 17.3%
Czech Republic 21.8%
Belgium 18.6%
Slovenia 16.7%
----------------------
less than 1/6
----------------------
Germany 16.3%
Northern Ireland 15.6%
* Norway 15% (using data from 1990 EVS)
Malta 12.0% [not indicated on map]

amazing dance moves

what is this?


hat tip to DangerousMinds.Net for this one:


if you've got it, flaunt it:


when you make an entrance like this, you'd better be able to dance like Sridevi:



more Sridevi:

Belief in reincarnation in Europe by country (Map of EVS 2008 data)

Below are some statistics for belief in reincarnation in Europe are from the 2008 European Values Survey. Also check out this follow-up post: More on belief in reincarnation in Europe.

Here are the numbers:

-------------------------------------------
1/3 or more believe in reincarnation
-------------------------------------------
Latvia 41.9% (2.3M)
Lithuania 37.4% (3.4M)
Ukraine 37.1% (46.3M)
Iceland 36.2% (0.3M)
Russian Federation 33.0% (142.0M)
----------------------
between 1/4 and 1/3
----------------------
Portugal 31.4% (10.6M)
Estonia 30.7% (1.3M)
Belarus 30.6% (9.9M)
Ireland 30.5% (4.4M)
Northern Cyprus 30.5% (0.3M) [not indicated on map]
Bulgaria 29.8% (7.6M)
Austria 28.8% (8.3M)
Turkey 28.4% (74.8M)
Switzerland 28.0% (7.6M)
Great Britain 27.8% (62.0M)
Moldova 27.5% (3.6M)
Luxembourg 26.1% (0.5M)
----------------------
betweem 1/5 and 1/4
----------------------
Finland 24.7% (5.3M)
Hungary 23.2% (10.0M)
Northern Ireland 23.2% (1.7M)
Spain 23.1% (45.6M)
Serbia 22.6% (7.4M)
France 22.6% (62.3M)
Sweden 22.6% (9.3M)
Bosnia-Herzegovina 22.4% (3.8M)
Romania 21.8% (21.5M)
Armenia 21.5% (3.1M)
----------------------
between 1/6 and 1/5
----------------------
Malta 19.5% (0.4M) [not indicated on map]
Slovenia 19.4% (2.0M)
Italy 19.2% (60.2M)
Albania 19.1% (3.1M)
Netherlands 18.8% (16.4M)
Germany 18.4% (82.1M)
Denmark 18.4% (5.5M)
Norway 18.4% (4.8M)
Czech Republic 17.6% (10.7M)
Cyprus 17.5% (0.9M)
Belgium 17.5% (10.7M)
Poland 17.4% (38.1M)
Greece 17.4% (11.3M)
Macedonia 17.4% (2.0M)
----------------------
less than 1/6
----------------------
Croatia 16.2% (4.4M)
Slovak Republic 13.0% (5.4M)
Georgia 11.3% (4.4M)
Azerbaijan 7.1% (8.7M)

(These show what percentage of people answered "yes" to Question 31 on the 2008 European Values Study: "Do you believe in reincarnation?" Numbers in parentheses are total population for each country. Here is a handy link so that you can go and look up the data yourself. The numbers shown in this post are more complete than what I have previously posted here and here.)