Norwegians Split Over Eating Pork and Wearing Niqab

In the aftermath of last year's migrant crisis, Norway has been, like its neighbors, struggling to integrate newcomers into its society. Debate on what the preferred way of integration should be has recently flared up. As usual, Norway's Immigration Minister Sylvi Listhaug added fuel to the fire with her tirades, which many view as controversial.

Prior to yesterday's conference on integration in Oslo, Norwegian Immigration and Integration Minister Sylvi Listhaug of the anti-immigrant Progress Party provoked outrage with a Facebook post, which spread through Norwegian social media like a wildfire, Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten reported.

"Those who come to Norway must adapt to our society, and I mean it. Here we eat pork, drink alcohol and show our faces. One must abide by the values, laws and regulations that apply in Norway," Sylvi Listhaug wrote.

Whereas the post was liked over 18,000 times, it also stirred a wave of criticism.

"Remarkable that you assume that everyone in Norway shares the same values and that everyone drinks alcohol. It seems to me that you have an incredible narrow picture of what people living in Norway actually are," one debater wrote.

Criticism towards Listhaug's viewpoint was also expressed by Usman Mushtaq of the EAT Foundation, founded by Norwegian hotel magnate Petter Stordalen and his wife Gunhild.

Nei @SylviListhaug, nordmenn er ikke en homogen gruppe! Vi verdsetter diversitet. Noen spiser svin og drikker alkohol, mens andre gjør ikke pic.twitter.com/DK4tbFlgj9

— Usman A. Mushtaq (@uamushtaq) 18 октября 2016 г.

​Subsequently, Listhaug explained that no one is forced to eat pork or drink alcohol, but cannot refuse to have contact with these ingredients at work.

In an opinion piece in Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet, published on Monday, Listhaug encouraged immigrants to adapt themselves to the Norwegian way of life, including not covering their faces with religious garments.

"Employers will hardly hire people if they cannot see who they are. You cannot run a shop with a covered face. I doubt that customers will find it particularly enjoyable," Listhaug said, stating that people are free to dress in sweatpants and niqabs in their free time.

Most notably, Listhaug, who also admitted that her goal as Immigration Minister is to receive as few asylum-seekers as possible, received support from none other than Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg of the Conservative Party, who said that a person dressed in a niqab was unlikely to get a job with her or any other public institution.

Know the difference? #burqa #hijab #niqab pic.twitter.com/EhfRvT0vJL

— The Orient Club (@theorientclub) 27 августа 2016 г.

​"I believe we need to look each other face to face in the workplace," Erna Solberg told Norwegian national broadcaster NRK.

Solberg also joined the popular debate on whether or not Norway should ban face-covering religious garments. According to Solberg displaying religious affiliations in the workplace should not be forbidden, but it is nevertheless important to set some boundaries.

"The niqab and the burka are a marginal issue in Norway, but there are nevertheless some who use it. I find it a political statement from those who use it, as if they wanted to challenge the limits of Norwegian society. Therefore, we must also set some limits," Solberg said.

In Norway's neighboring state Sweden, Conservative MP Hanif Bali, himself of Kurdish-Iranian origin, suggested utilizing peculiarities of Islam as a litmus test to sift out the most hardcore jihadists who are feared to return to Sweden en masse following Daesh's defeats in the Middle East. According to a recent tweet of Bali, Swedish municipalities should send returnees to pork farms for internships before re-introducing them into Sweden's welfare system, which is the common practice in many municipalities. The idea behind the sarcastic suggestion is that handling "impure" animals, such as pigs, is forbidden in fundamentalist Islam.