Aisha was the driving force. She was energetic and engaged but could be slightly brusque, making hurtful comments. Proud and sometimes aloof, she’d adopted the habit of holding her head slightly back with her chin up when speaking to people.
In Dilal’s opinion she was actually kind, just not really in tune with people’s feelings, owing to the fact that from a young age she had closed herself off from her own, to protect herself from an abusive father.
Like Aisha, Emira had problems at home. Her parents had already planned her wedding. Her husband-to-be was from the countryside in Pakistan. Emira begged to get out of it, to choose a husband herself, but her parents stood firm. She asked to at least have the wedding postponed until she was finished with her studies. Her parents had gone along with that, for the time being. Emira was a dedicated student, and wanted to be a computer engineer. Her passion was soccer. She was an important player on the Holmlia team—exercised a lot and wore mostly athletic shoes and sports gear.
Dilal was a Kurd from Iran, who had lived in Iraq until the family moved to Bærum when she was small. She looked like a Middle Eastern model, with made-up almond-shaped eyes, powdered skin, and a little aquiline nose. She was hooked on exercise, mostly yoga, Pilates, and light weight lifting. She would chastise Aisha, with whom she had attended lower secondary, for eating junk food and having a trashy lifestyle that was ruining her skin and figure. Aisha responded that what was on the inside counted and admonished Dilal in turn for not covering her hair. Islam required it, she said. Dilal disagreed. Both of them found verses of the Koran to back up their views.
Together they all grew strong. A four-leaf clover with one stalk.
* * *
Islam Net had started out as a Facebook page two years previously, in 2008. Ten or so engineering students at Oslo University College were behind it.
The wave that gave the engineering students direction, and that they would continue to surf, was Salafism. Salafists emulate al-salaf al-salih—the first three pious generations after the Prophet Muhammad.
Salafism is ultraconservative, seeking radical change and looking to the past for inspiration. Islamic practice is to be built upon the foundations of Islam—upon the Koran and hadith. One should strive to follow the messages and maxims of the Prophet literally and rise above the local culture and more recent handed-down exegetical traditions. The roots of the movement are deep, but its growth worldwide has occurred in the last fifty years.
In the 1950s, Saudi Arabia began its efforts to Islamize nearby regions. Over time, the kingdom financed a global missionary network to carry out dawa, which means “to invite” and is used in the sense of “to proselytize.” The movement’s mode of thought and interpretations streamed out of the Arabian desert, financed by oil money. Mosques and madrasas the world over accrued generous gifts. Stipends and scholarships to study in Mecca and Medina were granted to obedient young men.
The organizers of Islam Net did not term themselves Salafists, but said they were Muslims who were “guided by the four major schools of Sunni Islam.” Salafism had received negative attention in the wake of the September 11 attacks, and the students wanted to avoid that label.
When their Facebook page proved a success, the engineering students decided to make a web page. They discussed the possible content.
Someone had already blazed a trail for them. Their icon was Zakir Naik, a Salafi-oriented Muslim televangelist close to the Saudi royal family. One of the students suggested that they copy the concept from his book Answers to Non-Muslims’ Common Questions About Islam, which aimed to “clear up misunderstandings about Islam.” Naik’s speeches, which were available on YouTube, were put on Islam Net’s home page. On his channel, Peace TV, the young men were discovering new preachers all the time. Their message seemed fresh, new—and true.
The students now had friends on Facebook and followers on their home page. During a conversation in the prayer room at the university, one of them suggested expanding. In order to recruit more people, they had to hold get-togethers where people could meet.
A couple hundred people attended the first gathering, where Norwegian-Pakistani Zulqarnain Madani was the guest speaker. The imam, who had studied at the University of Medina, was invited to lambaste the Dutch politician and activist Geert Wilders’s film Fitna, but the question that caused the most debate was: Who was behind September 11? Madani argued that the attacks were planned by the Jews and the U.S. government.
After holding a handful of meetings, Islam Net swelled to several hundred paying members. The leaders wanted the organization to grow even larger and suggested that a Peace Conference would ensure this. The concept had originated in Mumbai, where for many years charismatic preachers had been awakening the Indian masses with rhetoric steeped in religious fervor.
In Norway, Islam Net illustrated a generation gap. The students were opposed to the tradition of ethnically divided mosques. When the first Muslims arrived in Norway in the 1970s, mosques were not considered a priority, as the immigrants’ stay seemed destined to be short. Only during the ’80s, when it became apparent most of them would be permanent residents, did the need arise. People wanted settings for the rituals of life—births, weddings, funerals—and a place to seek guidance when life proved difficult.
The older generation had used apartments, basements, and disused factory floors, consecrating them as places of worship. The mosques became venues to gather for Friday prayer and to meet one’s compatriots. The students viewed their parents as having blended culture with religion, continuing to pray as they had in the Punjab or in Mogadishu. For them it was more about tradition than having a conscious attitude toward Allah. The students believed that mosques divided along national lines did little to contribute to the collective interests of
