Here’s one for the Great Auk. What do you think of this, by Anna Linda Traustadóttir an Icelandic-Syrian Muslim woman?
I've also since got some new Muslim girlfriends over the Internet. Whilst searching the net, I came across an Icelandic Muslim site: www.islam.is, and I contacted the writer. We started a correspondence. Around New Year's 2004, I sent her a report I wrote entitled "Islam in Iceland 2003," which I am submitting to the Saudi Government, she suggested we three work on the translation of the Qur'an from Arabic to Icelandic (Kóraninn), as she also speaks Arabic. So it seems that we will be three Icelandic Muslim women working on translating the Arabic Qur'an. For those of you looking for a good English version, I’ve heard the Muhammad Asad translation is also very direct, but I myself have yet to get hold of it.
I’d also really like to know what you think of that Icelandic Islamic site – Iceland is so small, that if you don’t know these people personally, you surely know people who know them.
UPDATE: Bjarni responds. Excerpt:
The thing is that Iceland has the same problem as many western countries – rising anti-semitism disguised as criticism of the Israeli government. Talk for more than a couple of minutes with these people (more on the left than the right, but there are lots of anti-Israelites on the right as well), and they start telling you how the Jews control America, they control American TV and Hollywood, they control the IMF and the World Bank etc. etc.
I just thought it was jarring and exotic to think of Islam in Iceland. More:
There is a term often used here, barnatrú, or child’s faith. This is the faith that you take with you into adulthood from the time you were a child. This is often a rather generalized version of Christianity, you don’t qoute chapter and verse, but you know your stories and the morals of the faith and you consider yourself a Christian. This is, I think, one reason why many Icelandic Christians have no problems with single mothers or homosexuality – it may contradict some verses in the Bible, but it isn’t in conflict with the more basic, maybe naive, barnatrú.I, for example, consider myself Christian. I don’t go to church, and I have never read the Bible from cover to cover. My barnatrú tells me that God isn’t going to punish me for using the reason or conscience that He gave me and I trust those better than most single bible verses.
I find this interesting because in Judaism there’s an oral tradition – the Talmud – alongside the written tradition – the Bible – which interprets it in sometimes surprising ways. But in Judaism it is this tradition that is considered correct. Is the Talmud the record of the Jewish barnatrú?
UPDATE: Amritas tells us the etymology of barnatrú. I was wondering about that.
UPDATE: Bjarni responds again.
UPDATE: Bjarni answers Amritas.
Posted by David Boxenhorn at July 12, 2004 07:18 PMGiven that I know next to nothing about the Talmud, this is my take on the Barnatrú/Talmud thing.
It's a mistake to think that the Barnatrú is in any way a regimented faith. It might even be called Christianity for dummies, or Christianity Light. Barnatrú has sometimes had a "simpleton" stamp on it - stupid peasants' version of the True Faith.
In Essence Barnatrú is just your personal view of Christ and God - each version is different from the next - but the best part of it is the notion (hazy thought it is - as all notions in barnatrú ar rather hazy) that you should do what you know in your heart to be right. Not necessarily what some book, or some bishop, says is right.
With all this in mind you should be ready for some Icelanders to barge in here and contradict every thing I've said about barnatrú - but that only affirms the fact that is is a very personal thing, and rather difficult to explain.
So you see - barnatrú has never been anything that the intelectual elite of Iceland (such as it was before 1900) has ever bothered itself with. I don't think any theologicians have ever written about it, or that there are any sayings unique to it. You might glimpse some of it through some of the traditional stories and myths of Iceland, but I don't think there has ever been any serious study of it.
Posted by: Bjarni Ólafsson at July 13, 2004 07:17 PM PermalinkNow imagine that the intellectual elite embraced barnatrú, and theologians of diverse points of view spent around 500 years discussing it, and reconciling it with chapter and verse under the assumption that the Bible was the source of truth – and that it was all written down, interspersed with “traditional stories and myths” – you’d get something like an Icelandic Christian version of the Talmud (lit. Learning). Imagine further that over this time a practical consensus was worked out as to the public and social aspects of observance, while leaving private aspects and theology undefined – you’d get an Icelandic version of halakha, Jewish law.
Jewish law is a common-law system, like English law, and unlike Roman law. Instead of going back to the original laws for interpretation, the whole weight of tradition must be taken into account. In this sense Judaism is inherently conservative, as opposed to (at least the Protestant form of) Christianity. But it is also based on the common sense of its practitioners, rather than a literal reading of the original text. In that way, I think, the study of Jewish law is the study of human nature.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at July 13, 2004 08:26 PM Permalink