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Vengeful gang beats up wrong target
As many as 15 Pakistani-Norwegian teenagers attacked a 31-year-old man outside his flat Monday night.
| Ya, sure! The very thought of Pakistani-Norwegian teenagers takes my breath away... |
They thought he was a journalist who'd written a provocative guide about how to have sex with young Muslim women. It was all a case of mistaken identity, however. The hapless victim simply had the same name as the journalist who'd written the guide, Baard Torgersen.
| "Oops. Sorry. Our bad..." |
The teenage gang did take the trouble to question his identity when they confronted him on the stairs leading up to his flat in Oslo. "They asked whether I was Baard Torgersen," he told newspaper Aftenposten. "I said that was me, and then they asked to see my driver's license."
| "Yew got any witnesses yew're yew, infidel?" |
After they examined it, they asked for even more ID, and then spotted a discount card in his wallet for the publication "Natt & Dag" (Night and Day), which coincidentally had published the guide that had angered the Pakistani-Norwegian boys. That set them off, with flying fists battering both Torgersen and a neighbour who happened to arrive on the scene as the fight went on.
The gang had fled by the time police arrived at the scene. The Baard Torgersen who actually wrote the sex guide declined to comment on the incident. His editor, however, claimed the article that the teenage gang found so offensive was meant to launch a debate on sexual liberation among Muslim women in Norway. "There will be fewer mixed marriages in Norway," said editor Gaute Drevdal of Natt & Dag. "If we don't do something now, there will be more ghettoes forming."
| Now, I've been to Norway. I've walked the streets of Oslo on a nice day, and I came away with the sore neck to prove it. There are more good-looking women per capita in Norway than anyplace I've ever been in the world. Why would Norwegian men pass them up for some drab in a burka? |
Drevdal claimed Norway is a society where "sex comes before romance and romance comes before marriage."
"Ya, sure! I been thinkin' of settlin' down. Want to go for a test drive?"
"Why, Ole! That's so romantic!"
"We're two thirds of the way there!" |
A local Pakistani-Norwegian comedian, Shabana Rehman, said the guide may be considered "vulgar" but it also is important. "The main question here is accessibility and sexual control," Rehman said. "The role of men is changing and it's interesting that this is often tied to women's sexuality."
Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-10-07 |
