Has Nicolai Sennels been mentioned here before? Am hoping not and putting up a brief summary.
His potted life story is in an interview here - note this is a translation from the original danish
http://hommaforum.org/index.php?PHPSESS ... #msg271993
I was born in 1976 and grew up far out in the countryside in Denmark. During my studies in Copenhagen I worked as a social worker with teenagers. I also worked as a semi-professional rock musician for a couple of years while studying psychology at the university. I have worked with troubled youngsters all my adult life. It has always been very easy for me to like them, connect to them and help them. I have developed new kinds of therapies, especially for Muslims, and my methods have been mentioned positively in several professional magazines, newspapers and on the radio.
From the same interview about how he started in this study
Being passive while women are treated bad and failed integration threatens to drag down our cultural values and welfare societies is failing to live up to our responsibility as humans. Especially men should take their role as protector of women very seriously.
Anyway, as most other Danish, I was shocked about the rape story. Both the brutality and the fact that nobody helped that poor woman was devastating to me. Before this incident my ears were closed to those who critizised Islam and Muslim immigration but from then on I started listening with a more serious attitude. At that time I was still sure that successful integration was just a matter of time and that social injustice was the main responsible for the ethnic tensions. I was also too nervous about getting criticized to share my worries with others. Today things are different: I no longer vote for the Social Democrats. I also no longer care what people think of my opinions about Muslim culture etc. I am also no longer passive - I feel a responsibility for defending suppressed Muslim women, our freedoms and for showing people that we can say exactly what we think about Islam and Muslim immigration.
By the way, just as a footnote: it accidentally turned out that three of these four Muslim boys were sentenced to live for a period at the institution where I worked at that time. Confused, insecure young men with the too typical Muslim male chauvanistic attitude and strong victim mentality and no real values in life except getting as much as they could with as little effort as possible.
About his experience with government
As a psychologist with special knowledge about criminality and foreigners I was invited by Copenhagen’s mayor of integration to participate in a conference on integration at the city hall. The discussion was about criminal foreigners, foreigners and integration, foreigners and terror, foreigners and parallel societies, etc. I got irritated about the way the discussion went, because everybody generalized all foreigners as if they came from the same culture. I argued that the main part of the problematic foreigners have Muslim background and that we should discuss the meaning of culture when trying to find causes and solutions. This was far too strong for both the mayor and most of the people attending the conference. Another discussion at the conference was that we should try to help criminal foreigners find peace in their life by inviting them to become more religious. Here I reminded the mayor and the others about the many passages in the Quran that actually bid Muslims to do criminal acts – and that several Mosques in Copenhagen are known to be very extremistic. Again this was more than the politicians could handle.
I have later debated with the mayor of Copenhagen on my blog ”The Cultural Cleft” on Jyllands-Posten. I started the debate because he promised to pay the Muslims’ religious festivals if they helped him get reelected at the local elections on November 17th. He – by the way – did not get reelected. The new mayor, Klaus Bondam, is unfortunately an even worse choice. Since he is a homosexual and wears makeup, I guess he will have a hard time communicating with the Muslim society.
About why he thinks its difficult to discuss the issue
The reason has to do with cultural psychology. In Muslim culture people see their lives mainly as controlled by outside factors – Islam, Allah, the imam, the father of the family, cultural norms and traditions, society, and - when the experience problems - especially non-Muslims and non-Muslim authorities. In our Western culture, it is in many ways the opposite. Here we see ourselves as being in control of our own life. We see our motivation, view on things, way of thinking, communicating and acting as the most important factors deciding our lives. This is why we have so many psychologists and therapists, a great number of social sciences, tons of self help books, etc. – all of which are aimed at our inner life and build on the view that we create and change our own life ourselves. You do not have all these things and also not this view in Muslim culture. If you have a problem as a Muslim, you are not raised to think, ”What am I doing wrong since I always end up in trouble?” In the Muslim culture you look outside yourself: ”Who did this to me or my life?”
With this way of thinking you always see ourself as the victim and somebody or something outside yourself as the cause of your problems. Bernard Lewis, the famous professor in Islamic history, has observed the same cultural difference. In his words Westerners asks themselves, ”What did I do wrong?” and Muslims asks, ”Who did this to me?”
Therefore many Muslims do not think that they create the problems. And talking about a person’s problems with somebody who thinks that everything is everybody else’s fault is not easy.
Some recent news he is making
http://europenews.dk/en/node/21789
http://europenews.dk/en/node/20695
http://gatesofvienna.blogspot.com/2009/ ... islam.html
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