Will approve the Islamic Association’s razing of the chapel

As a resident of Drammen, I have many memories connected to Landfalløya chapel. The chapel is a stone’s throw from the kindergarten my children attended, and was the setting for the Lucia train and Christmas parties. There were also concerts in the chapel, and a service on Christmas Eve, so that the people of Dram in the immediate area could go to the chapel instead of taking the car to the central churches.

In 2016, there was a stop. The listed chapel was deconsecrated and sold to a Pakistani couple in the city. The cross on the roof was immediately torn down, a Muslim religious community came in, and in October last year it became clear that the entire inside of the chapel has been demolished and converted for mosque use.

We mentioned the razing of the chapel last year, and can reproduce what Hege Storhaug wrote at the time:

“The recipe for how to take over a church and turn it into a mosque was long ago given by a Somali hate preacher in Canada, who has frequented Norway and instructed his followers:

1. First fundraising so the church building can be purchased.

2. Arrange for a private sale, because then you don’t necessarily know who you are selling to.

3. Do not tell that you are Muslim, but give a generic name (a random name).

It was almost the same thing that happened in Drammen in 2016. Landfalløya chapel was bought by a private Pakistani couple in the city who were to use it for “charitable work with children, young people and elderly people” (Vårt Land, paywall). The couple “gave” the chapel after the acquisition to the Muslim organization Al Ghazali Muslim Center. A board member of the chapel said this after the hoax was a fact:

In the sales board of Landfalløya chapel, they are not aware that the building will be used for a mosque.

– This is unknown to us, says board member Runar Løvaas.

– Is it unproblematic to use the chapel as a mosque?

– We have sold the chapel to a private family, and they can in principle use it for anything. They told us that they were going to use the building for work aimed at children, young people and the elderly. Religion has not been mentioned.

No, religion was not mentioned, but the cross went down quickly after the acquisition. And soon after this it emerged that Landfalløya chapel was to become a mosque.

Now it turns out that the mosque’s management did not limit itself to removing the cross from the tower. They also got rid of the listed building (protection class A) from the late 19th century.

The gallery has been demolished, while the former chapel room with an opening right up to the ceiling has been divided in two horizontally with a new attic floor. In addition, several bathrooms and toilets as well as stalls have been built.

All this should have been applied for in advance, as the chapel is subject to the strictest protection regulations.

– That the building has conservation status A – very high conservation value, is an aggravating factor in this assessment, but not decisive, as the municipality is of the opinion that the works are so extensive that they would have been considered to be subject to application regardless of the building’s conservation status, writes the municipality.

– Bring it back!

The news of the demolition of the chapel did not go down well in Drammen municipality, and the result was a clear call to return the chapel to its original condition. The Islamic faith community was given a deadline of 16 January this year. If they did not carry out the restitution work during the months they were given, the mosque was to be fined NOK 10,000, followed by daily fines of NOK 1,000, it was said at the time.

Then there was silence. It must have undeniably been a quiet period for the neighbors too, because nothing happened. Everything was left as it was, both externally and internally. In addition to razing the interior, the mosque had clad the roof with solar panels and the outer wall with a series of heat pumps. Both the city antiquarian and the county council’s cultural heritage department reacted to the unsightly changes, but they still stand like this.

For the mosque, it would prove to be a smart decision to sit quietly in the boat. When they had not lifted a finger to meet the municipality’s order before the return deadline expired, they instead sent a subsequent application for a change of use.

-Approve…

The local newspaper Drammens Tidende has written about what happened and how the threats of daily fines and compulsory fines suddenly disappeared like dew before the sun in Drammen.

The day before the deadline expired, Al Ghazali Center submitted an application for a change of use of the chapel, and the municipality put the illegality case on hold while they processed the new application. The area is currently set aside for residential purposes, and a dispensation so that the building can be used as a cultural center is necessary to possibly approve, among other things, the internal conversion.

Now the recommendation is clear: the municipal administration recommends politicians to say yes to the change of use.

“Applying for implemented changes afterwards is a common and desirable way to sort out illegal situations”, writes the municipality.

Among other things, it is indicated that the owners have chosen to withdraw the solar panels from the application, which means that an approval means that the roof must be solar-free, and that the heat pumps are drawn on the east side of the building, i.e. the short side facing away from the road.

The director of the municipality believes that the biggest advantage of agreeing to the changes is that the listed building continues to be used, thereby preventing decay.

“The planned activity for children and young people in the building is positive and desirable. Furthermore, the municipality believes that it is natural that the building once again has a function as a common meeting room, in line with what the building is intended to be listed as,” writes the municipal administration in its recommendation.

When I read this, I remembered a sentence from Elsa Beskow’s children’s book Okke, Nutte and Pillerill in my head, at least I think that’s where I got it from: “So clever, immediately shouted the others, so clever to have come up with!”

And yes, I think that with irony, because the husband of defeatism should be expelled. Defeatism is defined in the Great Norwegian Lexicon as “belief in defeat, willingness to give up.” The expression is also commonly used for a weak, self-giving attitude’, but the addition to the definition in Wikipedia is actually relevant in this case:

Defeatist attitudes can often function as self-fulfilling prophecies: if enough people give up resistance, whether in war or sport, resistance will weaken and one risks losing. Therefore, spreading defeatist attitudes is a well-known and well-used propaganda technique.

There is something clingy, self-effacing and conformist in Drammen, and it extends far beyond the cowardly handling of the demolition of the chapel.

Drammen’s politically correct split

Of course, it is ridiculous when the municipal administration writes that “the planned activity for children and young people in the building is positive and desirable”. Why on earth is it desirable to have more Islam for the city’s Muslim children? The image of the hijab-clad little girls in the former chapel should rather indicate the opposite, but in Drammen the will to pretend that the self-chosen outsider is positive is strongly present.

We don’t even need to go back to the now established illegal decision to want Ukrainian refugees over others. Just follow the local news in the city. It should not be about immigration from Muslim countries, although everyone knows that it does. A couple of examples from last week’s cases in Drammens Tidende can illustrate the phenomenon.

On Monday, you could read that employees cannot go alone, but line up in pairs, wearing knife and bulletproof vests when they check municipal housing.

Then chairman of the board Anita Winsnes told about an increasingly tough working environment and a large increase in vandalism and “hard use” of municipal housing.

Drammen Eiendom KF is a municipally owned company, and they are responsible for the operation and maintenance of a large number of the municipality’s buildings – including around 1,400 municipal housing. In some of these homes live people with major challenges.

“People with major challenges” have both Norwegian and foreign origins, but you know which group is overrepresented in violence statistics and statistics on serious mental disorders. Why not be honest that Drammen is not up to the task, that it must be paused?

Or the news that “Drammen stands out in particular in the number of Thai massage places. With several of them, the offer of sex is just a matter of time away.” Everyone who lives in the city knows why there are operating bases for 28 massage places in Drammen, you can easily register that by seeing who walks in the door.

The luxury opinions

But in Drammen, the pressure from the politically correct is so strong that the vast majority have given up. It is only necessary to record how the city’s right-wing mayor has behaved in the aftermath of the refugee case. Cowardly, evasive and yes to diversity, while Frp’s very orderly Jon Helgheim was left with a racist stamp for having pointed out the obvious in that Drammen cannot tolerate more Muslim immigration, but is already struggling with a load of challenges brought by the already settled.

The luxury opinions are not only visible in the municipal administration and Drammen city council, it was also reported by the local newspaper Drammens Tidende. The newspaper’s political editor is outspoken on the political left, and when she is to summarize the resourceful debate about the city’s reputation in the aftermath of the refugee case, she writes on Facebook:

Good atmosphere at Drammen cultural center last night when we asked how the city’s reputation really is.

Basically, there was quite a bit of optimism in the air this spring evening, mind you if the city’s politicians and developers make choices that help preserve the city’s soul and identity – what makes us a little Berlin-ish. That we cultivate the urban, and that we manage to balance realism and optimism by being a multicultural and international city.

Many things distinguish us from competing quasi-cities around the capital, including the fact that the proportion of residents with cultural capital is much larger, and has increased in recent years. Such things that affect the markets and cultural offerings.

A little Berlin-ish is hardly a wishful dream for Drammen. The German city with such a large immigrant problem that it is mentioned specifically about this in Politico, the city that has a record number of knife attacks as a result of mass immigration and where the city’s residents, like the rest of the country, hope that the law on the mass return of illegal migrants comes into force .

You can of course use the term “inhabitants with cultural capital”, but that is not fair. As we wrote in the case “Right” and “free” opinions that give status: “While the former left was concerned with the struggle for social justice, they now appear concerned with the struggle to climb to the top of the social ladder. It is easy to allow yourself to be tempted to hold opinions that do not have negative consequences for yourself, while at the same time being marked as belonging to the elite. But those who lose from this new system of class division of society remain the same: They will be the ones who have to experience the political consequences. Sometimes it is far more useful to listen to the man in the street than to listen to academia. When status is involved, you know who to listen to.”

It is easy to be seduced into inclusive opinions when the stamp of racism is loose and the accusations that the city’s reputation is being ruined are made by a queue of different actors, from Liberal politician Herman Ekle Lund, Islamist and Center Party politician Sajid Mukhtar to Sylo Taraku from Tankesmien Agenda. Neither these nor the city’s media managers need to fear violent attacks or having to sell their own bodies to make ends meet. They can care about the kind that make them shine in the light from each other.

This time, Drammen should listen to the city antiquarian, the county council’s cultural heritage department and the Local Committee for Bragernes and the Øresund, all of whom have allowed themselves to be upset by how the owners of the former Landfalløya chapel have taken care of themselves and destroyed the listed building. Both vandalism and violence could also cease to be criminal if it were decided that it was not punishable, but that does not mean that it would be a good solution to the problem. Møte’s razing with an approved stamp is a strong signal to let the Norwegian cultural capital suffer the same drop in value as the Norwegian krone.