Friend took a bike ride few days ago.
Cycled around in the southern suburbs today, Hammarbyland, Kärrtorp, Björkhagen, and Bagarmossen.
Once in the Bagarmossen, I cycle past a woman. She looks at me and I look at her, we smile at each other and I ride onwards.
A young man of what I suspect is of Arab origin has cycled behind me.
When I come around the corner he comes cycling like a fury and brakes in right in front of me and tells him to stop.
I stop and think he wants something important. Then he, with great indignation, asks me why I looked at the woman I was cycling past and goes on to say that, I must not look at women that way.
I answer that I get to look at who I want and who are you? I'm her neighbor and you can't look at her like that you damn child of a whore! Followed by various threats.
I am both happy and sad that I am not close to violence.
Happy, because I do not want any legal consequences, but at the same time sad because I really wanted to teach him properly a lesson he would not forget.
Well I abstained from violence as the civilized man I am still.
That being said, I do not want to say that all young men of Arab origin would not really behave in such a way, but my absolute feeling was that this was a contextual expression of a man raised in a so-called honor-culture.
I feel sick annoyed and to some extent even pissed.
This is not what I want to meet in my backyard in my country from someone who has been invited here to live with us, and who has a completely different understanding and obviously does not have the same feeling for written as well as unwritten rules on how to behave against a fellow man!
I know that an event is not a scientific observation, but nonetheless it is an experience I do not want to encounter in the future.
Thankfully, most of our invited friends are extremely nice and lovely people who know and want to make use of our way of treating their next, with respect and affection.
I know that this post will be addressed in two ways.
One with indignation and anger at what has happened, which is entirely in order, because one does not behave that way.
The second will be about, "you can't pull everyone over a comb" / " you can't judge everyone the same just because of their cultural background".
Your anecdote is not a truth. I do judge everyone the same and i hope that this was a single event that only I have experienced and hope it will never happen again.
But I acknowledge some concern for such a development, but really hope I am wrong.
