What does it take to get your own documentary film shown in Norwegian cinemas? In Yahya Nasser’s case, all it took was not killing anyone.
The film is called ‘This Is Not an Apple’ and premieres today. The film is about Yahya and his younger brother Reda. They are two Palestinian brothers who grew up in Stovner, one of the areas of Oslo with the highest gang activity. And, almost inevitably, the two of them also joined a gang; they even became leaders within it. In March 2022, they were stabbed by their own gang members.
As is usual in that neighbourhood, the thirst for revenge came quickly, and it was no small matter.
– “The plan was to kill all five,” they told Klassekampen in August.
All five. That, then, was the starting point. Then their mother entered the picture with stories about Allah and the Prophet. And slowly but surely, the ‘fire’ was extinguished, Yahya tells Dagsavisen.
Islam saved the day. And now the rest of us are supposed to sit in the cinema and be moved.
I am not moved. I feel sick.
Because in Norway, refraining from taking revenge is not a heroic act. It’s the very least we expect of anyone. The vast majority of us have never made a plan to kill five people, and we don’t get a film made about it for that reason.
Screenshot from Facebook/Norsk Filmdistribusjon
The same applies to the police. Yahya describes his decision to cooperate with the prosecution rather than seek revenge as a courageous choice. He took the step that many do not dare to take, he says. What he calls courage is simply a matter of course for people living in a country like Norway. At least, that’s how it used to be. The fact that testifying against those who stabbed you is regarded as a heroic act says something about the environment these two Muslims came from.
And what sort of environment was that? The brothers were, in fact, leading figures in the criminal gang they hung out with in Stovner. Yahya then, according to himself, began to go down a different path. He claims that he was no ‘wanna-be gangster’ deep within the criminal underworld. Deep within, really? But deep enough within that his mates stabbed him, for reasons unknown.
The film’s own introduction describes how fine the line is between the brothers and the inmates they meet at Ullersmo Prison.
So this is not a story about two random lads who were mugged on their way home from football training.
But the left loves the story. The Labour Party’s deputy leader, Jan Christian Vestre, has travelled to Stovner to meet Reda. The film has been screened at the Storting, with the brothers as guests of honour. *Klassekampen* has published an in-depth feature, and *Dagsavisen* has conducted an interview. The Norwegian Film Institute has also supported the film with nearly 2.8 million kroner.
That is your and my tax money, spent on telling us that Islam is the safest haven to be in.
No one asks why Muslim boys growing up in Norway end up in an environment where their friends stab you with a knife, and where revenge killings are the first thing on their minds.
Now Yahya is a qualified social worker, and Reda is going to be a doctor. Are we supposed to sit here and applaud that? Just as we did when Yasser Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the killing of Jews for a short while, perhaps?
The truth is that Islam is an integral part of the criminal gang culture in Oslo. But no film is being made about that.
Instead, we’re told that what makes Yahya happy is Islam, the faith he claims helped him out of his predicament.
But he says nothing about the fact that it was probably also Islam that got him into that mess in the first place.
