Is Lina........?

[gary13136]

Well, according to the best available information, Lina's biological father was Iranian, but her mother is Swedish. Lina now has a stepfather who most likely is Swedish. Is she a Muslim? That is very unlikely, although not impossible. If she was Muslim, she would IMHO be from a very liberal Muslim family. Otherwise, she would never have been allowed to appear in this particular movie. And she certainly wouldn't have been allowed to pose for some of the recent pictures of herself. I personally wouldn't be bothered if she was Muslim.

[gattoparde59]

I knew an Iranian girl who fled Iran because she and her family were Jewish.

Unless the person in question makes a point of it, it really is a puzzle to me why any body would ask about their religious persuasion, especially a 14 year old girl.

To my reading, nothing was said nor implied here that is remotely denigrative. Someone asked a question. It might not be a pertinent question, or even one that's popular, but questions should never be silenced. When questions turn to rants, other options exist, like turning off the TV.

. . . or expressing your opinions with a post.

[sweetgirl]

. . . or expressing your opinions with a post.

got a point !

[God of Vampires]

Who cares.

But really, she is not more likely to be a muslim than I am. As a native of Sweden I can say that we are not generally very religious people, and if we do follow a religion, we are not very extreme. Also, we generally don't care about religion as children, mostly because we like to take our time deciding. Sure, Lina can be a muslim, but what exactly does that how to do with anything? She is still the wonderful person who so masterfully played our favorite vampire. In the end, the only one who can answer that question is Lina herself, our speculations will lead nowhere.

Even though I agree with Drakkar on the relavancy of this topic, I do understand why mikelikesyou brought this up however. For the sake of curiosity, Me too would think it would be nice to know some more about Lina, but I don't want to appear stalker-ish. I am not normally much for idols, but she certainly are one of the few celebrities I admire.

[Wolfchild]

I agree - this is just about curiosity. I view it as being akin to asking, "What is Lina's favorite color?" or "Does Lina like sushi?" or "What is Lina's top score in her favorite video game?"

This question is really pretty benign when compared to some of the discussions that have gone on at IMDB.

[N.R. Gasan]

This question is really pretty benign when compared to some of the discussions that have gone on at IMDB.

I agree with Woof. In another forum, I could see this topic getting very ugly. Case in point: The so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" that has so many people going banzo here in the U.S. (Talk about a non-issue...as an American, the whole bruhaha is nonsense to me, an embarrassment before the world; it seems that in the U.S. of A., too many of my fellow Americans have lost the ability to tell the difference between what is important and what is not important.)

But here at "We, The Infected" members by and large are able to agree to disagree. There is a very liberal atmosphere here, which makes being open and honest comfortable. Yes, sometimes the conversation gets silly and even a bit gross, but isn't that what often happens when friends sit down to chat?

[drakkar]

It's only that I have seen too many of these discussions, and grown tired of them.
Or sick. Of the threads, not the people writing them.
And I feel I'm not distant enough to view it like this:

I view it as being akin to asking, "What is Lina's favorite color?" or "Does Lina like sushi?" or "What is Lina's top score in her favorite video game?"

Rant over.

[kirkesque]

I knew an Iranian girl who fled Iran because she and her family were Jewish.

Unless the person in question makes a point of it, it really is a puzzle to me why any body would ask about their religious persuasion, especially a 14 year old girl.

To my reading, nothing was said nor implied here that is remotely denigrative. Someone asked a question. It might not be a pertinent question, or even one that's popular, but questions should never be silenced. When questions turn to rants, other options exist, like turning off the TV.

. . . or expressing your opinions with a post.

Was there a rant somewhere here? If people didn't post their opinions, forums wouldn't exist. Little touchy, are we?

. . . or expressing your opinions with a post.

got a point !

"Fire calls the kettle black."

[decltype]

Not Muslim and no connection to Iran or the Middle East apart from the fact that her father is from there (I've conceded as much).

[Lacenaire]

When I first saw this post I intended to ignore the entire thread. Not because it made me made me “want to puke” (it did not) but the question seemed to me rather ignorant and I expected it to generate similar or worse replies. As it turned out, it did not, and gary13136, gattoparde and decltype have basically said all the relevant things that could reasonably be said. So I will only add a somewhat personal note.

In fact, the only post in the thread that I find irritating and objectionable is Gasan’s no doubt well meaning attempt, bringing in the issue of the “Ground Zero Mosque”. This issue not only has absolutely no relation to this forum but quite contrary to Gasan (who calls is a “non-issue”), it is a far too serious and important issue to be discussed here, and I don’t think it is Gasan’s fellow Americans that are the one’s who “have have lost the ability to tell the difference between what is important and what is not important”…the pot calling the kettle black?

The original question was obviously also well intentioned but it reminded me of the time I was asked in Japan if I was Jewish. Now, this is the kind of question where the answer really depends on, to quote Bill Clinton’s immortal phrase, “what the meaning of is is”, so I hesitated before answering it and the well intentioned questioner hurried to add “you need not worry, we are not anti-semites”. Now this really annoyed me for my hesitation had nothing whatever to do what I thought of my questioners attitude to the Jews and I could not care less about it. The difficulty was intrinsic to the question - there are just so many different meanings that can be given to the question.

In fact, my father was born in a strictly orthodox Jewish family (mostly exterminated during the Holocaust) but my mother came from a Polish catholic peasant family (in fact her father, whom I still remember, was illiterate). To survive in occupied Poland my father needed false documents with a Polish name, which he kept after the war (and this adopted surname is still the one I use). He became an atheist in his teens and even, for some time, a communist, who, of course, saw all religion including Judaism as “opium of the masses”. I was brought up without any religion, I am neither circumcised nor baptised and, in fact, until the age of 14 I was completely unaware of having any Jewish heritage, since my parents thought not knowing would make my life easier (it certainly did). When we were allowed to leave Poland (during an official anti-semitic campaign of 1968 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Polis ... cal_crisis) we were officially destined for Israel but settled in Britain instead. Under the Jewish religious law I would not be considered a Jew, since among religious Jews it is having a jewish mother or conversion that makes one Jewish (in Islam, of course, it is only the father that matters). But of course I am a Jew under the Neumber Laws (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Law) and in the mind of most anti-semites. And, in a certain sense, which amounts mostly to a certain sympathy for Jews and Israel, I do feel if not exactly a Jew then a “fellow traveller”. Which is why it is hard for me to answer this question without making a long lecture out of it (of course I find this a problem with many questions).

The issue of “being a Muslim” is not quite as complex as that of being a Jew. Becoming a Muslim is extremely simple all you need to do is to recite the shahada: There is no god but Allah and Muhammed is his Messanger and you are a muslim. To be a “good Muslim” you need to follow all 5 pillars of Islam, and then there are other obligations, including “the jihad”. By contrast to become a Jew you either have to be born of a Jewish mother or go through a complicated process of conversion, which actually is discouraged by most synagogues. However, “locally” there can be complications with the question “who is a Muslim?” resembling those with the perennial question of “who is a Jew?” In parts of the former Ottoman Empire, in particular in Bosnia, “a Muslim” is more of a nationality than a religion. There are thee kinds of Bosnians: Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims. The Croats are nominally catholic, the Serbs orthodox and the Muslims “muslim”. Each “nationality” contains, of course, many atheists, yet it is the “religious”identity that determines to which group you belong. A Bosnian Muslim who converts to catholicism will become a Croat and one who converts to orthodoxy a Serb, but if one should convert to, for example, lutheranism he will (I think) become a lutheran Bosnian Muslim.

Another complication in answering the question of “who is a Muslim” concerns the treatment of children. In orthodox Islam you do not become a Muslim until you have recited the shahada and usually you have to be old enough to do that. Once you have done it, however, there is no way out without committing “irtidad”, apostasy, for which the penalty is death according to all traditional legal schools of Islam.

In the case of someone like Lina, of whom we only know that her father was from Iran, the only sensible question that could perhaps be answered without her help would be was he at any stage a Muslim? Since her mother remarried a non-Muslim it is very difficult to imagine that she herself was one - for a marriage of a Muslim woman to a non-Muslim man (unlike the other way round) is strictly forbidden and equivalent to irtidad. But even from the fact that Lina’s father was Iranian, is it reasonable to assume that he must have been a Muslim?

The original religion of Iran was Zoroastrianism. After centuries of hostile toleration and persecution (in different periods) there is only a small number of Zoroastrians in Iran, but they do exist. As pointed out by Gattoparde, Iran still contains a sizeable Jewish community, which once used to be quite numerous. And then there is the most fiercely persecuted group of all: the Bahais (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahá'%C3%AD_Faith). Under the government of the Shah the Bahai community was the best educated and the most prosperous of the religious minorities in Iran and many of Iran’s prominent cultural figures were Bahais.

For all we seem to know Lina’s father could belong to any of these groups. Even if he did, whether this would mean anything to Lina today or not only she would no. There is nothing in what I have read about her here or elsewhere that suggests anymore than what was already pointed out by gary13136. I do think therefore that the question that started this thread was rather pointless and has not contributed anything at all to our knowledge of Lina beyond what we knew already, but still I don’t find it illegitimate or objectionable in any way. As some people have pointed out, one can find much worse ones elsewhere. (However I am still very curious about the allegation of “spamfest” that is supposed to have been wrought on numerous threads in this forum. Like, for example, what?)