We can’t take out parts of our history, like the hard ones. They carry meanings in ways only Allah knows, which is especially important to remember when the mind wanders to the darker moments. We swallow the urge to think “why me,” the destructive mentality that eats up logic, positivity and hope. They all matter.
An afternoon indulged in my daily coffee-writing ritual, I started to think about the major course changes in my life. Not this immense learning process of how to navigate life as immigrants, or the transition from fulltime work to being a stay-at-home-mum. These are self chosen, we longed for them, but still, it can be hard, a shock for the system, difficult for the broader family as well, and maybe strange for the ones who suddenly find us living amongst them striving with social codes and language. Why here? Why not the Emirates or Egypt? Somalia? Why not Norway? - A topic for another day. The replacement of the familiar with something new, different and unknown is first and foremost thrilling. Hijrah brought a new beginning for all of us, but it didn’t come out of the blue. It stems from earlier chapters, an inevitable continuation of what has been, and it is a beginning of what is ahead. Self-governed beginnings are easier to reflect upon than those who came with force. Those sudden ruptures that created fear, anger, sorrow and potentially apathy. How are these interruptions connected to our present, to our thoughts, emotions, behavior and relations?
The first unchosen change in the course of my life was a heavy one. I was 5-6 years old when I was taken away from my parents and placed in an institution for six months. For many, many years I thought I lived there for years. This topic was an open painful wound in my family. I didn’t ask before I was around 15, and the healing process began.
Care and Concern
The kindergarten sent a letter of concern about my home condition to the now world-famous child protection service, who ultimately responded by taking me one morning from the kindergarten. I remember sitting in a gray car, with two women I didn't know. I also have this picture in my head looking back, seeing my mother crying, calling my name while trying to keep up with the car. I wonder if this is a true memory or not. At least it tells about my feelings of being kidnapped. I remember a strong feeling of total confusion. I'm still confused. Over thirty years have passed, and I still struggle with accepting this type of institutionalized solution to concern, unfortunately still ongoing. I was taken away from where I was safe, from my loved ones, in case I was in danger, due to a third party's concern, and there was nothing my parents could do, or I, in that moment.
It´s called care, a protection measurement. The logic is that it´s better to be safe than sorry: Rather five mistakes than to miss the one in need. What is under-communicated about this rationale is that it doesn’t acknowledge the damage it creates for those families who get unjustly invaded, potentially turning healthy families from harmony to potential life long traumas. I discuss this topic in my on-the-deadbed(?)thesis as a result of an evolving institutionalized over-intellectualisation. Taking children on emergency decision has become a taken for granted part of the investigation work that transcends moral and reasonable constraints. The CPS´emergency decisions are discussed in chapter 14 of a NOU (Norway´s Public Investigations) about the legal rights of children and parents. The following facts are taken from this commisioned research with over 500 pages, available for everyone in the Norwegian language.
Scope and the question Why
The following formulation is found in the child protection law: an emergency replacement decision can be made if there is a “risk that the child will suffer significant damage if the decision is not implemented immediately.” As the NOU informs, the main reasons are: Physical abuse, lacking parental skills, parental drug use, mental illness and violence, or high level of conflict in the home. The category "lacking parental skills" is not specific but can allude to challenges with stimulation, setting boundaries and interaction skills. (P. 196.):
In 2021, 1700 children were ´relocated,’ amongst them 932 with force. The child was 9 years old on average, most often in a family known by CPS over years. Children with minority backgrounds were overrepresented as in many other categories of CPS' work: A study of 175 cases showed that half of them had at least one parent born outside of Norway. Between 2013 and 2021 emergency care-replacement was reduced 50 percent, but as explained by Bufetat we begin to see a slight increase.
How does it happen?
Police officers attend if the caseworkers fear for their security, but there are no statistics showing the scope of police assistance. Despite the trauma this emergency measure cause for the parents as well, a study showed that only 18 percent received some type of help or follow-up while their children were absent (P.203). The same study showed that in 60 percent of the cases the children had either moved home or to another institution before the end of the third month: half of them during the first month. The three month limit isn’t held in more than half of the cases.
The same study showed that the children are taken to an emergency care facility (beredskapshjem) in 21 percent of the cases. To a foster home in the child's own family or network; 21 percent, and to an emergency institution like I was, in 58 percent of the cases.
52 percent of the children returned to their homes afterwards.
There is a lack of knowledge about the decisions made, but those children taken based on what was considered an emergency event, are the same children who returned to their homes in over half of the cases. Meaning, the family not known to the CPS beforehand, like in my case. As explained in the NOU: “when the situation was no longer dire” (p.203). But as we know, it should also be a category named Failure. In some cases there were never any real emergencies, no more than an empty concern/suspicion. An overreaction that leads families into the worst nightmare a family can experience.
24 percent of the replacements ended up with the parents losing the care for the children.
12 percent ended up in a voluntary(?) care-replacement into a foster home or institution. A destiny that for many involves multiple forced relocations between foster families and institutions, mental illness and introduction to drugs.
The NOU refers to a study that found a “high level of stress” amongst children and families who experienced an 'emergency decision’ especially when they weren’t prepared. Another study showed that only 6 of 10 children between 3-18 years, had been talked to/with before or during the replacement. (See references at page 204.) The praxis is explained as pretty much the same in both scope and process in Norway as in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, England, Ireland and Germany, but I didn´t dig deeper into that in this text. The chapter concludes with highlighting that emergency decisions can be experienced as dramatic and that the legal rights of children and parents can be put on trial. The knowledge on this type of public care is limited, and more statistics should be made available.
They call it protection, but to normal people, this type of measure is considered as pure brutality, far away from the necessary sensitivity, communication and reason. Care and protection doesn’t look like this in other places in the world. What about all the good work? That is not the topic of this text.
Looking back
Three years ago I asked for a copy of my file from back then, and as I was reading it for the first time I was shaking like a leaf. Vague memories became clear. My bed became wet during the first night at the institution as I was crying myself into sleep, scared and in shock of not being able to go home to my parents. I was fed up with all the different people who insisted on talking with me, asking me the same strange questions. I was tired of it and I told them. I took the little control I could. They analyzed my body language, my look, my words, my drawing and playing. The file is full of different experts’ descriptions and interpretations of me and my parents. No wonder I prefer to study systems and social phenomena rather than human beings. I found letters to the CPS from my grandparents. They did everything in their power to at least get me to them during the investigation which seemed to never finish. Without any other result than being described as manipulative. Manipulative. But their well mannered letters despite the nightmare the family was in, was a natural and healthy reaction to what I refuse to call something else than what it is, a state approved abduction.
I tried to escape the institution twice, in pajamas, following the road to my father’s office, but I was caught. And I kicked and hit the social worker who held me away from my parents when they were told to leave after a visit. I was relieved to read that I FOUGHT! I showed them and my parents that all I wanted was to go back home. My mother told me later how extremely hard it was to be told to leave and to observe and feel the bad effect this institution had on me, but she knew the CPS would use everything against her; her reactions, words and attitude, as so many parents tell. Often these caseworkers are in their early twenties by the way, who just finished three or five years of education, and often without children themselves:
A newborn taken
The caseworker in a Muslim sister´s case, who decided that her newborn baby should be taken from her two days after birth, a ´trend´ four experts warned about, was of this type. We followed her influencer-blog. After the newborn was returned to the mother six months later, as the court concluded that the newborn never should´ve been taken, the caseworker wrote she was exhausted by working at the CPS so she quit. Poor her. What about the woman who lost the first six months of bonding with her baby. Who pumped milk and delivered it every day before the CPS relocated the baby to a single mother on the other side of the country. The biological mother who cried her eyes out, who came to us in the masjid for support, who lost her milk, and then, when she was finally reunited with her baby, was told to pay back the child benefit she was given automatically after birth, as she didn’t have the baby with her. As if it was due to voluntariness.
In my file I read that they discussed foster home for me. That was frightening to read. QadrAllah that I was brought back home and that nightmare of a chapter got sealed. Sealed, but still with me as a painful memory of how easily life can be turned upside down through institutional invasion. This trauma could by no means be repaired by the bureaucratic and financial excuse I got as an adult. If I didn’t take the case to a lawyer, I wouldn’t get that excuse. The mother who lost six months of bonding time with her baby got Nothing. When the case got closed, they left Norway. Of course, how can an Injustice of that magnitude ever be repaired?
Help, they say
I thank Allah that we didn't experience something like this with our children during the 13 years we lived in Norway as parents, but I know first hand Muslim families who went through this nightmare. Like this mother mentioned, as well as a girl at the age of one of my daughters. She was suddenly taken one day by the CPS to an ´emergency shelter´; a family she had never seen before many hours drive from their home, family, school and friends. These parents had also received a concern about potential damaging conditions in the home, so the girl had to “stay safe” while they were investigating the concern. The whole community supported them with written letters to the CPS. We all knew they had messed up bigtime by invading this family. Three months later her daughter was back home as the investigation ended with “Nothing’, but still they had to have the CPS in their life for another six months before the case was finally closed. I see it as a way of trying to “justify” the extreme measurements taken, now insisting on helping a family that wasn’t in need of it whatsoever, not even financially. It can’t be called help or voluntary when it is enforced. What I see is a perverse form of care where parents and youth are forced to ‘accept’ help from decisions taken above their heads with obvious negative consequences if they are declined. The girl was so traumatized after this that she couldn’t leave her mother for a second. If it happened once, it could happen again, any time. They moved from Norway after this experience, and our community never forgot. Our children never forgot what happened to their friend.
Violence
Negative experiences accumulated in diverse communities are like dark matter: Pretty much kept hidden but with a significant influence on the ordinary matter: What we see is a system of care that creates unnecessary insecurity, anxiety, depression and lack of trust to public institutions in both children, youth and parents. The result is a society of parents either being amongst those who experience the horror stemming from better doing five mistakes to save one, or amongst the many who live in the state of expecting that the same fatal misunderstanding will happen to them: One Word from a child’s mouth to an employee eagerly to follow every handbook on having an “extra eye on Minority youth” can be enough. A drawing can be enough, an accident that brings you to the emergency can be enough. What kind of society rationalizes making parents criminals towards their own children based on suspicion, faqat?
I can’t think of a torture method worse than taking children away from their families, nor living in a society where this threat is constant, while being told that the problem is theirs: Insecurity and distrust are due to a “lack of knowledge about the system.” But there are many who observe first or second hand what this system leads to. Many experience it as a type of state violence exercised through the institutions we are told to trust.
The motherly instinct of sensing potential danger manifests itself in many ways. Mothers find themselves walking back and forth in their homes with an increased heart rate if the children don’t come home from school on time. They become dizzy, nauseous, close to entering their children's bedrooms to pack their bags while wondering what it was that led to them being taken. There are mothers who get the joy of pregnancy disrupted by the thought of the following check-ups. Not the medical side of them, but the invading investigation through questioning and observation like the mother is first and foremost a potential damage source to their own child rather than a safe haven. Mothers struggle with sleeping well the night before the check-ups, in case of what they could think of her or her baby. Mothers get anxious if their children fall and get a wound or a blue mark, in case what the kindergarten worker may think. Read more examples in this article. It sounds too extreme to be true. I wish it wasn’t. I remember a mother who needed me to join her to the emergency after her child found and ate some painkillers, as she feared the doctors would use it against her as a mother and send a concern that potentially could ruin her family. What type of life is that?
Naivety
I wanted to DO something about it. I wanted to use my education and love for research to contribute to a better society, a more productive system of care. A public care based on trust, collaboration and resource building: Like it is presented as, but not experiences as by everyone, like amongst the ones categorized as 'vulnerable’; non-western minority youth, the sick on benefit, the ones without education and work, the single mothers, and ironically enough, individuals who have been under public care. I applied for a PhD fellowship with my project abstract, and got it, partly due to the project’s countervoice as the committee wrote: It could bring something new to the table. No wonder I was optimistic. How naive.
I experience a very small room for looking twice towards what is considered to make Norway supreme: Their care for women and children, the fight for their rights, worldwide. Going down that road with integrity intact feels as a mission impossible. ´The system only wants good,´ I was told, as well as hearing that I´m not trustworthy: ´You are not only a Muslim, ´but an orthodox one:´ I was told to turn my project upside down. What I heard was that I should look critically at the families, and not the system they experienced as problematic. I guess I wasn´t seen as scientific enough, and for the first time despite good results, I started to doubt myself. One individual admitted that it’s hard to question the dogmas in one's research field. There we have the problem in a nutshell.
Triggers
I wasn’t aware of how this program and topic of study could reactivate this painful chapter of my childhood. I didn’t even acknowledge the trauma it caused before having courses located at a uni for applied sciences. I think this tells me I wasn't truly connected to all chapters of my past back in 2019. Neither was I aware of the depth of systemic failure making these institutional invasions possible. I realized throughout the line of courses that the situation was worse than I thought, and experienced myself. I remember I called my husband during the first week, telling him this is not a place for us. But I continued working, and I worked hard, until the beginning of 2024 to complete my thesis. It helped a lot to write from abroad, and to attend seminars and meetings digitally. I’m close to finish, but I refuse to steer the investigation away from the system, to produce another problem-oriented analysis of Muslims , exploiting my informants, mothers like myself by not taking their experiences seriously. How I love social sciences, and I truly dislike not finishing things I’ve started, but I need to think and write from my standpoint, in line with my scholarly conviction and intuition.
The Consequence of Critique
I’m aware that while I’m writing about a painful chapter, I also write about the public child care rationale that made it possible. There is a very short road from highlighting negative experiences or questionable praxises, to being considered as a ´Barnevernsmotstander,´ an ´oppononent´ of the CPS; a social suicide. I know that highlighting institutional failure from my standpoint as a Muslim is like putting the scholarly me on death row. This attention from someone like me is seen as close to hate speech, no matter how many times I refuse that interpretation. All those years I lived in Norway as a Muslimah, I was positively engaged in our community as well as in the broader society. I was never acting bad towards individuals or groups in society, I never glorified violence. I didn’t attend demonstrations, I didn’t burn flags or symbols, but still obviously, I was seen as a potential threat. I just got documentation that proves I’ve been under objectionable surveillance in Norway amongst many hundred other individuals based on religious identity:
The EOS committee concluded the investigation (that I asked for) with a critique of the surveillor, but I couldn’t get any details. That means I have no information about why, how, or when. “Yeah. This is how it was to be a communist back in the days like my parents. You’ll at least be able to read your file in thirty years,” a close sister of mine told me to help me handle the emotions of deep disappointment, infringement and sadness. Why did it hurt? I can't even claim justice on my behalf. I felt spat at, thrown out of a clip. Like I was Nothing. Like privacy and justice doesn't apply to people like me.
Alhamdulillah. I know myself and my intentions. This is just another test from Allah, and He sees me all the time. I thank Him for having the opportunity to live amongst Muslims in a place that feels like home, for every step that ultimately brought us here, even the hard ones.
Prayers
I pray for my sisters who right now live with insecurity or who face unjust institutional invasion of their families; who at this moment have their children taken away and placed in non-Muslim families or institutions, or who unjustly are experiencing a series of sudden home visits, or just recieved that first letter. I feel your anxiety. May Allah make you strong and bring you closer to Him, and may He protect you and your children. Remember that everything in life is a test, and that every chapter in life brings something valuable. Allah has given us rizq and the power of dua. May He bring us all to what is best in dunya and Akhirah. Allah is sufficient for us, and He is the best disposer of affairs.
