16 March 2007

How to be an updated Swede

Zaynar Adami on my TV yesterday

1981 Zaynar Adami was born in Iran to kurdish parents. Five years later his family came to live in Sweden. Thank you God for that.

2004 he started the magazine Gringo, then and still a supplement to the free Metro magazine, designed to bring nuance to media's image of life in the suburbs and its inhabitants. With humour, love and optimism he brought Gringo to a huge success and received Sweden's Journalist prize 2005 for "Innovator of the year". Today, his company Latifeh AB (named after his mother), have 17 employees from 15 different countries. Half are men, half are women.

This day he gave a speech at a Swedbank's seminar, broad casted on national TV, with the clear message that diversity pays off. He had the one thousand swedish suits all pronounce his name. "Let's say it together; Z a y n a r!". The whole world is a market, and the immigrants are not part of the problem, but part of the solution, he says.

And what is a Swede anyway? A blond,
tall and blue-eyed guy? Just look to the society as a whole! Me and my staff might
be from 15 different countries, but we have one thing in common; we're all swedish,
says Adami.

Sweden needs to update what it means to be swedish. We (Swedes) are few and the world is global today. Ask not how we can integrate the immigrants in Sweden, but how the immigrants can integrate us in the world, he says.


Love this guy.

5 comments:

Shaykhspeara Sha'ira said...

Han e toppen, förändrat mycket i Media Sverige.

Anonymous said...

It's very interesting to watch Sweden make the transition to a multi-ethnic society. My impression is that Swedes are handling these changes quite well - especially compared to France, for example.

Zaynar looks like a very charismatic guy, btw.

Nizo said...

Can you send him over to Québec?

:-)

We need him now more than ever...

Anonymous said...

Assalamualaikum,
I ended up at your blog just being curious about swedes and Sweden. I have a curious question - are you a native swede (like the ones that are from the blood stream of the vikings) who became Muslim or an migrated swede?

The reason for this question could be that I want to know how swedes who are mostly ignorant about religions are taking Islam as.

Imaan On Ice said...

Viking swede here...

//Imaan