Taking a cue from similar experiments abroad, one Icelander tested just how well people know the Bible.
Vísir reports that Bjartmar Þeyr Alexandersson stopped people on the street, quoting verses at them that he said were from the Koran, asking Icelanders what they thought of them.
As Bjartmar explains in the beginning of the video, asylum seekers – especially Muslims – have been the subject of heated debate in Iceland lately, and he sought to know just how much people knew about Islam, or even Christianity for that matter. Amongst the Bible verses quotes at people are Leviticus 20:13, Deuteronomy 25:11-12 and 1 Corinthians 14:34.
Consistently, people reacted with shock, horror and dismay that a faith would profess ideas such as these. Bjartmar told reporters that when people talk negatively about Muslim asylum seekers, they will at times accuse them of being terrorists who follow a dangerous faith guided by scripture that commands its followers to adhere to medieval and oppressive belief systems. With this experiment, Bjartmar demonstrates that belief systems that Icelanders find repugnant can be found in the Bible, the holy book of the country’s national church.
The experiment idea is not a new one, and has in fact been used in numerous contexts. Amongst the most well-known of these was conducted by Dutch television in 2015:
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