Norway Attack Victim’s Funeral Is Held
While her friends saved for iPads, Bano Rashid worked at an amusement park last summer to buy a bunad, the ornate and expensive national costume of Norway. Though she was an Iraqi Kurd who came here as a child, Ms. Rashid wanted to stretch the limits of the country’s blond and blue-eyed identity, to help redefine what it means to be Norwegian.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
Ms. Rashid, an Iraqi Kurd who moved to Norway as a child, wanted to help redefine what it means to be Norwegian. A Muslim imam and a Christian minister presided over her funeral.
It was a mission that an anti-immigrant extremist sought to thwart when he killed Ms. Rashid, 18, and at least 76 others a week ago in attacks on the government headquarters and at an isolated camp that were meant to turn Norway upon itself.
But the challenge from the extremist, identified by the police as Anders Behring Breivik, has been met with defiance on many fronts, nowhere more so than at Ms. Rashid’s funeral here on Friday, where mourners channeled their grief into a powerful display of unity.
A Muslim imam and female Christian minister presided over a ceremony that drew hundreds of mourners to a small 12th-century church in Ms. Rashid’s hometown, about 25 miles from Oslo, the capital. Her coffin was draped with the red, white and green Kurdish flag, as well as Norway’s red, white and blue.