Finland's newspapers cover a range of main topics today Thursday, with tabloid Ilta-Sanomat running a front page headline on the views expressed by a local Muslim official in Helsinki.
Imam Abbas Bahmanpour was asked in the paper about the customs of Finnish Muslims after controversy in Switzerland over a Syrian family's asylum application, which was reportedly frozen because the family's two teenage boys refused to shake a teacher's hand.
"Islam has very strict chastity mandates, one being to avoid all physical contact with the opposite sex," Bahmanpour says in Ilta-Sanomat. "The line is drawn clearly for clarity. Otherwise many might ask whether hugging is alright if handshakes are, if kissing is allowed if hugging is, and so on."
Vice chair Pia Jardi of the Islamic Council of Finland says in the piece that Muslims hold different interpretations of the no-touching rule, and that following or refusing to follow Finnish greeting etiquette is a personal choice.
"Wall of meat", Sipilä on apathy
Ilta-Sanomat sister tabloid Iltalehti runs a pointed headline on security guards working in migrant reception centres, quoting an ex-guard who said he was "a wall of meat".
The guard said he experienced many threatening situations during his time at the centre. His anecdote details a situation in which a fight between Shia and Sunni Muslims nearly broke out after a single person tried to assault a fellow asylum-seeker.
"During the half hour that it took the police to come the whole population of that floor of the centre came to verbally abuse the instigator," says 'Jari', name changed. "It was frightening. If they had decided to lynch the man then and there, there would've been nothing I could have done, as I was alone."
The IL piece ties in with a bill proposal coming to Parliament this spring on extending the powers of security guards in reception centres, or effectively upgrading their security personnel.
Meanwhile in Finland's biggest daily Helsingin Sanomat Prime Minister Juha Sipilä is featured as saying that Finland's difficult times are "now behind us". The PM illustrates his take with a clock face metaphor that describes a scale of "fervor, creativity and apathy". According to him Finland as a country is rising out of a phase of apathy, while his Centre Party is already somewhere between "creative" and "fervent".
Sipilä's comments come on the heels of news that government last stumbled over policy in talks on traffic regulations early this week, says HS.
Women veterans to outnumber men
Finally, Tampere region paper Aamulehti reports that, within the next few years, a majority of the number of people living in Finland to have taken part in the country's wars will be women.
The Lotta Svärd organisation was well known for its part in recruiting women to serve in a host of different roles to aid the war effort. Women worked as food providers, office and communications personnel, medical staff and maintenance service workers.
"The women who took part in Finland's wars were younger than the men on average and tend to live longer," War Veterans' Union director Markku Seppä says in Aamulehti.
The War Veterans' Union of Finland will choose a new chair and board in June.