A local politician from the far-right Sweden Democrats argued during an election debate on Thursday that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to practice their faith in Strömsund in northwestern Sweden.
“I don’t think someone should be allowed to be a practicing Muslim in Strömsund,” Sweden Democrat Mikael Säbom said on Thursday during a live election debate broadcast on Sveriges Radio Jämtland.
LANDSKRONA, Sweden — In Sweden’s last general election, a surge in voter support for an anti-immigrant party in this small, southern coastal town shocked a nation long regarded as one of the world’s most liberal.
That party, the Sweden Democrats, now hopes to win its first parliamentary seats in elections on September 19, a radical departure for the country could make forming a new government more difficult for the established parties.
Islam is a particular focus of criticism for the Sweden Democrats, who contend it is not compatible with Swedish values. “We have religious freedom in Sweden and we shall have that in the future. What I am against is the adaptation of society to the Muslim minority,” said party leader Jimmie Akesson.
Center-right Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt this week called the Sweden Democrats “a right-wing, xenophobic populist party” akin to those found in other European countries.
The center-right Danish minority government usually relies on People’s Party support in parliament in return for tougher immigration laws.
The Sweden Democrats polled 2.93 percent nationwide in the 2006 election. Sweden has a threshold of 4 percent of votes to win seats in the 349-member parliament and opinion polls suggest the party has a good shot at clearing the hurdle this time.
That in turn could deprive Reinfeldt, whose center-right coalition has a narrow lead over the opposition, of a majority and leave the far right party holding the balance of power.
See also “‘Dragon Tattoo’ author anti-immigrant prophecy may emerge in Swedish vote”, Bloomberg, 10 September 2010
Update: See “Local Sweden Democrat: ‘ban’ practicing Muslims”,The Local, 11 September 2010
A student wearing the niqab has begun attending a teacher training course in Stockholm, more than one and a half years after another woman reported a school that would not allow her to wear the headscarf in class.
Employers and principals are still waiting for a guiding principle about the niqab in classrooms from the Equality Ombudsman (DO) following the woman’s notification last year, Dagens Nyheter (DN) reported on Monday.
The new student is studying at Stockholm University. “Almost no municipality or school that I know of allows the niqab,” Stockholm University lawyer and equality coordinator Christian Edling told the newspaper. “It would be easier if we had guidance.”
The DO explained that there is the delay in the case because it is not a priority and that it requires careful treatment due to the complexities involved.
“I think it is deplorable that there such a long time has passed since this girl notified the city of Stockholm and nothing has happened,” city school commissioner Lotta Edholm told DN.
Edholm has previously reported the DO to the parliamentary ombudsman for the slow process. The DO did not offer a timeframe on when it can present a decision on new guidelines.
“In general terms, I can say that one should try to find a pragmatic solution, but the right to education is deeply rooted in law,” George Svéd, director of DO’s education division, told DN.
A Swedish Radio News investigation suggests that women who wear a headscarf have a much harder time getting a job.
The P3 radio channel invented two imaginary job seekers who applied for 200 posts. They had essentially identical qualifications, spoke the same number of languages and were both involved in clubs and other activities.
The only difference was that one was wearing a headscarf on her photo and had a non-Swedish sounding name. But there was a clear difference in the result: “Emma Svensson” was contacted by 35 employers, while “Evin Ziadi” only heard back from eight.
Swedish TV channel TV4 announced on Friday that it has refused to broadcast a campaign advert by the far-right Sweden Democrats because it claims it contains racial hatred.
The party wanted to pay the channel 1.5 million kronor ($201,240) to run the ad. The half-minute advert shows a race in which an elderly woman with a walker is chased by a group of burqa-clad women pushing prams with a slogan promising to safeguard pension funding at the expense of immigration.
According to party press secretary Erik Almqvist, the ad does not violate Swedish law. The party has screened the clip for lawyers, who said that it does not break the law against inciting racial hatred. “The conflict we see as a result of mass immigration is not related to the person’s origin, but rather a conflict of values, as far as we can see,” said Almqvist in reference to the burqa-clad women in the video.
TV4 CEO Jan Scherman disagreed. “The film is contrary to the democracy clause in the Radio and Television Act and also against democracy clauses which the Sweden Democrats, among others, have adopted for the equality of all people, regardless of whether it is the European Convention or the UN Charter,” he said. “The film is also against the constitution act on freedom of speech that prohibits hate speech,” Scherman added.
A civil servant working under Integration Minister Nyamko Sabuni will be assigned new duties after writing a blog saying that there are no good adherents of Islam and comparing the religion to Communism or Nazism.
The man, a non-political appointee, shared his opinion on Islam on his blog in September 2008 when he commented on an article by writer Lena Andersson in which she warned against the “religious terrorism” directed at artists, writers and journalists. The civil servant’s own commentary on the article was that “Islam is like Communism or Nazism. There are no good practitioners – just confused or evil.”
Sabuni told the Expressen daily on Wednesday, “I strongly disagree with these views and there is of course no truth in them.” However, neither she nor her state secretary, Christer Hallerby, commented on Wednesday on whether they consider the man man fit to work with immigration issues.
“I cannot conduct personnel policy in the media since this is something we deal with internally,” Hallerby told news agency TT. “This is something he has done outside of his duties and as I understand it also before he was hired here. For the non-political parts of government offices, the same rules apply as for those in the rest of the labour market in terms of freedom of expression, job security and professional negotiations during a transfer.”
Sabuni also stressed that the man is an non-political civil servant and that she cannot keep track of what all the civil servants in the government offices think. She declined to comment on whether the man is suited to work as a researcher in her department.
However, a written statement from Hallerby on Wednesday evening confirmed that he and the staff member had agreed that as the discussion had arisen it was made clear that the man could no longer represent the department “in the same way as before.” The man will “change job duties within the department in the future.” A discussion of what these will entail is currently ongoing.
The man later apologised on his blog for the comments and offered a clarification of his statement.
The leaders of Swedish schools and universities should be allowed to ban students from wearing clothes that cover their faces, including Islamic veils such as the full-body burqa and the full-face niqab, Education Minister Jan Bjorklund said Wednesday.
“Education is based on an interaction between teacher and students. You have to be able see each others’ faces,” Bjorklund said. “I think that it is questionable if the school can fulfil its task if a student wears clothing that covers the face, like the burqa and niqab.”
The Left Party’s education spokeswoman, Rossana Dinamarca, said the proposal would “force more girls with full-face veils to (religious) independent schools” and criticized the proposal as populistic, noting the upcoming elections in September.
The City of Stockholm is to pay 35,000 kronor ($4,500) in compensation to a woman who was forced to leave a municipal training course for wearing a long headscarf.
The course was aimed at helping people secure jobs in the cleaning business. But when the woman arrived at class the first day she was told that prospective employers would not accept the way she dressed. As a result, the woman’s name was struck off the list of course participants.
The incident, which occurred in April 2008, was reported to the Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen – DO). The ombudsman elected to sue the city on grounds of discrimination but on Thursday the two sides were able to reach an out of court settlement.
“Ethnic and religious diversity are part of today’s Swedish labour market. Employers are bound by law to prevent religious discrimination and unions have a key role to play in driving this issue,” said ombudsman Katri Linna in a statement announcing the compensation agreement
From his party’s office in the basement of a Stockholm parking garage, Jimmie Akesson is running for Parliament, preaching sharp cuts in immigration and calling Islam the greatest threat to Swedish society.
That message until now has gained little traction in Sweden, but polls are predicting gains for Akesson’s far-right Sweden Democrats that could give them a king-maker role in national elections this year if neither mainstream bloc wins an outright majority. It’s an unnerving scenario for Swedes and their self-image of being more tolerant of outsiders than the rest of Europe.
Opinion polls show the Sweden Democrats could get 4 to 6 percent of votes in the September election, enough to win 15-20 seats in the 349-member Riksdag and potentially throw Swedish politics into disarray. But by law a party needs at least 4 percent to get into the legislature, and the Sweden Democrats could well fall short. Also, paradoxically, their poll numbers are up at a time when another survey show the number of Swedes worried about excessive immigration is declining.
All the same, the mainstream parties which hitherto simply ignored the far right are being forced to say where they stand. The center-left says it won’t govern with the Sweden Democrats under any circumstances. The incumbent center-right hasn’t put it quite that strongly, but sounds very reluctant to line up with the far right.
Akesson, the clerkish 31-year-old leading the Sweden Democrat charge, insists voters are more disenchanted with liberal immigration laws than they admit out loud. “In Sweden, if you voice criticism against the immigration policy, you are viewed as a racist or xenophobe,” Akesson said.
The depiction of Prophet Muhammad as a dog by a Swedish cartoonist has sparked off controversies and renewed debates on the limits to free speech. The incident at Uppsala University when Muslim protesters physically attacked Lars Vilks while giving a lecture on the limits of free speech is presented in the media as yet another instance of Muslim intolerance and violence. But let us first examine the subtext of the message that Vilks is trying to convey….
Muslims, in Vilks’s view, as represented by their prophet, are sub-human creatures to be looked down upon. They are perhaps the worst vermin that “nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth”, to use Swift’s phrase in a different context. In this respect, Vilks’s message seems fairly similar to that conveyed by the short “documentary” film Fitna produced by the Dutch politician Geert Wilders….
But does Vilks realise the impact of this kind of representation on the lives of ordinary European Muslims going peacefully about their business? Does he realise that the image he has created feeds into the racial profiling and stereotyping targeting the Muslim population in Europe in particular? …
Vilks has succeeded in gaining his moment in the spotlight. But the legacy of his action will be the perpetuation of a cycle of hatred and suspicion.
Amira Nowaira at Comment is Free, 21 May 2010