Category Archives: Sweden

Göteborg: anti-mosque protestors outnumbered by counter-demonstrators

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Goteborg anti-mosque protestors
National Democrat protestors make up for lack of numbers with lots of flags

Hundreds of proponents and opponents held rallies in Sweden’s second-largest city Goteborg on Saturday to voice their opinions over the building of a mosque there.

Heavy police presence kept the two groups appart and a spokesman for the force said only one person had been arrested for violent behaviour toward an officer. It was the biggest police effort in the city since the EU Summit in 2001, when several thousand people gathered to protest against U.S. President George W. Bush, the EU and globalization.

Mosque opponents claim the construction will ruin a nearby park and that the area is not suitable, while supporters say the opposition is racist. The mosque – which will be the city’s second – is due to be completed in mid-June.

Associated Press, 21 May 2011

The anti-mosque demonstration involved the National Democrats and the Swedish Defence League – the sister organisation of the EDL, who sent a delegation. But the National Democrats reportedly refused to co-operate with the SDL who they regard as pro-Zionist.

The National Democrats, who split from the far-right Sweden Democrats in 2001 because they opposed the party toning down its racist rhetoric in the interests of electability, distributed a leaflet headed “Warning! Sweden is occupied by a foreign power!” which claimed Islam was responsible for suicide terror attacks, rape gangs, child marriages and robbing pensioners.

The counter-protest was organised by Göteborg Against Racism and the Left Party. About a hundred people joined the anti-mosque protest and they were met by 700 counter-demonstrators, according to police figures, though the organisers put the figure at over 2,000.

SDL and EDL

Swedish politician charged over anti-Muslim poster is acquitted

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A Swedish politician facing charges for producing a poster depicting the Muslim prophet Muhammad naked together with his nine-year-old wife was found not guilty by a jury in Malmö on Wednesday.

Carl P Herslow, leader of the Skåne Party (Skånepartiet), a small right-wing populist regional party, is charged with agitation against an ethnic group (hets mot folkgrupp). The poster included the text: “He is 53 and she is nine. Is this the kind of wedding we want to see in Skåne?.”

Herslow admits producing the poster but contested the charges. He said the aim of the poster was to stimulate a debate about Islam, which he argued was incompatible with democracy and equality. “The intention was to provoke a strong reaction among both Muslims and non-Muslims,” he said.

The prosecution argued that Herslow should to be given a suspended prison sentence and for the posters to be confiscated. But after deliberating less than an hour the jury, which are only used in Sweden in freedom of speech cases, told the court that Herslow was not guilty of agitation against an ethnic group. As a result, the court cannot convict the politician when it delivers its formal verdict on March 16th.

The Local, 3 March 2011

Sweden: UPS sued for sacking Muslim who refused to shave beard

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sweden’s Equality Ombudsman (Diskrimineringsombudsmannen, DO) has filed a lawsuit against parcel delivery company United Parcel Service (UPS) after the company dismissed a Muslim driver who refused to shave his beard.

In a lawsuit filed with Sweden’s Labour Court (Arbetsdomstolen) on Monday, the ombudsman argued that the company should pay the man, a resident of Spånga northwest of Stockholm, 150,000 kronor ($23,000) in compensation plus 42,000 kronor in lost income, as well as interest on both amounts.

“The rule has no legitimate purpose and is not appropriate and necessary,” wrote Anders Wilhelmsson, the ombudsman office lawyer representing the man, in the filing.

The man was employed in June 2010 by the Uniflex staffing company, which intended to subcontract him to UPS as a driver. The contract was to last through the summer until August 31st, but the stated aim was a permanent position with UPS if all went well, according to DO.

During the recruitment process, the man was informed that UPS had a uniform policy under which drivers were not allowed to have beards. During the recruitment process, no one asked if he was prepared to shave his beard. In addition, his beard growth was very minimal. As such, he believed his beard would not be a problem.

The man began his employment at UPS on June 7th, 2010. The first week was devoted to training. During that time, no one remarked about his beard, according to the lawsuit.

However, the following Monday just before his first run, his immediate supervisor told him he had to shave the beard the next day.

Since there were other colleagues in the vicinity, the man waited until the afternoon to speak to his supervisor again, but was nevertheless unable to make contact with his boss until the following morning.

The man told his supervisor that he was a Muslim and it was against his religious convictions to shave his beard. The supervisor said it sounded strange to him because there were other Muslims at UPS who had shaved their beards, reiterating the policy was in place so that drivers would look clean and neat and that a beard was unacceptable.

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Sweden Democrats leader says terrorism is ‘a form of Islamic tactic’ and calls for fight against ‘Islamism as a political ideology’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jimmie Akesson2Sweden’s far-right leader on Wednesday called for a fight against Islamic extremism at a parliamentary debate in connection with the December suicide attack in Stockholm.

“Terrorism is not an isolated threat. It is a form of Islamic tactic and it is Islamism as a political ideology that needs to be fought and mapped out,” Sweden Democrat leader Jimmie Åkesson said.

Åkesson, whose anti-immigration party burst onto the Swedishpolitical scene after the September election, acknowledged that only an extremely small portion of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims committed terrorist acts, but said many more “sympathise with Islamism.”

Åkesson, whose Sweden Democrats’ requested Wednesday’s parliamentary debate following the country’s first-ever suicide attack, insisted an important debate had been stifled in Sweden by “a fear of being branded Islamophobic.”

Green Party parliamentarian Maria Ferm blasted Åkesson for “trying to connect the typical picture of a terrorist to the Muslim man,” insisting that only 0.34 percent of all terror attacks in Europe are committed by Islamic extremists. Most attacks, she said, were carried out by rightwing and leftwing extremists.

Swedish Wire, 26 January 2011

Swedish government minister takes stand against Islamophobia

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Sweden’s integration minister Erik Ullenhag is meeting on Thursday with representatives from the Swedish Muslim community to develop a strategy for combating Islamophobia in the wake of the Stockholm suicide bombing.

The suicide bombing in Stockholm risks resulting in suspicions being cast against hundreds of thousands of Swedish Muslims, Ullenhag writes in a debate article in the Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper. He argues that it is unacceptable to blame an entire group for one person’s actions.

“We who believe in the Swedish values of openness and tolerance have a responsibility to fight the Islamophobia and prejudice which can follow in the wake of terror,” writes Ullenhag. “We should never allow one individual’s act to result in an entire religion being seen as suspect or having a group saddled with collective guilt.”

The Local, 13 January 2010

‘Just because you pray, you are not a terrorist’ Swedish Muslim tells police

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Police in Norrköping came out in force Wednesday afternoon after they had been tipped off about a “mysterious foreign man” behaving strangely at a bus stop, and then getting on the bus with his rucksack.

It turns out the 28-year-old man had carried out the muslim praying ritual at the bus stop, but when police caught up with him, and searched him, all suspicions were dismissed.

The local police told news agency TT that this is not the first time they got reports of people with foreign looks behaving in what is seen as “suspiciously”. They claim the number of reports have increased after the failed suicide attack among Christmas shoppers at Drottninggatan in Stockholm. “the atmosphere is very agitated,” says officer Torbjörn Lindqvist at the police in Östergötland.

Also Moustafa Kharraki, deputy head of the Swedish Muslim Council, has noticed more suspicion of muslims lately. “This is very serious and it concerns pure discrimination. People have become fearful and suspicious, a lot has changed since Drottninggatan,” Kharraki told the news agency TT.

Kharraki finds the actions of the Norrköping police “unacceptable”. “The police needs more knowledge. Any muslim can pray in a public space. It is completely normal and just because you pray, you are not a terrorist.”

Radio Sweden, 12 January 2011

Via Islam in Europe

Ban on niqab in Swedish schools is discrimination: ombudsman

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A ban against wearing veils that cover the face at schools and universities violates the Swedish discrimination act, the country’s equality ombudsman ruled Wednesday.

The decision by Katri Linna was the first concerning full-face veils in Sweden.

It was sparked by a complaint made in early 2009 by a young Muslim woman who was studying to become a kindergarten teacher, who was told she could not wear the full-face niqab at her school in Stockholm.

In her decision, Linna said the right to wear religious garb did not mean that safety measures should be neglected but “schools, or employers, are obliged to seek solutions to possible obstacles.”

The plaintive finished with good results, suggesting that “her niqab did not constitute an obstacle for her training,” Linna said.

In August, Education Minister Jan Bjorklund said he wanted leaders of Swedish schools and universities to be allowed to ban students from wearing clothes that cover their faces, including the burqa, the niqab or balaclava masks.

DPA, 1 December 2010

What are the wider issues behind the shootings in Malmö? Liz Fekete reports

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Between August 1991 and January 1992, at a time of heated debate about immigrants, John Ausonious (now serving a life sentence) killed one man and seriously injured ten others, most of them immigrants – in shootings which occurred in and around Stockholm and Uppsala. He was dubbed the laser man because he used a rifle equipped with laser sight (which the current gunman does not). Some journalists are attempting to broaden the media debate, by pointing to lessons from this bleak period in Swedish history….

Back in the 1990s, the populist anti-immigrant party, New Democracy, was active, and members were elected to parliament. Today, the Sweden Democrats (an avowedly neo-Nazi party in the 1990s but now, following a makeover, presenting themselves as the Swedish version of the Danish People’s Party) have just won twenty seats in the Swedish parliament. In the 1990s, there was growing societal hostility towards refugees and asylum seekers with the view of the far-Right affecting national immigration and asylum policies – all set against a backcloth of racist violence against refugees and arson attacks on asylum hostels. But, today, in Sweden, the hostility is increasingly being targeted at Muslims – while the mainstream debate also tends to blame Muslims for failing to integrate into Swedish society.

The linked shootings have taken place in a number of districts around central Malmö where the sniper can hide or in more working-class areas where dense housing estates provide camouflage. Areas range from the multi-racial area of Vendelfridsgatan, and the working-class district of Lönngaten (where the Sweden Democrats are strong) to the more up-market district of Köpenhamnsvägen. Lisa Bjurwald is an investigative reporter on the anti-fascist magazineExpo. “What we do know,” she explains, “is that the climate is similar to that of 1991-92”. And today we “have a debate on integration that is increasingly crossing the line into Islamophobia and anti-immigration views”.

IRR, 1 November 2010

Sweden alarmed by series of racist shootings

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A string of 19 unsolved shootings – all of which appear to be racially motivated – are sending shockwaves through Sweden’s immigrant population.

Bejzat Becirov points to a large hole in the bottom corner of a window at the Islamic Centre, Malmo’s largest mosque. “It was last year,” he said, “New Year’s Eve, and there were people in there, drinking tea and writing greetings cards. Then one of them felt a kind of rush of air, and splinters of glass on the back of his neck. The police later found a bullet embedded in a piece of furniture.”

This is not the worst thing that has happened at the mosque. Mr Becirov, its director, also remembers an arson attack that caused severe damage in 2003. But the shot fired at the mosque late last year is now being re-evaluated. Could it form part of a wider series of unexplained attacks that the police in Malmo are now hoping the public can help solve?

The announcement last week by police that a string of unsolved shootings might be connected is causing deep concern in this city, where almost half the population has an immigrant background. The attacks that police are investigating have all taken place in the past year and have all been aimed at people who look as though they might be immigrants. Of those 19 shootings, one person has been killed and eight have been injured.

BBC News, 28 October 2010