Sweden's rising Muslim tide
Sweden's rising Muslim tide
Home to one of Europe's most Muslim cities, the country may also be host to increasing radicalism.
By James Brandon
MALMO, SWEDEN - As a group of Swedish Muslims begin their midday prayers in a mosque still blackened by smoke from a recent Molotov-cocktail attack, Bejzat Becirov, director of Malmo's Islamic Center, is talking urgently.
"I'm afraid the same thing will happen here as in Paris," says Mr. Becirov, a Macedonian immigrant who opened Scandinavia's first mosque in this city in southern Sweden in 1984.
Malmo, which has one of the highest percentage of Muslims of any western European city, illustrates the challenges facing a continent whose native population is increasingly wary of a rapidly expanding and often discontented Muslim population.
But while the mosque has been a target for attacks since its founding, there is increasing evidence that Islamic militants are gaining a foothold in Sweden by successfully exploiting racial tensions and Muslim anger over economic underachievement, and ghettoization.
Bosnian authorities arrested a Muslim Swede in Sarajevo in October for possession of explosives while Islamist websites published several inflammatory but unsubstantiated claims in late summer that a mujahideen training camp has been established in southern Sweden.
Meanwhile moderate Muslims like Becirov, whose progressive mosque is a place where Sunnis and Shiites praying side by side, are increasingly under fire from both Swedish nationalists who see them as dangerous representatives of radical Islam and Muslim fundamentalists who see them as selling out to Western ideas.
"It's been like hell on earth to deal with this whole process," sighs Becirov, displaying Swedish press accounts of the last firebombing of the mosque Oct. 21.
But although the attacks on Becirov's mosque have generated support from Muslims in Sweden and abroad, many Malmo Muslims are turning to increasingly radical forms of Islam - in some cases alienated by Becirov himself.
"This mosque is no good," says one Palestinian refugee who works nearby. "The imam, he is no good. He says one thing and he does another," he says, accusing him of un-Islamic activities, such as drinking alcohol.
Such suspicions may be pushing even mainstream Swedish Muslims toward radical street preachers, especially in the nearby suburb of Rosengaard where Muslim immigrants form a substantial majority.
"These neighborhoods are hunting grounds for Islamists but how many and how organized [they are] it's impossible to say," says Aje Carlbom, a Malmo University researcher who began studying Rosengaard society nearly ten years ago.
"Twenty years ago when the mosque was established they [its founders] had some political problems and pushed the different factions out," Carlbom explains. "These small factions established their own mosques in basements."
It is a pattern echoed across Europe. While moderate Muslims may disown extremists and bar them from mosques, they do little to challenge extremist ideologies and the radical preachers merely regroup elsewhere, out of sight of both mainstream Muslims and the authorities.
"I know for a fact that there are small extremist groups in Malmo," says Arjumand Carlstein, a social worker at Malmo Islamic Centre, attached to the mosque. "And apart from the organized groups, you also have the Internet and extremists can easily communicate with each other in other parts of the world."
This global phenomenon appears to be spreading to Sweden. In August, several short video clips appeared on the Internet purporting to show experimental detonations of explosives in a wooded valley, supposedly in Sweden.
In September, another Islamist website claiming to speak for Ansar Al-Sunna, the Iraqi terrorist group, said the group had established "a small isolated training camp in southern Sweden."
"We wish to inform the Ummah," said the website, referring to the global Islamic community, "that the Army of Ansar Al-Sunnah in Sweden are well-trained to defend our holy countries ... having established a Mujahideen training camp, located in Skane [the region in southern Sweden that includes Malmo] ... with the help from Allah."
The website's authors claimed that the camp would only be used to train fighters for combat abroad. However they also promised to "capture and punish" the Swedish Evangelist preacher Runar Sogaard who in March called Islam's Prophet Mohammad a "pedophile" for marrying a girl who, according to many Muslim traditions, was only 9 years old.
The website has since been closed down, and experts interviewed for this article were unaware of any such camps. However, the jihadists' claims suggest that problems lie beneath the placid exterior of Swedish society.
While lavish welfare payments have to some extent enabled Sweden to buy off Muslim discontent more effectively than France, some think this has also fomented other problems by preventing many immigrants from advancing economically or socially in Swedish society.
"The Swedish system is very pacifying," says Carlstein. "A lot of people feel you don't have to get a job or learn the language," adding that unemployment and social immobility can help fuel radicalism.
But so far there have been no terrorist attacks or Paris-style revolts in Sweden, and violence in Malmo has been largely between criminal gangs, together with some sporadic attacks against Jewish targets and municipal buses.
"France has a tradition of revolt and demonstration against the state," says Jonathan Friedman, professor of social anthropology at the nearby University of Lund. "But in Sweden it's almost as if the state has sided with the immigrants against the Swedish working class."
"Sweden thinks of itself as immune from terrorism because of its foreign policies," adds Magnus Ranstorp, an analyst at the Swedish National Defence College.
"But one has to be worried about issues like in Holland," he continues, referring to the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh, "although it would take a lot for something like that to happen in Sweden."
www.csmonitor.com | Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures
I want to be the first person to jump on the Anti Muslim argument. Recently anywhere there are Muslims there is trouble. What is up with these people? Cann't they just live in peace with everyone around them?
However the golden question here is why is it that anywhere there are Muslims there are problems???? Can anyone answer that question??
As always I ask that responses be intelligent and worthy of thought... Otherwise what is the point??
"Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science Monitor."
LOL.
There is a lot of law abiding Muslims in the West. Can't paint the whole with one brush, but i see how people can think that. In the US is not really a big problem from my own experience (I'm an Infadel). I think that it's some Muslims refusal to intergrate into society and biting the hands that feed them that fuels this perception.IMHO
there's no connection to Christianity.Originally Posted by signatory
Yes, offcorse it is questionable. Specially that they picked a movie that was found on a neo nazi website and claim their finidings of terrorist camps in Sweden based on that. And that imam was teaching non muslim acts in a mosque. Oh well.
Jwillmoore Read the first line.
Yes but why is that how did they become so radicalized? Islam is not a religeon that teaches violance yet some member of this pro life human loving religeon are resulting to the worst kinds of violance ever imagined?
Even Islamic history that most Muslims learn teaches tolerance. It is not in Islamic traditons to commit violance. What is so wrong with these few?
I can not bring myself to just discount them as murders. There most be more.
I hope your not talking about Swedish muslims, because they are the ones that flee from people like that. Many of them still fear of ex. Iranian agents.
Anyway, there is very few arab muslims in Sweden. Most of them are from the balkans and exiled iraqi and iranian families. Unike in especially France and Holland with a north african base where the culture is a bit different.
Just because they might be muslims doesn't mean they all culturally act the same (duh) so to draw comparative conclusions like that is just sillyness.
Some muslims would love this Yet another conspiracy theory against Muslims. Could that be a reason that is driving them to Violance??? I hope not or is that an orchastrated plot to discredit Muslims so that people will see them as thugs murderes worse yet terorists...
Jwillmoore Read the first line.
Offcorse, many innocent muslims get in the way and they have to suffer for it. Ex, sergrigation, no jobbs, quiet racism etc. Also burning their mosque 5-6 times (Dont know exact number but there where plenty) doesn´t help. Some of the immigrant muslims have been targeted for their religion in their home countries and when they come to Sweden they dont expect their holy place to be burned once again.
People come to America for economic opportunities... and they actually have them here, regardless of race. And that's why I don't think you see Paris-style riots that are centered around a certain minority group aside from the extremely Balkanized parts of the country like Los Angeles.
Yes, we have a perpetual underclass that has poor minorities... but also a lot of poor white people - and I would say that most of those perpetually poor are native-born and of many cultural backgrounds.
Islam is not a problem here any more than radical Christianity (say, for instance, the Davidians... who probably shouldn't have been burned to death anyway, and if we tried to do the same to radical Muslims like we did to radical Christian cultists, the **** would truly hit the fan.) The "bad" Muslims either came to America for the purpose of stirring up **** (Mohammed Atta) or they are dumbasses from the perpetually stupid segment of society (Nation of Islam).
LoL, U can't be dumber.......Many of them...U actually think they fear agents who want to kill them in Sweden. We got about 1 million muslims....
Did I say majority? It was an example of what people where persecute for. Look up the word many and 1 million muslims? 1 MILLION OUT OF 9?! Are you shure that its not 100.000 ?
FYI
http://ncr-iran.org/content/view/38/53/
The problem is not Islam, the religion. We have plenty of muslims in my neighborhood from Somalia and they're are wonderful neighbors. The descendents of Iranian immigrants in American have reached incredible heights in our society. Indian and Malaysian immigrants are at the forefront of our academic and scientific world. Islam, as expressed by these ethnics groups, has been demonstrated to be a religion of respect, peace, and modernity, in our country.
And then.....there are the Arabs.
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