هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
Muslims in Sweden have forced their way onto the media and research agenda in the wake of the violence that recently erupted in five Swedish cities after copies of the Quran were burned by supporters of the anti-Islam far-right Stram Kurs (Hard Line) movement, led by extremist Rasmus Paludan, the movement’s founder, who has a disgraceful history of attacking immigrants and members of the Muslim community.
Sweden is considered one of the world’s most open countries and has a bright record of welcoming refugees from across the globe. But things changed quickly over the past seven years, from 2015 to the present, to the point that the UN Human Rights Council sounded the alarm over concerns about the rising pace of racist crimes against Muslims.
In this report, part of the “Muslims of Europe” file, we shed light on the reality of the Muslim community in Sweden and the challenges of integration despite the positive steps Muslims have made on that path, while also pointing to the repercussions of the growing far-right current on the community’s present and future.
Muslims in Sweden: 70 years of relations
Direct relations between Sweden and Muslims go back more than 70 years, specifically during World War II, when Stockholm became the destination of the first community of Islamic origin arriving from Finland. They were of Tatar origin, and they began legitimizing their presence through a number of social entities, foremost among them the cultural association established in the capital.
During the two decades following the war, the second wave of migration began, but this time it was labor migration. Thousands of workers emigrated from Turkey, North Africa, Palestine and the countries of Yugoslavia, and they officially began establishing the country’s first Muslim minority, setting up associations and clubs that served their interests and spoke on their behalf.
In the mid-1970s, migration shifted from labor-driven to political and humanitarian. Successive waves arrived in Sweden from Lebanon, Kurdistan, Bangladesh, Uganda and Palestine, fleeing the dire conditions in their home countries, whether political, security-related, economic or environmental, and settled in a number of cities, most notably Gothenburg, Malmo and Uppsala.
In 1975, the country’s first Islamic federation was established in Malmo, in the south, under the name “League of Islamic Associations in Sweden,” gaining legitimacy through recognition by the Swedish government. Successive waves of migration then continued from Iran, Iraq, Eritrea and Bulgaria, as well as from Iraqi and Turkish Kurds and Pakistanis, bringing the number of Muslims by the end of the 1980s to more than 150,000.
In less than 50 years, the number of Muslims in Sweden rose from 1,000 to 830,000. Syrians make up the largest group at 190,000, 90 percent of them Muslim, alongside 170,000 Iraqis, 70 percent of them Muslim, followed by 65,000 Afghans, 65,000 Palestinians, 60,000 Somalis, 45,000 Bosnians, Chechens and Serbs, 35,000 from North Africa, 95 percent of them Muslim, 30,000 Turks, 75 percent of them Muslim, 25,000 Iranians, 15,000 Lebanese, and nearly 90,000 of other nationalities.
The open-door policy is over
The official relationship between the Swedish state and immigrants in general, especially Muslims as the largest minority after Christians, has passed through two main phases. The first was the open-door phase, when the country opened its borders to successive waves of migration beginning in the 1950s and continuing until the first decade of the current millennium. At the time, Sweden was an important destination for those seeking coexistence and integration.
The second phase came after 2015, when the country closed its borders and imposed strict restrictions on immigrants, placing it in the crosshairs of international criticism, especially after the rise of the far right, led by the Sweden Democrats party, which made hostility toward Muslims and refugees its most prominent slogan, deploying it from time to time to win populist support.
The shift from openness to closure toward immigrants in general came as a result of strong pressure exerted on the Swedish government, some of it social and some security-related and political. Swedish intelligence had warned of growing extremism among immigrants, revealing a 1,000 percent increase in the number of extremists in less than a decade, and that more than 300 people from Sweden had joined the Islamic State group, ISIS, in recent years, although 140 later withdrew from the organization.
The head of the intelligence service, Anders Thornberg, commented on those figures by saying that despite the small number of extremists and their limited ability to carry out attacks against Swedish targets, they must be closely followed and monitored, noting that this is necessary before everyone is taken by surprise by an act of violence.
As for Muslims specifically, the Swedish National Defence College presented a special report to the country’s civil authority on the map of Muslim presence and demographic expansion, revealing that in less than 10 years the number of Muslims had increased tenfold. It warned that the preaching speech directed by Muslim preachers in Sweden carries jihadist calls within it, and concluded that the spread of Islam has become a future threat to the national demographic makeup.
Writer and researcher Nasser al-Sahli described in an article the violence Sweden recently witnessed over the burning of copies of the Holy Quran as proof that the country has placed itself in a “demonization dilemma,” adding: “Stockholm is now living through a debate over the repercussions of migration policies and their mistakes, which are beginning to appear day after day, and there is a carefully crafted plan to export a negative image of Muslims that serves the agendas of the far right, amid an indecisive legislative and legal structure that opens the door to the country turning into battlefields among minorities.”
A safe society
The atmosphere may be somewhat clouded by the growing rhetoric of hate in recent years, but the general environment remains among the best in Europe for helping integration, according to researcher Hani Salah, who pointed to many indicators supporting that conclusion. One example is the status of the Stockholm Grand Mosque, which receives 20,000 visitors annually seeking to learn about Islam, a large proportion of them non-Muslims.
He notes that anyone living outside Sweden does not need to make much effort to see this positive integration. A quick visit to the capital and to the mosque inaugurated in 2000 is enough, as it has become a destination for people of different religions and ethnicities who come specifically to learn about Islamic civilization and its great arts.
This helps improve the image and bring Muslims and others closer together, helping establish a common ground of humanity and civilization through which coexistence can be achieved.
According to a study issued by the Muslim Association in Sweden, Muslims are concentrated in three main cities: the capital Stockholm in the center, Gothenburg in the west and Malmo in the far south. They come from Arab backgrounds, especially from Iraq, Somalia and Eritrea, as well as Balkan origins from Bosnia and Turkey. The study also indicated that relations between them and the state have improved as Muslims have become more aware of their civil rights and more insistent on claiming them.
Muslims previously suffered from difficulties in religious coexistence amid a shortage of mosques and religious institutions, a problem that the authorities gradually began to take into account. Islamic institutions established to serve the community then spread, most notably the Islamic Association IFIS, considered the spiritual father of Islamic institutions, followed by the Swedish Islamic Council SMR and the League of Islamic Associations FIFS, which has many branches, as well as the Swedish Muslim Youth Association SUM, which focuses on youth issues. There are also a number of federations that speak for specific nationalities, such as the Swedish Muslim Federation SMF for Turkish Muslims and the Bosnian Federation SFBH, alongside some other federations representing Shiites and other religious sects.
Muslims’ problems with the education system there are gradually receding. After matters had once been confined to mosques and their affiliated centers, the authorities adopted Muslim curricula in some Islamic schools. This is in addition to recognizing those schools, making it easier for Muslims to obtain certificates recognized by Islamic educational bodies, a problem many communities in other countries still face.
Racism against Muslims
The dramatic shift in the reality and challenges facing the Muslim community since 2015, along with the growth of systematic hate speech after the rise of the far right, prompted the Swedish government in 2017 to adopt a local strategy to combat the radicalization and extremism of populists, drawing on its experience in preventing violent crime, given that it has one of Europe’s lowest murder rates.
Despite that strategy, populist expansion continued to grow after immigrants and Muslims became rich and fertile material for supporters of the extremist Sweden Democrats party, something that was reflected in the reality of Muslims, who in recent years have been subjected to fierce waves of racism and hate crimes.
The far-right party’s success in the 2018 elections, when it won 18 percent of the vote, caused what observers described as a “resounding earthquake” that thrust Sweden, that peaceful and safe country, into the ranks of states suffering from populist rhetoric and a rising far right, such as Italy, Austria, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands.
Commenting on the escalating hate speech against the Muslim community, Swedish academic Mattias Gardell, professor of the history of religions at Uppsala University, said in remarks to Swedish state television, cited by Middle East Online, that racism against Muslims in his country has become disturbingly commonplace, adding, “There is a new racist assault on Muslims. We call this Islamophobia.”
Despite the growing hate speech, the Swedish environment in general remains the most flexible and accommodating for the steps of integration, and Muslims there are clearly aware of that
The Swedish academic’s conclusion is echoed by the testimonies of a number of members of the Muslim community in Sweden, who pointed out — as Syrian young man Ahmad Salim told Alhurra — that the growing phenomenon of Islamophobia now threatens people’s coexistence in the country, and that they face serious challenges because of their religion and Islamic identity. He added, “So we are facing a wave of hatred that may gradually reflect negatively on us in the coming period.”
Swedish political researcher Magnus Ranstorp points out that one of the main reasons behind growing fears of increased racist crimes against Muslims and the rise of “Islamophobia” is the government’s inability to deal with the huge numbers of immigrants and refugees arriving in the country. This coincides with the growth of extremist groups demanding that this presence be reduced in order to preserve the future of Sweden’s demographic makeup, according to his remarks to France 24.
Samir Murtic, imam of a mosque in the southern city of Eslov that was attacked by extremists in 2015, commented on the growing wave of racism against the Muslim community by saying: “We came to Sweden to live in safety and peace, and all we as Muslims can do is explain to Swedes that Islam is a religion of tolerance and love and has nothing to do with violence,” adding, “Sweden is our homeland. Our original countries are those in which we were born, not the countries our fathers left behind.”
Despite the growing hate speech, the Swedish environment in general remains the most flexible and accommodating for the steps of integration, and Muslims there are clearly aware of that. Hence their insistence on staying and coexisting in response to the sporadic acts of violence that occur from time to time, while the far right remains the most painful thorn in the throat of Muslims, who are making major efforts alongside the authorities there to dry up the sources of extremism and clip its wings as much as possible.