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Young women in expensive-looking hijabs strolled by in pairs or with baby carriages, while blond, tattooed hipsters fussed with their smartphones. Most of them have been working since they were 8 or 9. Yet she sees herself as a modern, secular Swede.
Still, when non-Muslim Swedes are critical of Islam, she often finds herself defending the faith. Last year, there were dozens of arson attacks on refugee settlements throughout the country after the Sweden Democrats, a nationalist party formed in , published the addresses of the settlements. As Sweden and neighboring Denmark tighten border controls in response to the Paris attacks, which killed people in November, the appeal of radical religion for some young Muslims in places like Rosengard is likely to intensify.
Rolling, grassy lawns with well-maintained playgrounds surround blocky, high-rise apartment towers. Tidy kitchen gardens flourish next to the main entrance of many buildings. Barakat, for example, is a member of Coexist Malmo, an interreligious organization that includes Jewish, Buddhist and Christian representatives, as well as gay-friendly groups such as the Metropolitan Community Church.
Expanding opportunities for minority participation in the political process figures into their strategy as well. Louis suburb where weeks of civil unrest followed the fatal shooting of an unarmed black man by a white police officer in I am here to remind the majority of that. Street is a special correspondent. Reporting for this article was funded by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. In , we saw the large wave of immigrants all over Europe. And I was really appalled at the response of the government, or lack of response.
The Sweden Democrats advocate ending asylum immigration and instead propose increasing economic aid for refugees abroad in their respective countries. This avoids the problem of assimilation, particularly Muslims who interviewees believe are hard to integrate in large numbers. Sweden Democrats argue that the country had economic, criminal, and cultural problems due to unassimilated immigrants, especially Muslims, even before , and more refugees were just exacerbating the problem.
Data show an increase in certain types of crime over the past few years, including bombings, gang violence, and rape, which interviewees blamed on a multiplicity of factors, some socioeconomic and some sociocultural relating to Islam. However, the reality is far more nuanced. Accurately assessing these claims and discerning a comprehensive picture of the violence is not straightforward. Certain trends in violent crime have provoked public debate. Sweden saw over bombings in , twice that of —one of the highest percentage increases of any other industrialized nation.
Yet a major difficulty in assessing the nature of these crimes is the limited availability of official data. For instance, the Swedish Police Authority only began to collect data on the number of non-lethal shootings in Similarly, while the government has conducted studies on the national origin of crime suspects, the most recent one was in , which, among other things, found immigrants more likely to be suspected of crimes, with discrimination playing a role.
Comprehensive official data on national origin of criminal suspects is not readily available, 57 even though various parties have demanded new investigations to find data that will substantiate their claims. Of the data that is available, interpretations and implications can be misleading, depending on bias.
For example, official statistics do show a large increase in reported rapes, or 34 percent, in the past ten years, 59 but convictions remain low. The media has stepped in with the aim of filling in the gaps, sometimes contradicting government claims.
In , a public broadcaster investigated court convictions and found that 58 percent of convicted rapists were foreign-born, feeding into a narrative that the rise in rapes was due to some cultural proclivity among Muslim refugees. The piece attracted endless media attention, yet this statistic does not consider the ethnic breakdown of non-prosecuted cases nor is it an official statistic given that the government does not report national origin of suspected rapists.
Irrespective of the cause or severity of the violence in Sweden, the narrative that violence is getting worse and more grotesque because of immigrants is having a very real impact on political opinion. They have the appearance of professional news sites and are shared at increasingly high levels. For instance, in the leadup to the elections, Swedish Twitter users shared one link from this ecosystem for every two links shared of professional news.
In one case, they were staged by a Russian television crew. Complementing these media narratives are personal experiences, local stories, and a sense of injustice. A councilmember in the seaside town of Trelleborg said he joined the Sweden Democrats in after a personal experience with violence. He spoke about how his daughter had a child with a Tunisian Muslim who ended up assaulting the two, causing the baby developmental damage.
He said the man was imprisoned, but on appeal was set free and given money to compensate for wrongful imprisonment. The councilman claimed that if a non-Muslim Swede committed the same crime, he would still be imprisoned, but because the man was Muslim, the court was more lenient.
Trying to verify elements of stories like this with third party sources can be difficult in this information environment. As a charismatic local leader, however, his story is well-known. Especially my wife. The night before we moved, a man was shot down in the parking lot just next to my house. You know, when we loaded the furniture in the truck, we could see the stains of blood. Yet he did not blame the new refugees—he thought they were mostly immigrant gangs from the former Yugoslavia and not specifically new Muslims.
Interviewees discerned that not all of the gang violence was coming from the most recent refugees, but many believed that adding more immigrants to already economically and socially depressed areas would create more problems. As has been reported elsewhere, he noted that some immigrants like himself were joining the Sweden Democrats because of violence in their neighborhoods.
And therefore, we have a lot of social problems. Like many newly arrived migrants, they have difficulties getting a job. So there are a lot of unemployed people in these areas. So these areas can never create some kind of community. So I wanted to do something about it. Given that Swedes pay some of the highest personal income taxes in the world, there are regular public concerns about any decreased quality in healthcare or education.
On healthcare, for instance, recent reports show some of the worst wait times for emergency care in Europe, 79 delays in specialist care, nurse shortages, fewer beds but an increased population, and clinic closures. Compared internationally, Sweden still has good healthcare, cancer survival, and life expectancy. Unemployment for the foreign born is 15 percent, compared to 3. Because of the perceived strain on social services by unemployed migrants who receive an unfair share of benefits, a discourse of welfare chauvinism has set in.
Interviewees also discussed strains on education and personal experiences with refugees in the classroom. An official in Svedala discussed the challenges of teaching computer science to non-Swedish refugees. And after summer break, there were They got seven new arrivals in her class. They were young men from Afghanistan, just put in her class. They were illiterate. The whole educational framework, so to speak, in that class was totally demolished.
For many Somalis, they consider work as a punishment. They are just staying here and making a lot of babies. We have a welfare system that is very generous for families having babies. So they are flourishing here. This points to the deeper issue of whether or not Sweden Democrats see the presence of Muslims as compatible with Swedish society.
Of Swedes, 19 percent were foreign-born in compared to 11 percent in 2, When asked during interviews what it means to be a Swede, Sweden Democrats sighed and mentioned love of fika coffee-driven snack breaks , a strong work ethic, respect for nature, speaking Swedish, and equality between the sexes. Those aside, each respondent had a difficult time describing what exactly it meant to be Swedish, which turns out to be part of what it means to be Swedish.
One interview subject brought up the concept of lagom. This makes it more difficult for newcomers or those born in immigrant enclaves to discern how exactly to be Swedish. When asked what is Swedish culture and what its rules might be if you were to explain them, the chairman paused, then reflected on the reality that Swedish culture is rather muted. Unlike Islam, which has proscribed religious rules for being and living, Swedes do not have rules so much an intuitive understanding of their mild-mannered culture.
Swedes have generally been uninvolved in conflict, instead asserting their tolerance of others, acceptance of refugees, and humanitarian efforts. We are in danger from becoming run over by some more strong culture. I think that Islam is a strong culture because it has a very strong moral codes, strong beliefs. At median growth projections, according to Pew, Muslims would not approach anything close to a majority. By , they would comprise around 21 percent of the population, but some Sweden Democrats fear that Islam, and what they perceive as a distinct, strong, rule-driven religious culture, threatens to displace or dominate secular Swedish culture—making it wholly different in the process.
Sweden takes civic secularism seriously and surveys indicate it is one of the least religious countries in the world. There were split feelings amongst respondents about whether or not Islam is compatible with Sweden, based primarily around whether or not the respondent believed Islam could be practiced privately or if it was inherently political and public.
Some respondents asserted there is a difference between radical Islamists and Muslims.
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