Sweden protest after three mosque fires in one week

[lego 44,165]

Swedish anti-racism campaigners have staged a big rally in central Stockholm after three arson attacks on mosques.

Demonstrators held leaflets saying "Don't touch my mosque" at the 1,000-strong rally outside parliament.

A petrol bomb was thrown at a mosque in Uppsala, eastern Sweden, on Thursday. The building did not catch fire.

In late December a mosque was set ablaze at Esloev in the south, and earlier an arson attack on a mosque in Eskilstuna injured five people.

Anti-racism rallies also took place in the cities of Malmo and Gothenburg on Friday.

In Stockholm Sweden's Culture Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke said the government would launch a national strategy to counter Islamophobia. The idea is to educate people about Islam and curb prejudice, she said.

In a mark of solidarity well-wishers plastered the entrance to the Uppsala mosque with red love hearts after Thursday's attack.

So far the police investigation has not led to any arrests following the arson attacks.

The government has pledged to step up security at places of worship.

Culture Minister Bah Kuhnke told the Stockholm rally that the attacks were "aimed at intimidating and diminishing" people.

"That's why one of the most important things we can do is to not let ourselves be intimidated," AFP news agency quoted her as saying.

Immigration has become a hot topic of debate in Sweden, which accepts more asylum seekers per capita than any other European country.

The anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, who got 13% in elections last September, want a 90% cut in the number of asylum seekers allowed into Sweden. Last month the party nearly brought down the new coalition government, in a protest against its asylum policy.

About 16% of Sweden's population are foreign-born, many of them from war-torn Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria - all Muslim-majority countries.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-30658482

 

 

Protests across Sweden in solidarity with Muslims

 

Demonstrations took place in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö on Friday to protest against the recent string of fires and acts of vandalism at mosques in Sweden, including in Uppsala on New Year's Day.

 

Under the slogan "Rör Inte Min Moské", or "Don't Touch My Mosque", people in Sweden's three biggest cities took to the streets to show solidarity with Swedish Muslims and to protest what they say are Islamophobic acts.

Speaking at the Stockholm event outside the Swedish Parliament, Culture and Democracy Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke says the government is planning steps to create a national strategy to fight Islamophobia by giving people more information about Islam to stop the prejudice. Money is not always the answer, she says.

"The big problem is that some people have these sets of values which make them prepared to carry out these horrendous deeds. We won't change that with more window bars, cameras or guards", she told news agency TT.

Andreas Hasslert of the Ibn Rushd Educational Association is one of the organisers of the protest in Malmö. He told Radio Sweden that many Muslims are afraid. “You just fled from bombings. You think you've come to safety and your neighbours start burning your mosque down," Hasslert said.

There was also a "love bombing" action in Uppsala on Friday, with members of the public attaching paper hearts and messages of support to the mosque there.

"Each time there has been an attack, the same mosque has then received a kind of 'love bomb' where people have shown their support and sympathy. A large part of the population is strongly against this type of attack and tomorrow we will gather these good forces," Omar Mustafa, chairman of the Islamic Association in Sweden, told the news agency TT.

He said there is "notable concern" among Sweden's muslims over the recent attacks in Uppsala, Eslöv and Eskilstuna.

"It feels like these are planned hate crimes, with the purpose to scare a part of the population. It is an attack on the freedom of religion, an attack against the whole society and I cannot call it anything else than an act of terror," Omar Mustafa told TT.

 

http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6058485

[Goosey 3,017]

A lot of people complain about minarets and mosques I don't think people would care so much about mosques if they did two things:

 

1. remove the minarets especially in smaller towns, it ruins the traditional skyline.

 

2. remove the muezzins, it's not necessary in 2015 and only annoys people, Muslims already know when to pray and they couldn't hear the muezzin anyways since people no longer live all clustered in small villages like it's AD 1000.

[Miley 5,006]

Bless my country

[lego 44,165]

A lot of people complain about minarets and mosques I don't think people would care so much about mosques if they did two things:

1. remove the minarets especially in smaller towns, it ruins the traditional skyline.

2. remove the muezzins, it's not necessary in 2015 and only annoys people, Muslims already know when to pray and they couldn't hear the muezzin anyways since people no longer live all clustered in small villages like it's AD 1000.

Mosque in Uppsala was built in 1995, it exists for 20 years and you think the recent arson attacks are happening because of minarets?

[Mast 980]

A lot of people complain about minarets and mosques I don't think people would care so much about mosques if they did two things:

 

1. remove the minarets especially in smaller towns, it ruins the traditional skyline.

 

2. remove the muezzins, it's not necessary in 2015 and only annoys people, Muslims already know when to pray and they couldn't hear the muezzin anyways since people no longer live all clustered in small villages like it's AD 1000.

so they should be burned down?

[xoxo cupcakke 4,781]

A lot of people complain about minarets and mosques I don't think people would care so much about mosques if they did two things: 1. remove the minarets especially in smaller towns, it ruins the traditional skyline. 2. remove the muezzins, it's not necessary in 2015 and only annoys people, Muslims already know when to pray and they couldn't hear the muezzin anyways since people no longer live all clustered in small villages like it's AD 1000.

By your logic, we should burn churches and carhedrals with bells a-ringing every hour or so

[craig 680]

In Stockholm Sweden's Culture Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke said the government would launch a national strategy to counter Islamophobia.

 

 

Isn't Sweden already the country that's most restrictive about hate speech - where people merely critical of immigration get treated as racist haters, and there is no space in the mainstream to oppose Sweden's fairly radical immigration policy.

 

Immigration has become a hot topic of debate in Sweden, which accepts more asylum seekers per capita than any other European country.

 

 

Perhaps extremist policy on the left is provoking extremist actions on the right?

[lego 44,165]

Isn't Sweden already the country that's most restrictive about hate speech - where people merely critical of immigration get treated as racist haters, and there is no space in the mainstream to oppose Sweden's fairly radical immigration policy.

Perhaps extremist policy on the left is provoking extremist actions on the right?

So accepting asylum seekers is as "extreme" as throwing petrol bombs at people's places of worship?! People got injured and there were kids inside. It's disgusting how there is no one word of condemnation from people like you, but instead you're looking for excuses and foreigners are to be blamed for this as well.

[craig 680]

So accepting asylum seekers is as "extreme" as throwing petrol bombs at people's places of worship?! People got injured and there were kids inside. It's disgusting how there is no one word of condemnation from people like you, but instead you're looking for excuses and foreigners are to be blamed for this as well.

It's the Swedish left in power that I'm partially blaming. Nobody benefits from a immigration policy that leads to racial tension, neither natives nor immigrants.

 

Of course firebombing buildings is a completely different level of violence. But why in Sweden, the country with the most "progressive" multicultural policy? There are other places where criticism of immigration and Islam is more open, where ISIS-type terrorist provocations have occurred, yet they don't have serial firebombing of Mosques.

 

Either the Sweden left is doing something misguided or the Swedish right is exceptionally vicious.

[lego 44,165]

It's the Swedish left in power that I'm partially blaming. Nobody benefits from a immigration policy that leads to racial tension, neither natives nor immigrants.

 

Of course firebombing buildings is a completely different level of violence. But why in Sweden, the country with the most "progressive" multicultural policy? There are other places where criticism of immigration and Islam is more open, where ISIS-type terrorist provocations have occurred, yet they don't have serial firebombing of Mosques.

 

Either the Sweden left is doing something misguided or the Swedish right is exceptionally vicious.

 

 

Yeah Breivik had the same mentality.

[Melech 9,900]

Yeah Breivik had the same mentality.

Actually it's common sense that when a left rises the right rises as well as something like rivalry 

[lego 44,165]

Actually it's common sense that when a left rises the right rises as well as something like rivalry 

 

You're suppose to blame and condemn the perpetrator, the idiot who thinks burning mosque is ok. NOT to blame left parties for their policies.

[Melech 9,900]

You're suppose to blame and condemn the perpetrator, the idiot who thinks burning mosque is ok. NOT to blame left parties for their policies.

Of course you can't fully blame the lefts. I just wanted to say that the opponent always begins to rise. 

[Luc 4,776]

Actually it's common sense that when a left rises the right rises as well as something like rivalry 

Only in the case of extremism, tbh.

 

 

It's the Swedish left in power that I'm partially blaming. Nobody benefits from a immigration policy that leads to racial tension, neither natives nor immigrants.

 

Of course firebombing buildings is a completely different level of violence. But why in Sweden, the country with the most "progressive" multicultural policy? There are other places where criticism of immigration and Islam is more open, where ISIS-type terrorist provocations have occurred, yet they don't have serial firebombing of Mosques.

 

Either the Sweden left is doing something misguided or the Swedish right is exceptionally vicious.

It's because of the high amount of immigrants, which is thanks to the left government, yeah. 

 

But you should not blame the muslims in the countries for attacks on mosques, considering the people who do the attacks are far-right extremists, not muslims. Far-right extremists always have a scapegoat, whether it be jews, gays, soccer supporters of the club you don't like, muslims, communists or whatever, and somebody with the mentality that he feels the need to attack a building like this, is doing that because of his own personality and behaviour, not because they need to defend themselves from the muslims.

 

The Islamophobia is due to different reasons, a high crime rate among muslims (which is thanks to the right-wing parties, which want less leveling which results in bigger poverty for the lowest class, and next to that is thanks to the racism against them, which is from far-right parties too), and the recent rise of IS, which isn't actually islamic, and which is mostly politically motivated.

[craig 680]

You're suppose to blame and condemn the perpetrator, the idiot who thinks burning mosque is ok. NOT to blame left parties for their policies.

 

Tell that to the Left - when a country with Conservative policies is hit with Islamic terrorism, they never fail to lecture us on how "if only we'd listened to the left" it never would have happened. It's our fault for fighting ISIS, or for colonialism, or whatever.

 

I know as a Muslim in Sweden what you need right now is love and sympathy, and you're probably feeling a bit persecuted by events, so