After one mosque was set ablaze on Christmas Day in Eskiltuna, two others have been targeted by suspected arsonists in the southern town of Esilöv on December 29 and in Uppsala on New Year’s Day, reports Helsingin Sanomat, Finland’s largest daily.
The attacks against three mosques took place within a week. The far right Sweden Democrats caused a political crisis that would have required the minority government of Stefan Löfven to call snap elections in March. An agreement announced on Saturday between the government and opposition parties helped call off such elections.
Apart from being a direct attack against religious freedom in Sweden, the suspected arson attacks are a direct threat to Sweden’s cultural and ethnic diversity.
Read full story here.
Elvir Gigovic, chair of the Muslim Council of Sweden, told The Guardian that the spate of attacks against Muslims in 2014 was systematic. Justice Minister Morgan Johansson described the Eskilstuna fire as a “heinous atrocity” that was nothing more than violence directed against the Muslim community.
Expo, an anti-racism NGO, claimed that there have been at least 13 suspected arson attacks against mosques in Sweden this year alone.
The fact that a handful of people are taking the law in their hands and committing acts of violence against a religious groups should be enough proof of the ugly face of intolerance but our resolve to not be intimidated by vigilante style violence.
We hope the authorities in Sweden capture the perpetrators soon.
“The fact that a handful of people are taking the law in their hands and committing acts of violence against a religious groups should be enough proof of the ugly face of intolerance but our resolve to not be intimidated by vigilante style violence.”
You are generalizing and victimizing as usual one group on the basis of a few tales that you’ve twisted to suit your own prejudices. Or how was it? Now actions of a few are enough proof?
“We hope the authorities in Sweden capture the perpetrators soon.”
Hope they resolve the causes of the fires soon. If they are intentionally set up, which we don’t know at least for eskiltuna, hope they find out the attackers so we know facts for sure. Now you are just twisting the cases to suit your own prejudices.
Yossie
Well, perhaps you need to get out more and talk to more people, because if you did, you would not think it a generalisation or ‘tales’. The degree of Islamaphobia nowadays is clearly increasing and people are quite brazen in expressing intolerance. The idea that Muslims are a threat to modern society, despite extremists forming only a tiny minority of Europe’s Muslims, is now entrenched in quite intelligent and educated people.
The problem is that it’s an idea that has been adopted with little real thought behind it, and when you ask people how they formed such opinions about Muslims, they offer no other evidence than media stories. In other words, it’s not based on real contact or understanding, or even basic education about Muslim culture.
Indeed, when you ask people about their real knowledge of Muslims, it is horribly inadequate, given the implications of these negative opinions. People know more about nuclear energy than they do about real Muslim culture. But the fear is real and palpable, and clearly it’s this climate of fear that leads people to torch a place of worship.
You cannot consider these arson attacks on a community as being anything other than criminally negligent in the extreme. Such actions are not going to do a single thing about radicalisation, if that is the concern. On the contrary, it is only going to inflame tensions within communities.
Yossie, stop thinking in terms of ‘groups’ and start thinking in terms of what works in OUR community, a community that consists of people of different religious and non-religious persuasions.
“You cannot consider these arson attacks on a community as being anything other than criminally negligent in the extreme. Such actions are not going to do a single thing about radicalisation, if that is the concern. On the contrary, it is only going to inflame tensions within communities.”
Totally agree. That is why I find odd you are more than willing to flag these out as islamophobia inspired attack when investigations are not even complete. If you have not noticed, news agencies have had to correct themselves that the first fire might not actually be an arson at all. So far police have found no evidence of such action. Yet people were more than willing to flame up tensions by claiming racist motives.
So yes, for time being, the arson attack is just a tale that is getting twisted by you people to victimize people who wants reduce immigration.