Sweden Democrat Björn Söder. Photo: TT
Björn Söder,
who is also a Deputy Speaker in the Swedish parliament, wrote the
comment on Facebook after 12 people were killed in the Charlie Hedbo
offices in Paris earlier this week.
On
Friday morning, the Dagens Nyheter newspaper reported that Swedish MP
Veronica Palm of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven's Social Democrat party
had reported Söder to the police for racial agitation (hets mot
folkgrupp).
"It's not legal to offend people
based on their race, and I think this should be treated as racial
agitation," she told the paper.
Others have
also chimed in on the Facebook post, including political scientist Olof
Ruin, who said it was "an embarrassment for Sweden".
While Söder's initial comment read "the religion of peace shows its
face", Dagens Nyheter said he then edited the post to add a question
mark at the end and later deleted it.
"As
far as I know there was always a question mark after the post," Sweden
Democrat press spokesman Henrik Vinge told The Local on Friday
afternoon.
"But it is not a serious matter, this is about political point scoring by a Social Democrat politician," he added.
"In these times where freedom of speech is threatened, politicians should not be seeking to silence each other."
He said that Söder had not been questioned by police and that he did
not expect him to be, arguing he felt that criticism of the Facebook
post had been "overblown".
When questioned
about whether he understood why some Muslims could be offended by the
comment, he said: "Muslims should try to create a force to prevent this
[extremism] from happening. We all have a responsibility to prevent
extremism."
The Sweden Democrats earlier
condemned the Paris massacre in an official statement, calling it "an
attack on all of Europe and on the values of democracy and freedom of
speech."
The party has roots in the
country's most radical extreme right and entered parliament in 2010 with
the ambition of curbing the Nordic country's generous policy on
immigration and refugees. It is now the third largest group in the
Swedish parliament, scoring almost 13 percent of the vote in the last
general election in September 2014.
Björn Söder previously came
under fire from Sweden's Jewish community
in December when he told Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter that Jews
could not be considered Swedish unless they abandoned their religious
identity.
Söder's Facebook comment follows a
string of attacks in Sweden recently that some say reflects the
country's growing Islamophobia. Over the Christmas break, three separate
mosques across the country caught fire, prompting pro-Muslim rallies
across the country last week. Another mosque was vandalized in southern
Sweden this week.
Mohammed Fazlhashemi,
Professor of Islamic theology and philosophy at Sweden's Uppsala
University, told The Local on Thursday that he thinks Sweden may see
even more attacks.
"When it comes to what
happened in Paris, I think we may see reprisal attacks in Sweden. The
risk is definitely there, and I think the worry is there among Sweden's
Muslims," he said.
"The mosque attacks in
Sweden haven't come out of the blue, we've seen Islamophobic rhetoric
gradually strengthening in Swedish society, and the effect has been that
Muslims here are mistreated."
Sweden
Democrat press spokesperson Henrik Vinge told The Local on Friday that
he believed Sweden's mainstream political parties had been "ignoring the
need to discuss multiculturalism" for many years.
Björn Söder's post came as other nationalist leaders around Europe
also faced criticism for their response to the Paris shootings.
In the UK, Ukip leader Nigel Farage said the attack on Charlie Hebdo
was "truly horrific," adding that it raised questions about what he
called a "gross policy of multiculturalism".
Farage told British news network Channel 4 News there was a "very strong
argument" that the events were a result of "a fifth column" which he
said lived in Paris and London.
"We've got people living in these countries, holding our passports, who hate us," he said.
The leader of the UK's junior coalition party the Liberal Democrats
was among the most vocal critics of his comments. Nick Clegg stated on a
radio phone-in that he was "dismayed that Nigel Farage immediately
thinks, on the back of the bloody murders that we saw on the streets of
Paris...his first reflex is to make political points."
In France, a
huge row broke out on Thursday after the National Front party was not invited to a rally to remember the Paris shooting victims on Sunday.
Former French Prime Minister François Fillon said: “"Our best
response is the total unity of the country. We can't have any dissenting
voices.”
“It’s a mistake, we should unite everyone and not
judge people by their political colours,” Imam Farid Darrouf told The
Guardian newspaper.
“Everyone should participate to say no to this barbarism. Division can only feed the fanatics.”
No comments:
Post a Comment