Friday, July 13, 2018

The Relentless Radicalization of Sweden

by Judith Bergman • July 13, 2018 at 5:00 am

Swedish police report that Muslim children have told their classmates they will cut their throats, while showing them beheadings on their mobile phones, according to the new study of Salafism in Sweden by the Swedish Defence University.
"Many women live worse [lives] here than they would have in their former countries" — Swedish care worker.
The inability -- willful blindness is probably a more apt description -- to see that jihadist terrorism does not emerge from a vacuum, but is nurtured in particular environments, is hardly an exclusively Swedish situation. The insistence of so many European and other Western authorities on describing terrorist attacks as instances of "mental illness" illustrate it perfectly.

The Swedish Defence University has published a new study that paints a bleak picture of the ongoing radicalization of Muslims in Sweden. (I99pema/Wikimedia Commons)

A new study[1] of Salafism in Sweden, conducted by the Swedish Defence University, paints a bleak picture of the ongoing radicalization of Muslims in Sweden.

The Salaf are the "pious ancestors" during the first three generations of the followers of Mohammed; its ideology has come to be associated over the last few decades with al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as with local al-Qaeda affiliates. According to the study, Salafists, who believe in Islam as Mohammed's early followers practiced it, tend to reject Western society in favor of a "pure" Islam: "Not all Salafists are jihadists, but all jihadists are Salafists". [2]

Although the study does not give an estimate of how many Salafists are in Sweden, it does describe how Salafist milieus there have evolved and grown stronger, especially during the past decade, and lists several examples of the influence they wield in different Swedish cities and localities.