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| Screen shot from this video. It's shocking, not for the crimes of young Muslims in Malmö -- bad enough -- but for the credulity and apologia of its "acclaimed director" Joseph Rodriguez. |
According to the BBC World Service Radio (today, here in Hong Kong) and its interviewees, native Swedes are being simply horrid to its Muslim population. If only they would leave them alone, let them get on with their drug dealing and jew-baiting, things would be fine...
One of the guests, a convert to
Islam, complained about “far right Islamophobia", saying “today it’s criticism
of Muslims; tomorrow it may be the Jews”. Cunning. But it doesn’t wash.
Christopher Hitchens skewered this false equivalence, here.
Talking of the 2010 so-called “Ground Zero Mosque controversy”, he noted:
Reactions
from even "moderate" Muslims to criticism are not uniformly
reassuring. "Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is
very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and
1930s," Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New
York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we
recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of
women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that
published cartoons they did not like. What is needed from the supporters of
this very confident faith is more self-criticism and less self-pity and self-righteousness.
[Source]
The BBC line is that the problems in Malmö
are all the fault of the Swedes: they discriminate against Muslims which keeps
them in poverty and leads to the high crime rates amongst that community.
Nothing is said about the
responsibility the Muslim community may have to help itself. To stress education, taking on Swedish
mores, adapting to the community. Yet:
Then (2007) Swedish Integration Minister Nyamko Sabuni
[now Minister for Gender Equality]—a Muslim who came to Sweden when she was 12
and the first African to become a member of government in the country—insists
that the only way for immigrants to integrate into society is to learn the
language and get a job.
“It is crucial that immigrants get in contact with the labour market as soon as possible after receiving their residence permit. This has to be combined with language courses,” she told AFP.
“It is crucial that immigrants get in contact with the labour market as soon as possible after receiving their residence permit. This has to be combined with language courses,” she told AFP.
Why don't the BBC or its
interviewees discuss that?
As for “hate crimes” the official Swedish police figures
belie the BBC line. It’s not
Muslims but Jews that are the main target of “hate crimes”, by a factor of 70 times:
But
Jews are feeling the heat disproportionately. Malmö police say that of 115 hate
crimes reported in 2009, 52 were anti-Semitic. Becirov estimated there are
about 60,000 Muslims in Malmö, while the number of Jews is about 700 and
shrinking - it was twice as big two decades ago, according to Fredrik
Sieradzki, a spokesman for the Jewish community.
In sum:
Jews: 7% of their 700 population in Malmö experienced “hate crimes”.
Muslims: 0.1% of their 60,000 population in
Malmö experienced “hate crimes” And that’s assuming that all the non anti-Semitic hate crimes were against Muslims.
In other words, Jews in Malmö experienced
“hate crimes” at a rate 70 times greater than did Muslims.
These hate crimes in Sweden are mirrored in
the US, where we are led to believe that the Muslim population there is subject
to regular “Islamophobia”. Yet, according
to the FBI:
64% of hate crimes are Anti-Jewish
13% are Anti-Islam
Nicholai Sennels is a Danish psychologist
who has treated many Muslim and non-Muslim young criminals in Copenhagen. His observations for Denmark would
likely be similar to its neighbour Sweden. He talks of deep-seated and virtually intractable
differences in cultural outlook between his Muslim and non-Muslim patients. It makes uncomfortable reading, but
worth careful study, here.
Letter
to BBC WorldService (worldhaveyoursay@bbc.co.uk):
In your coverage of increasing tensions in Malmö,
Sweden, your reporter (Joanne (?) Fidgin, (sp?)) and her interviewees placed all the blame on so-called
“far right” parties and Swedish racism or “Islamophobia”.
But consider:
“Hate Crimes” in Malmö are overwhelmingly
against Jews: at a rate 70 times that against Muslims. [ref]
Jews, not Muslims, are the ones being
driven out of Malmö.
A previous Swedish (and Muslim) Minister of
Immigration, Nyamko Sabuni, in 2007:
‘’…insists that the only way for immigrants to integrate into society is to learn the language and get a job.‘It is crucial that immigrants get in contact with the labour market as soon as possible after receiving their residence permit. This has to be combined with language courses,’ she told AFP.”
Why no mention of this view of a Swedish Muslim Minister? Why should the Swedes not expect the Muslim community to help itself, to “integrate into society”, to “learn
the language”, as have all other previous immigrant groups? Practicality aside, it's just polite to do so!
Related: Your BBC Video “The Other comes
across rather as an apologia for Muslim crime in Sweden -- “leave us alone” says the drug dealer…. It shows whole
areas of Malmö are Muslim where only Arabic is spoken. How can this be the way to get ahead in
Sweden? How can this be a good way for society to develop?
This is not a rant against
immigration in general. Waves of
previous immigrants have managed to get ahead in their host societies, in the UK as in my own Australia. The problem with Islamic immigration in
many countries is that later generations are not becoming more integrated into
the societies their parents chose to come to, but less, not just in Sweden, but also, as Christopher Caldwell has shown, in Germany and France as well.
Yours, etc,
Peter F.
