Islamic Immigration In Europe

[Sakeenah]

Hi MuslimaInBlack,

Thanks for your response!

Of course I don't live in Europe, and even if I visited I could only hope to see a small slice of the big picture. It's heartening to hear your perspective.

I'm struck that you said you think you'll "disappoint me". Really? I don't want these things to be true. But I really want to know what IS true. I'm also struck that you assume I fear Muslims. Once again, I just want to know what's true.

I can tell you that in the U.S., I often hear Muslims claim that valid criticism of Islam is "Islamophobia". Such actions are not conducive to peaceful integration. I can tell you that for years and years now the OIC has been pushing to introduce blasphemy resolutions into the UN. Also not conducive to peace.

And finally, you speak of your experience in England, again I'm glad to hear your report, but that doesn't in any way refute the questions I asked about what's happening in Sweden. Does that make sense?

Your welcome

I'm glad to hear that you don't want this to be true, and I can understand that many people after hearing different things in the media would like to know if this is the truth. I don't believe that all criticism towards Muslims is Islamophobia but often it's just fear for the unknown and media is doing a good job creating more fear. I think the solution would be more dialogue,discussions while at the same time respecting each other. I can speak of my experience in both The Netherlands and England but I have no idea what's happening in Sweden so maybe someone else can share their experience.

 

[icehorse]

Below is a link to Pat Condell's recent video concerning Islamic immigration in Sweden. Again, the video is quite harsh, you don't have to watch it. BUT!

Below the video is a "SHOW MORE" button. Under "SHOW MORE" there is a list of sources Condell used to back up the factual claims he makes in his video. Many of the claims I offered earlier came from this video. I counted 16 citations.

Sweden - Ship of fools | Godless Comedy

 

[Poeticus]

Below is a link to Pat Condell's recent video concerning Islamic immigration in Sweden. Again, the video is quite harsh, you don't have to watch it. BUT!

Below the video is a "SHOW MORE" button. Under "SHOW MORE" there is a list of sources Condell used to back up the factual claims he makes in his video. Many of the claims I offered earlier came from this video. I counted 16 citations.

Sweden - Ship of fools | Godless Comedy

Sweden, the "rape capital of Europe"?

Wowzers---what has happened to glorious Sweden?! One of the very few countries that I wanted to tour one day and support their local breweries (rule #1 of foreign traveling: always support local breweries), not to mention that I also wanted to tour Sweden because of the midnight sun phenomenon and offer salutations to the local spirits and the indigenous gods and goddesses of the land.

 

[mycorrhiza]

Are any of these true, or is this all false?

- Sweden voted to recognize a a Palestinian state.

True. Most of the world has.

- Open immigration policies were recently reaffirmed.

Not true. We don't have anything close to open immigration. People even get sent back to war territories. Had people from my high school die in a bombing when they were sent back to a "safe" area.

- Sweden's rape statistics have gone up sharply over the last few years.

Not true. As far as I know, they've gone down over the last 10 years. We have really wide rape laws compared to other countries and less police corruption, so it's only natural that we have a higher amount reported. Many countries don't include rape within a marriage, for example.

- Immigrant rioters recently attacked the police in Stockholm and were not arrested "so as not to provoke" the rioters

Not as far as I know.

- An artist was recently imprisoned for artwork offensive to Islam.

Among other things. He is known for spreading racist art both against individuals and groups, and that is not legal.

- People have been arrested for speaking out against Muslim immigration.

Nope, at least not anything I've heard of. Not unless they did it with racism (which isn't that unlikely seeing as the ones opposing Muslim immigration in Sweden are racists) and threats of violence. The Sweden Democrats say racist things and constantly speak out against Islam, and yet they're not arrested. Hate speech is rarely reported and rarely leads to punishment.

- multiculturalism is now in Sweden's constitution.

I think so.

- Sweden is deporting Iraqi Christians

Probably. Sweden deports people all the time, even if they're likely to die.

- Anti-semitism is on the rise in Sweden

Not as far as I know. There was a spike in one of our cities in 2010 or so, but I think it has gone down since then.

- The mayor of Malmo encouraged Jews to distance themselves from Israel

From what I see on wikipedia, what he encouraged was to distance themselves from the violence commited by Israel. He does seem very critical of Israel, though.

- Immigrants have set many schools on fire

Nope. Haven't heard about any school fires whatsoever.

- Muslims protested against a cartoon of a dog and threatened violence

It was a badly drawn cartoon portraying Muhammad as a dog. A very small amount of people did threaten the artist.

- Police cars are now painted with the word "Aino"

Nope. Just a guy who painted his car like a police car with "aina" instead of "polis" on it. Had nothing to do with the police force.

- Muslims immigrants are bankrupting the social welfare system

Nope. The only threat to the social welfare is the constant privatization. For example: the privatization of the pharmacies lead to higher prices, less availability in the countryside, worse availability of prescribed medicine, worse service and half the store being filled with beauty products, ice cream, etc instead of medicine.

- Discussion of Sweden's immigration policy is not allowed

It is fully allowed and was probably one of the most discussed topics the last election.

- Immigrants have set fire to hundreds of apartments and police stations

Not true whatsoever.

- Interpol reports that Sweden has Europe's highest violent crime rate

Probably not. Though our strong alcohol culture probably contributes with quite a lot of violence. We have five times less murders than the US, though.


It's time to stop trusting racist propaganda and conspiracy theories...

 

[Poeticus]

It's time to stop trusting racist propaganda and conspiracy theories...

Agreed, and it's also time to stop trusting someone that writes "not as far as I know" as objective refutation.

 

[mycorrhiza]

Agreed, and it's also time to stop trusting someone that writes "not as far as I know" as objective refutation.

Well, I can only use what I've read in the newspapers and online. That Sweden has a huge trouble with immigration is nothing but a lie spread by racists.

 

[icehorse]

Hi mycorrhiza,

later today I'm going to take a look at the citations I mentioned earlier. Condell is known to be harsh, but I've never heard him called out for lying. My sense is that he's pretty well researched...

 

[icehorse]

Ok, I took a look at about half of Condell's citations and they seemed to come from reputable sources except one citation from a newspaper called "Avpixlat", which is viewed by many as "racist" (although Muslims are not a race), and xenophobic. Of course I don't applaud xenophobia, but xenophobes often get their facts correct.

Here's what I found:

Leaderpost reported in August of 2014, Swedish artist Dan Park was imprisoned for art deemed to be defamatory and inciteful.

Reuters reported riots in May of 2013, and Aug and Sep of 2014.

Avpixlat also reported that in the Sept. riots no arrests were made so as not to provoke a greater riot.

International Business Times reports Sweden in the top 5 worst countries for rape, #1 in Europe, and that Sweden's rape occurrences have gone up 400% in the last 20 years.

Europeandailynews.org reports that in April of 2014 Sweden passed a new law making it easier to prosecute those who insult immigrants.

Thelocal.dk - Danish radio in June of 2014 started a new show aimed at exposing Sweden's conflict-adverse and self-censoring approaches to problems of open immigration and multiculturalism.

Everything I checked, checked out, although I didn't check every citation.

Thoughts?

 

[Yerda]

Thoughts?

People will believe negative stories about Muslims on less evidence than they would normally expect.

 

[icehorse]

People will believe negative stories about Muslims on less evidence than they would normally expect.

Not sure I agree, but for the sake of discussion... why do you think that is?

 

[Yerda]

Not sure I agree, but for the sake of discussion... why do you think that is?

Could be a range of things. For the likes of the EDL or Sweden's Neo-Nazis it's just bigotry.

 

[icehorse]

Could be a range of things. For the likes of the EDL or Sweden's Neo-Nazis it's just bigotry.

Could it be that the lack of reform in Islam is starting to stick out like a sore thumb? When you say bigotry, that's a bit of a loaded term. What's an honest term for someone who simply disagrees with your ideas?

I disagree with the ideas of Islamic ideology. Does that make me a bigot?

 

[Yerda]

Could it be that the lack of reform in Islam is starting to stick out like a sore thumb? When you say bigotry, that's a bit of a loaded term. What's an honest term for someone who simply disagrees with your ideas?

I disagree with the ideas of Islamic ideology. Does that make me a bigot?

No. I don't think you are a bigot.

I'm a secularist at heart. I also disagree with Islam, and hate Islamism. I would go so far as to say that particular variants of muslim belief are among the scariest religious ideas around. That said, there are a lot of bigots who hate and fear muslims because they are muslims.

It is reported that rapes reported in Sweden have spiked. I looked at this. And found nothing but a series of blogs and far right sites repeating each other. I can't see anything that says the cause is muslim immigration. But it seems plenty of people are happy to agree with this diagnosis of the problem.

 

[mycorrhiza]

Ok, I took a look at about half of Condell's citations and they seemed to come from reputable sources except one citation from a newspaper called "Avpixlat", which is viewed by many as "racist" (although Muslims are not a race), and xenophobic. Of course I don't applaud xenophobia, but xenophobes often get their facts correct.

Xenophobics mostly never get their facts correct as their worldview is plagued by bigotry and not uncommonly also conspiracy theories.

Here's what I found:

Leaderpost reported in August of 2014, Swedish artist Dan Park was imprisoned for art deemed to be defamatory and inciteful.

Which makes it logical to arrest him. Art is not excepted from the laws against hate speech.

Reuters reported riots in May of 2013, and Aug and Sep of 2014.

Avpixlat also reported that in the Sept. riots no arrests were made so as not to provoke a greater riot.

There were some riots, but Avpixlat is not a trustworthy source whatsoever. What they didn't mention, of course, was that a lot of the violence was caused by nazis going there to act as a "citizen's army" by beating up as many as they could.

There were several arrests and apprehensions, so it's just a lie that there weren't.

International Business Times reports Sweden in the top 5 worst countries for rape, #1 in Europe, and that Sweden's rape occurrences have gone up 400% in the last 20 years.

We passed a law in 2005 that made more crimes count as rape, which of course made more crimes count as rape. The amount reported to the police have gone up, but the amount reported anonymously in national surveys have stayed around the same level the last ten years (slight decrease).

Europeandailynews.org reports that in April of 2014 Sweden passed a new law making it easier to prosecute those who insult immigrants.

European Daily News is a racist blog, not a newspaper. Just looking at any of their headlines will make that very clear. Haven't heard anything about that law and can't find anything by googling in Swedish.

Thelocal.dk - Danish radio in June of 2014 started a new show aimed at exposing Sweden's conflict-adverse and self-censoring approaches to problems of open immigration and multiculturalism.

That a Danish radio show exists doesn't mean that there is a problem of self-censoring. Immigration was one of the most discussed topics of this year's election.

 

[icehorse]

Hey mycorrhiza,

As far as xenophobes go, yes I understand what the word means. Again, if a claim is true, it's true regardless of who makes it. That's what this all boils down to, which claims are true and which are not.

Lets pick one, is it the case that Sweden has been allowing 100,000 immigrants a year for several decades now? And is it true that Sweden recently voted to continue that practice? If so, can you offer an opinion as to why?

 

[mycorrhiza]

Hey mycorrhiza,

As far as xenophobes go, yes I understand what the word means. Again, if a claim is true, it's true regardless of who makes it. That's what this all boils down to, which claims are true and which are not.

Lets pick one, is it the case that Sweden has been allowing 100,000 immigrants a year for several decades now? And is it true that Sweden recently voted to continue that practice? If so, can you offer an opinion as to why?

Yes, around 100,000 people immigrate to Sweden each year.

However:
~20% of that is returning Swedes.
~15% are students
~20% are workers (already hired as they enter Sweden)
~15-20% are people in the EES zone where there is a degree of free movement.
Only around 10% are asylum seekers. 20% are people related to other non-asylum seeking immigrants (either family or partners) and only 3% is people related to asylum seekers. Pretty sure we also count longer visits (more than a month? more than three months? I don't remember) as immigration as well.

We also have a yearly emigration of about 50,000 people, meaning that the net immigration is around 50,000. The studies done on the costs of immigration have shown that our economy benefits from immigration. The troubles we have with immigration (which by the way are widely exaggerated) is not caused by immigration itself but rather by a really bad apartment building policy leading to segregation, outspread racism on the job market and difficult and unsafe immigration processes. People don't want to make a home when they have to wait a year to know if they can stay or not. Me and my fiancée, who is an immigrant, were lucky that it only took 2-3 months to get a residence permit, and she was already here as an exchange student. For people who aren't here the waiting could be closer to two years.

I think it's good that were taking a big amount of asylum seekers compared to some other European countries. It's about helping people.

 

[icehorse]

Hey mycorrhiza,

Your responses have set me off on a journey for citations. One interesting conclusion I've drawn so far is that the level of journalistic professionalism is often higher on RF than it is in the media

 

[bretzter]

I´m actually an American,but have lived in Germany for a little more than
half my life.
I just wanted to point out that tensions do seem to growing between the
Germans and its Muslim community.
Mostly due to an unwillingness on the Muslims part to adapt to how things
are actually done inside a democracy,its blatant disregard for its culture,or
just plain western values in general.
On the one hand,they expect others to receive and accept them for who
they are with open arms,yet on the other they don´t think it right to show
that same respect they expect to get from others,to others.
Especially a country that are actually doing them a great service by allowing
them into the country to begin with.
What´s up with that?.
Do you think an American,or European would be allowed to do what Muslims
think they can get away with in any Muslim country,say like Saudi?.
Or would they themselves act there the way they think it´s their right to do in
any western country?.
I think not.
So if they want to be accepted into society,then first you have to acclimatize.
Or better said,"when in Rome,do as the Romans do".

 

[Sonofason]

I believe that people should be allowed move freely and I dont give a hoot what religion they are

I believe that if I and the community I live in don't like someone, for what ever reason we choose, we don't allow them in our community, if we so choose.

 

[dust1n]

Leaderpost reported in August of 2014, Swedish artist Dan Park was imprisoned for art deemed to be defamatory and inciteful.

You mean an artist who puts stuff up like this in public got arrested for 6 months and 9 pieces of art destroyed?

Warning: Graphic and Strong Language

Spoiler