This Swedish MP Thinks Young Muslims Don't Condemn the Paris Attacks

On Wednesday, Sweden's Second Deputy Speaker of the Riksdag [Parliament], Sweden Democrat Björn Söder, did what many people do and turned to Facebook. When commenting on the terror attack in Paris, Söder, who is well-known for speaking his mind about nationalities and religion – Islam in particular – posted an article about the Charlie Hebdo Massacre on his official page. That's all fine and dandy, except for that the link was accompanied with: "Fredens religion visar sitt ansikte". That's Swedish and means, "The religion of peace shows its face." [Space for a brief moment of shock.]

Following Söder's pretty xenophobic writing, Social Democrat MP Veronica Palm reported Söder to the police. "I think it's offensive and I'd like to see it tested against the law on hate speech that clearly says that anyone who spreads statements that threaten or express contempt for one or more groups of people is committing a crime," Palm told Swedish Radio.

Söder didn't seem to be bothered by Palm's accusations and told Swedish Radio that, "Islamism is a political orientation of Islam. In a democratic country you should obviously be able to criticise a religion or political orientation of religion."

Today, continuing on his quest to "criticise religion" or whatever, Söder once again turned to Facebook as organisation Young Muslims also reported Söder to the police this morning. This time as a response, Söder posted a link to Young Muslim's statement about their complaint. He also wrote (in Swedish):

I called up chairman of Young Muslims, Rashid Musa, to clear out potential misunderstandings regarding where their organisation stands.

VICE: Hey Rashid. Have you seen Björn Söder's most recent Facebook status?
Rashid Musa: No I haven't seen that actually. We filed the complaint this morning.

Well, he's writing that he can't find anywhere on your website where you condemn the terror attacks in France. [Reading the rest of the post.]
Ah. So it's the classic, "you don't condemn this so it means you support it…" That's not very unexpected.

Have you guys had something to do with him in the past?
No, this is the first time. I've never met him. Sometimes I see him on TV.

OK. So to make things clear, what are your views on the terror attacks in France?
What do you think? We've always condemned all kinds of terrorism, which we've said many times. Most recently this morning, when I was on [TV show] Gomorron Sverige. But he might have missed that. And that's the thing. The reason why he writes stuff like that is because he's not genuinely interested in whether or not we condemn these types of things. For him, it's about collectively blaming Muslims. It's as if he thinks we're bad guys until the opposite has been proven. It's that generalising way of thinking that, "all Muslims think and do the same and if you don't say anything it means you agree." It all comes down to racist logic, really. It's as if we we'd walk around asking random white people what they think about Breivik. And those who didn't say anything would be assumed to support him. That would be bizarre. But today's society allows for generalisations and assumptions regarding Muslims and the Muslim community.

So what about your filed complaint to the police, what would you like to see come out from that?
We want to show him that we don't think it's OK. We don't tolerate hate speech. We don't tolerate Islamophobia. And we definitely don't tolerate that people use this tragedy for their own racist and political agenda. We're standing up against that, and we'll see where it all goes.

@caisasoze