The BBC notes all is not well in Sweden…but who is to blame?
How Sweden became an exporter of jihad
Sweden is a peaceful democratic state that has long been a safe haven for those fleeing conflict. Yet many young people whose families took refuge there are now turning their back on the country. More than 300 people have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq, making Sweden per capita one of the biggest exporters of jihadists in Europe.
Gothenburg is where much of the recruitment for jihad is taking place. It’s one of Sweden’s most diverse cities. A third of the population are from immigrant backgrounds, many of them Muslim, and in the north-eastern suburb of Angered, the proportion rises to more than 70%.
Sweden’s massive housing shortage and long waits for rent controlled apartments in the centre of town mean that many new arrivals end up here, and stay here. This includes some of the 160,000 people who sought asylum in Sweden last year.
Angered has become a tough area to police.
Parts of it are classified as “vulnerable”, which in Swedish police terminology indicates a breakdown of law and order, among other things, and the emergence of a parallel society.
I am told that religious enforcers attempt to control the community to ensure Sharia law is adhered to. They allegedly harass and intimidate people – mainly women – for the way they dress and for attending parties where there is music and dancing, which they consider haram.
So the problem in Sweden is that of a massive lack of resources compounded by a large flow of immigrants allowed into the country regardless of the availability of resources…sounds familiar. Still…let ’em all in anyway.
The immigrants stay together and form ghettos, and due to their lack of education and unwillingness to integrate they become ever more separate from mainstream society and even if the majority do not want to be fundamentalist they are persuaded to be so by ‘religious enforcers’…it only takes a small hardcore of violent and determined fanatics to cow a community….a few beatings of individuals, a few bricks through windows and all the people get the message…conform….or it might be you next.
But it is Sweden’s fault for not making migrants feel at home….despite I’m sure, massive resources being pushed their way…
Suburbs like Angered have become pressure cookers of discontent.
You see this built-up resentment mainly with the second-generation “non-ethnic Swedes”, as they’re known here.
Many of their parents fled war-torn countries in search of safety and found it in Sweden. They appear grateful for what the country has offered them. Their children, however, often feel they’ve been discriminated against and left out of the system. Many young people I spoke to said they felt disconnected from the country where their parents came from – but didn’t feel they were Swedish either.
The reality is that right now young people from immigrant backgrounds are being radicalised.
Why would someone raised in Gothenburg want to leave one of the most peaceful and progressive countries in the developed world to join a violent extremist group in the Middle East?
With so many of them saying they don’t feel Swedish, perhaps the bigger question is: has integration and Sweden’s experiment with multiculturalism failed?
Who’d have thought?
Slate magazine gives us a good insight into the BBC’s/Left’s mentality…
How you feel about Muslim migration depends, to a large degree, on your moral instincts. Consider one of Trump’s more cutting remarks in his Fox interview: “That’s the problem with the liberal policies of this country and this world, it’s acting like it’s our fault. It’s not our fault, OK, it’s not our fault. It’s their fault.” Those who believe Europe ought to welcome Muslim migrants in large numbers might reply that it is our fault, at least in part. You could reasonably argue that the chaos spreading throughout the Arab world is a consequence of the Iraq invasion and the bloody conflicts that have followed or that the market democracies that have profited from capitalist exploitation are to blame for poverty and violence everywhere. It all depends on your particular ideological bent.
That is exactly the BBC ‘analysis’…Iraq and Western foreign policy are to blame…the same narrative peddled by the terrorists.
Importing massive numbers of people with an ideology, mentality and way of life that is radically different from that of European countries was always an experiment that was doomed to failure….nothing to do with moral or ideological bent…it’s pure, and very obvious, fact…the outcome was never in doubt for anyone who didn’t bury their head in the sand due to their ‘ideological bent’.
This is all tied into the events described in the previous post about Syria and the resultant mass migration of Muslims from the Middle East and beyond…
The wave of refugees will increase, and the price will be paid by the Europeans, already faced with legions of refugees and no plan for dealing with them. Eventually Gaddafi’s prophecy will come true: Islam will conquer Europe without firing a shot.
The Hoover Institution spells it out...the future is not bright as we fail to stand up for our own culture and values…..
We American should not indulge the schadenfreude aroused by watching our sometimes-condescending older cousins slip farther and farther behind us in global importance and power. Europe is still collectively the world’s largest economy, and its travails will impact the whole globe. More importantly, many of the trends weakening Europe today are active in our own country. The scorning of national pride and American exceptionalism, the decline of Christianity in the public square, multiculturalism and its ethnic separatism and divisive identity politics, and the preference of many Americans for greater social welfare spending, redistribution of wealth, and dirigiste economic policies all point us to a fate like Europe’s.
Self-doubt about the goodness of one’s way of life and living just for today’s pleasures are luxuries a great power cannot afford. In a world of violent ideologies and aggressive autocrats, a free people must have something beyond this world that they believe is worth killing and dying for. Europe seemingly has lost those ideals and beliefs that made it the nurse of freedom, democracy, and human rights. America has taken on that global role, but if we go the way of Europe, if we too no longer know what we believe, who will take our place?