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Malmö Imam Salahuddin Barakat (left) in conversation with Rabbi Moshe-David HaCohen.
This is an opinion piece from the editorial team. Sydsvenskan’s attitude is independently liberal.
Malmö resident Salahuddin Barakat has enjoyed high status in Malmö for several years as a bridge builder between Muslims and other Malmö residents. Among other things, through the Open Skåne forum, his award-winning work for understanding and tolerance has been associated with an Islam far from extremism and violence: open and tolerant, peaceful and distant from threats and hatred.
But in early October, he decided to squander his confidence in a senseless attack on France in general and its president Emmanuel Macron in particular: France, in Barakat’s worldview, has waged a “guillotine reign of terror” and is an “extreme secular and an increasingly Islamophobic rogue state ”and its president“ obviously nothing more than an evil prankster ”.
France has been hit hard by Islamist terrorist attacks. The attacks on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo 2015 claimed 17 lives. 131 innocent bystanders were killed by radical fanatics with automatic weapons a few months later. On the country’s national day, July 14, 2016, 86 people died on the seafront in Nice, deliberately run over by a truck.
In September this year, a new wave of attacks on innocent people began when a man attacked passers-by with a heavy attack outside of what he thought was Charlie hebdos editorial staff. In October, teacher Samuel Paty had his throat slit after a social media trip because he had used some of the infamous Muhammad cartoons in his teaching, which was about freedom of expression. On Thursday, three visitors were stabbed to death in Nice Cathedral. On Saturday, an Orthodox priest was shot and injured in Lyon and several other places in France, incidents with threats have been reported.
In a subsequent post, Barakat writes that he wants to let his “long and dedicated work against extremism in its various forms speak for itself.”
The problem is that the result against France speaks of something completely different. So no bridges are built. But roads to the abyss.
