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you get the infamous holy scripture of Islam, the Koran, in Sweden? Can you, on the other hand, start riots, throw stones at the police and start fires in reaction to someone violating the Koran in Sweden? Neither behavior is desirable. But only one of them is clearly illegal. However, official reactions to the riots this weekend in Malmö have tended to take the easier route by grouping two very different types of documents together.
DN’s leadership side, for example, promotes a cabbage soup theory of “activist minorities” on both sides taking “the right to ignore both law enforcement and their peers” at the expense of the vast majority. solidarity (DN 30/8). It is a convenient reasoning that avoids all questions of principle and equates between violating a symbol and attacking public property and the police: Several police officers were injured in connection with the riots.
Malmös Social Democratic city councilor Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh commented on the riots – where there were also anti-Semitic slogans – saying that “there is a lot of frustration in the air” and “many still believe in the myth that the police have allowed the Islamophobic demonstration” (SVT 30 / 8). Implicit: if the police had given permission for the violation of the Quran, the riots would have been more understandable.
The comments clearly reveal the Swedish apathy in the vision of freedom of expression versus multiculturalism, an apathy that is repeated in many of Sweden’s integration problems.
Of course, very few defend outright riots and violence. This applies both to official representatives and to the general population, both native and immigrant. But the degree of understanding varies.
To insult Religious symbols are a deliberately provocative act. That is not respectful. But it belongs to a radical tradition of desecrating the sacred to strengthen freedom of expression. Historically it has been forbidden to desecrate God or desecrate the flag in Sweden. August Strindberg was accused in 1884 of violating Christianity. Until 1970, Sweden had a religious peace law. The most conservative Finland still has such a law.
Yet it is often on the left that understanding of the outrageous reactions of perpetrators of violence within the Muslim minority is greatest today. The reason is, of course, the perspective of power. Minorities are not seen as having to endure as much as the majority. These different rules of the game also characterize the official attitude of Sweden. Visiting Danish provocateur Rasmus Paludan was swiftly barred on Friday. His followers were arrested the same day for incitement against an ethnic group when they kicked football with the Koran at Stortorget in Malmö.
That the violation of the Quran by the police it was considered an incitement against ethnic groups that puts the finger at the heart of the matter. Islam is as small an ethnic group as Christianity. If someone kicked soccer with the Bible, they wouldn’t be on the map to be arrested by the police. In other words, we have ended up in a situation where there are different rules that apply to different religions, completely contrary to universal liberal principles.
Sweden already has a law prohibiting the interruption of worship. That law could prevent the violation of the Qur’an outside a mosque. If it is considered that the desecration of the Holy Scriptures should not be allowed at all, what in practice are ancient laws of morality can be reintroduced, an obvious step back for liberal society.
But have Different rules for different religions, based on arbitrary ideas about who has power in society, constitute an even worse alternative and are a recipe for increasing contradictions. On the one hand, it gives extremists interpretive priority for its own group. On the one hand, it generates a fundamentally racist notion that minorities are not that capable of mastering their emotions.
The conflict between universal liberal principles and the political ideology of multicultural identity is, in many ways, the great destiny of our time. Official Sweden does not seem to be intellectually equipped to deal with it.
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