Teaching Sweden About Islam

Sverigedemokraterna in the crosshairsSweden will be holding elections in two weeks, and the Powers That Be are doing everything in their power to keep the anti-immigration Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats) out of parliament. As the German establishment did to Thilo Sarrazin, so its Swedish counterpart has done with the Sweden Democrats. The full wattage of the state media apparatus has been brought to bear to demonize them, and TV4 refused to air their “racist” campaign commercial.

Since fair and balanced discussion about Islam is at a premium in Sweden, Sverigedemokraterna sent abroad for some helpful experts on the topic. Henrik Ræder Clausen has written a report on the event for Europe News, and with his permission it is reposted below.



Teaching Sweden about Islam
by Henrik R. Clausen

In Denmark, it is well known that the Swedish public debate about immigration, and Islam in particular, hardly exists. The established political parties have a tacit agreement not to discuss the developments, and a compliant press is very helpful towards achieving that goal. Only one political party, the nascent Sverigedemokraterna, is seeking to open the discussion in anticipation of the September 19th general elections.

On August 30th they hosted an evening conference with guests from abroad invited to teach interested Swedes about Islam, the connection to crime and the possible implications for freedom of speech and other civil liberties. This packed the hall with just under 100 in attendance. The speakers were:

Nicolai Sennels, Danish psychologist. His extensive professional experience with criminal Muslims has taught him important reasons why the cultural differences between Western and Islamic cultures makes traditional crime-preventing methods ineffective.

Farshad Kholghi, Iranian-born, non-Muslim refugee in Denmark. Now a professional actor and debater, his personal experience of living in an Islamic society has motivated him to speak out now, in order that we may know the dangers of Islam and Sharia, and defend our Western ideals of freedom.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, daughter of an Austrian diplomat. Having lived and worked in several Islamic countries, her extensive experience and studies earned her an invitation to teach the Austrian political party FPÖ about the dangers of radical Islam. For her assessment of Islam, she was reported to Austrian police for ‘hate speech’, but continues to stand up for women’s rights, freedom of expression and other Western values.

Nicolai Sennels:
How do we deal with immigrant crime?

The first speaker, Nicolai Sennels, was armed with an array of slides with examples and statistics regarding immigrant crime. A handful of Antifa-style youth was watching from a distance, but apparently found the charts, bars and numbers presented by Nicolai Sennels to be not worth their time.

Sennels pointed out that crime rates are not falling over time (as one might expect), that quite to the contrary crime is more extensive among second and third generation immigrants. Thus, we cannot expect immigrant crime to level off in the foreseeable future, unless new methods are found and applied.

With his documentation he burst several other myths, including the one that the high crime levels were due to the traumatic experiences of coming from a war-torn country. This is countered by way of example, as crime rates among immigrants of Turkish background are at the very top of the statistics, beaten only by those of Moroccan background. Neither of these countries have suffered major military conflicts for many decades. In contrast, immigrants from Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan have much lower crime rates. War trauma simply isn’t a plausible explanation, but rather a diversion from the real problems.
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An important cultural difference is how we handle anger. Here in the West, raw expressions of anger are one of the fastest ways to lose face, whereas among Muslims it is a commendable display of strength. The obvious consequence is that our usual approach of making criminals reflect and understand the damaging nature of acting out anger is ineffective. In fact, statistics show that among criminal Muslims, the frequency of falling back into crime is marginally higher among those receiving psychological treatment, as opposed to those simply serving jail time.

Nicolai assessed integration as such and noted that in contrast with immigrants of other cultural backgrounds, integration of Muslim immigrants does not seem to be proceeding at the present time, and the criminal gangs are getting stronger. In Copenhagen alone, Danish police estimate that criminal gangs have a net gain of some 700 members a year, mainly among/from Muslim youth.

Articles by Nicolai Sennels:

Among criminal Muslims
Muslims and Westerners: The Psychological Differences
The one thing Muslim immigrants fear is being deported
Symposium: Islam’s War on Women’s Pleasure

Farshad Kholghi:
Islam in Iran and in Europe

The second speaker, Farshad Kholghi, briefly recounted his life story. Born in Iran, he remembers the time before the Islamic Revolution, when Shah Reza Pahlavi reigned supreme and the country was moving in a staunch Western direction, with extensive developments in infrastructure, industry education and health care.

Various opposition groups, communists, human right activists and others sought to overthrow the monarchy and replace it with Western-style democracy. Seeking a leader able to effectively unite their efforts, they naïvely chose Ayatollah Khomeini, then based in Paris. Khomeini promised democracy (as outlined in the Quran), women’s rights (as outlined in the Quran), and all necessary freedoms (as outlined in the Quran).

With riots spreading throughout Iran in 1978, the monarchy collapsed like a house of cards, and in January 1979, Khomeini was able to enter the country in triumph. For a year or so, the opposition groups held out, assuming that free elections would soon be held. Demonstrations pushing for those elections were countered with brutal violence. Demonstrations for proper citizens’ rights were met with brutal violence. Demonstrations protesting the brutal violence were met with brutal violence.

One year later, Ayatollah Khomeini was able to alter the course and implement the Islamic Republic of Iran, under which the Iranian people have now been suffering for 30 years. The regime is a primary sponsor of anti-semitism and terrorism around the world, and has no intention whatsoever of returning Iran to a Western-style democracy. On the contrary, it seeks to extend its influence abroad through mosque construction projects and funding terrorist organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Farshad Kholghi is a well-known figure from the public debate in Denmark. As is the case for most everyone debating Islam, he has been accused of ‘racism’ (which, given his ethnicity, is rather silly), and of presenting ‘right-wing’ political views, which is more interesting. Farshad rhetorically inquired: “Is it ‘right-wing’ to stand for women’s rights? Is it ‘right-wing’ to criticize religion? Is it ‘right-wing’ to defend freedom of expression? Is it ‘right-wing’ to defend the right of the individual over that of the ideology? If so, then yes, I present right-wing political views.”

Returning to the topic of Iran, the domestic reaction to the regime is that of an intense weariness of everything Islamic. The word is that a million Iranians have converted to Christianity, which according to classical Islamic law is tantamount to deserting the army and thus subject to capital punishment. Although it requires substantial courage to abandon Islam, Farshad predicts that the Iranian people will soon reject Islam entirely, instead return to their own cultural roots augmented by Christian influence.

On the other hand, Arabic countries, where corrupt secular leaders have kept Islam at bay bolstered by US support, may still proceed with a yet deeper Islamization until the direct experiences of implementing Sharia in actual life has caused too much pain and suffering to be bearable.

Farshad strongly encourages participating in the public debate, to not fear religious fanatics, but rather to ridicule them and their abuse of power through the application of the best of Western values, including open discussion, scrutiny of Islamic organisations and our healthy tradition of satire and ridicule of hypocritical, corrupt and exploitative religious leaders.

Articles by Farshad Kholghi:

My name is Farshad Kholghi and I am a free man
A letter to Kurt from the Prophet
The Iranian Dream
Dear Idiots

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff:
Islam and freedom of expression

The third speaker, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, recounted her experiences about living in Iran up to the Revolution, her father catching the last plane out of the country. In 1990, she worked at the Austrian diplomatic mission to Kuwait, only to be caught up and held hostage by the invading Iraqi army. Later she worked in Libya as well, without immediately reflecting on the connection between Islam and the high level of conflict that surrounded her.

Only when she returned to Vienna in 2001 and noticed a rising Islamic influence in her own country did she start to study Islamic theology and thinking, to find that radical Islam is intolerant and totalitarian. Increasing participation in public debate led her to find like-minded people in the Wiener Akademikerbund, where she is now a board member.

The Akademikerbund is committed to Western values, our Christian-Hellenic cultural roots, Austrian economics and genuine democracy. And while Islam can of course be practiced as any faith, the implementation of Islam in our political life and legal systems is not acceptable.

The Akademikerbund has been subject to a dramatic assault from the press and politicians, who found its recent position paper deeply unacceptable and held it comparable to national socialism. The fact that there can hardly be found any political position further from national socialism than the libertarian ideals of the Akademikerbund was ignored, as was the fact that the chairman of the WA, Mr. Müller, was personally a victim of national socialism during WWII.

Apart from her activities in the Akademikerbund, ESW was invited to teach the workings of radical Islam and Islamism to the FPÖ political party. Due her critical and thus negative analysis of Islam, she was reported to the Austrian authorities for “hate speech” by a journalist who had infiltrated the seminar for the leftist magazine “News”. The case is still pending with the authorities, who so far have taken four months to decide if the case should be taken to court, or abandoned due to lack of substance.

Upcoming Austrian municipal elections have taken an interesting turn in Vienna. Whereas debate about immigrants, Islam and integration has usually been avoided by the dominating political parties, FPÖ is now large enough to challenge that Sweden-style Wall of Silence. But some provocative election slogans broke that silence, leading to a breakdown of the usual, ehm, civility of election campaigns to a point where Vienna mayor Michael Häupl claimed that voting for FPÖ would lead to violence in the streets of Vienna.

Articles by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolf:

Seismic Shifts in Vienna: Part 1, Part 2
My Warning to America
ESW and the Wiener Akademikerbund
Report from OSCE
OSCE: Straight talk about women’s rights in Islam

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