Hem English content Extremism in Sweden – part 3

Extremism in Sweden – part 3

2026-01-02

Traditionally, countries in Europe have been confronted with three different types of terrorism: nationalist terrorists, such as the IRA and ETA; left-wing terrorists, such as the RAF and the Red Brigades; and right-wing extremist terrorism by neo-Nazi groups. Jihadist terrorism in Europe emerged during the 1990s. Awareness of this new and dangerous development, however, took quite a long time, and it became clear that the threat had been seriously underestimated.

The statistics speak for themselves. Between 2001 and 2006, 31 attacks were carried out in Europe that could be linked to 28 Islamist jihadist groups.¹ Of a total of 2,200 terrorist attacks carried out in Europe between 2009 and 2020, 69.3 percent were carried out by jihadists. The four terrorist groups that killed the most people in 2023 were, according to the Global Terrorism Index, the Islamic State, Hamas, Jamaat Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimeen, and al-Shabab.

Europol (the European Union Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation) defines jihadism as “a violent ideology that exploits traditional Islamic concepts.” Jihadists legitimize violence by referring to the classical Islamic doctrine of jihad, a term that literally means striving or effort, but which in Islamic law is treated as religiously sanctioned warfare.² This is considered legitimate because it is seen as promoting Islam.

In the book “The Struggle for Islam”, the French scholar of Islam Gilles Kepel shows how Salafism, with financial support from Saudi Arabia, has established itself both in Europe and in several other parts of the world. As we will see later, several other countries with an Islamist orientation also sponsor mosques in Sweden. Two distinct “worlds” meet. The struggle is between dar al-Islam (the Islamic realm) and dar al-kufr (the realm of unbelief), that is, non-Islamic areas.

There are several examples of hate preachers being invited to mosques in Sweden to give sermons,³ and of self-appointed moral police harassing immigrant girls in the suburbs because they were considered to be wearing the “wrong” clothing or displaying the “wrong” behavior. Women testify to how they have been forced to follow informal rules and how their lives are curtailed and restricted by neighbors, unknown men, other women, youths, and even children. This can involve the fact that they live alone, that they are considered to be wearing skirts that are too short, or that they have had a glass of wine.⁴

These are sensitive issues that, especially the political left, has been unwilling to address. The political parties’ flirtation with religious extremists is, however, nothing new—neither within the Social Democrats, the Green Party, the Left Party, nor the Centre Party—according to, for example, the author Helena Edlund, who has also worked as a priest and a liaison officer in the Middle East:

“The cooperation has been going on for many years, in the case of the Social Democrats for several decades. The idea has been to conduct an identity-politics-based barter. The parties have been lured into the trap of assuming that Islamist forces that claim to represent the so-called ‘Muslim civil society’ represent ‘all Muslims in Sweden,’ and by allowing Islamists to gain political influence, they have believed they could buy the votes of ‘Sweden’s Muslims.’”⁵

There are, of course, more people than Edlund who have pointed out the hypocrisy among Sweden’s political parties on this issue. “Political cowardice in Sweden is no myth,” noted Jan Hägglund, a former group leader for the Workers’ Party in Umeå. “It is very real. And it can both be explained and understood. But the effects are extremely dangerous. Ordinary Muslims are left in the lurch, as are Christians from other countries, while extreme Islamists benefit.”⁶

The origins of the Social Democrats’ close cooperation with fundamentalist interest organizations go back at least thirty years in total. A culmination occurred on June 15, 1994, when the Social Democrats received a tempting offer from several Muslim organizations.

These were:

The Swedish Muslim Council (SMR)*, the Swedish Muslim Federation (SMUF), the United Islamic Associations in Sweden (FIFS), and the Islamic Association in Stockholm (IFIS).

Among other things, they wrote the following:

“Our political committee has had good dialogue with other parties, but the decision was to support the Social Democrats. Our religious leaders have urged all participants in the Friday prayer to go to the polling stations on September 18 and vote; they have stated that there is nothing that prevents Muslims from giving their votes to the Social Democrats, who in speech and writing defend the weak in society.”⁷

Those who handled the negotiations were a side organization of the Social Democrats that at the time was called the Brotherhood Movement (now Social Democrats for Faith and Solidarity). They wrote:

“There are almost half a million Muslims in Sweden—they could together lift any party to unforeseen heights.”⁸

The agreement between the parties meant that the Social Democrats would relinquish a certain number of their seats to the “Swedish Muslim Council.” “It then became up to this organization itself—in a second step—to fill the seats ‘released’ by the Social Democrats with individuals whom the Islamists in the Swedish Muslim Council considered suitable,” Hägglund explained. “But who these individuals were was, in fact, none of the Social Democrats’ business!”⁹

The cooperation project was considered very successful in the 1998 election year, since “not least through SMR’s active contribution, Muslim voter turnout was likely high and many voted for the Social Democrats.”¹⁰ There was “scope for more far-reaching cooperation projects between the Social Democrats and the Swedish Muslim Council and its political branch.” In 1999, a formal agreement was subsequently concluded between Faith and Solidarity and the Swedish Muslim Council.¹¹

The goals of the agreement were:

“By 2002, among Social Democratic elected representatives there shall be Muslims on 15 municipal council lists, 5 county council lists, and on parliamentary lists in at least 5 counties. The SAP shall have 2,000 Muslim members, and 300 shall have received basic political training.”¹²

In 2005, the Swedish Muslim Council (SMR) invited a violent Hamas ideologue to give a lecture. The same year, the Brotherhood Movement and the Social Democratic Student Association also invited a leading pro-violence Hamas sympathizer.¹³ If anyone subsequently questioned the SMR or the Brotherhood Movement, they were not infrequently accused of Islamophobia. Experienced researchers such as Magnus Norell—an expert on terrorism, political violence, democracy-related issues, and security policy in the Middle East and Central Asia—have experienced this, as has terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp.

Today, the Muslim Brotherhood has subdivisions in around 80 countries. At the same time as the movement claims to work for the democratization of countries such as Egypt, it maintains that the state should be based on Sharia law. The Brotherhood’s ultimate goal is to establish an Islamic state by educating and transforming the population into believing Muslims.

Norell describes the Brotherhood as the “father of the Islamist networks and organizations that today dominate political Islam in the West, including Sweden,”¹⁴ and as having grown into a widespread movement across the entire continent. The goal has been—and remains—to establish itself socially and politically in Europe within Muslim communities and to gain influence over Muslim groups. This strategy has proven to be highly successful, not least in Sweden.

Journalist Johan Westerholm, writing on the website ledarsidorna.se, has studied the Muslim Brotherhood in depth and described its strategies in his book “The Muslim Brotherhood in Sweden.” He shows that they have built a structure for maximum influence that allows the Brotherhood to appear in official Swedish contexts or act as representatives of all Muslims in Sweden, despite being a minority even among Sunni Muslims.¹⁵

The Muslim Brotherhood’s chief preacher, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, was at times portrayed as fairly moderate in Western media. Reality, however, showed something quite different. During a speech on the news channel Al Jazeera on January 28, 2009, the then 81-year-old al-Qaradawi said the following:

“Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the Jews people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. Through everything he did to them—although they have exaggerated this matter—he succeeded in putting them in their place. This was Allah’s punishment for them.”¹⁶

The most important goals formulated by the European Council for Fatwa and Research and its chief ideologue, al-Qaradawi, are established at annual conferences. In 2003, one such conference was held at the then newly inaugurated Stockholm Mosque, Sameh Egyptsson recounts:

“They can be summarized as demands that European states recognize Islam and Muslims as a religious minority with their own rights. Muslims should consequently have the right to special legislation in accordance with Sharia.”¹⁷

The Muslim Brotherhood is a major actor within organizational life in Sweden, he further explains. Each year, hundreds of millions of Swedish kronor in tax funds are channeled through the Islamic Federation in Sweden (IFiS) and its subsidiary and affiliated organizations:

“Thanks to these grants and their contacts with the political elite, they gradually create a parallel society. Islamic schools, mosques, and associations with a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam hinder integration instead of strengthening it, as they are supposed to do under the conditions of the funding.”¹⁸

Few within the Social Democratic Party had anything to object to regarding their association with Islamists. One of the exceptions was Carina Hägg, who, after openly criticizing the cooperation with Omar Mustafa—who at the time was chairman of the Islamic Association in Stockholm and who for years had invited virulent antisemites to Sweden¹⁹—was removed from the Social Democrats’ parliamentary candidate list.

Carina Hägg subsequently wrote an op-ed in which she accused the party secretary, Carin Jämtin, of running an internal campaign against her. Minutes from a district board meeting reveal that Hägg was thereafter given an ultimatum that amounted to the following: resign voluntarily or we will force you out. “The Social Democrats’ cooperation with Islamists is about power, the political agenda, and mandates,” Hägg explains. “I am extremely glad that the agreement has been exposed. At the same time, it shows that the basis for why I was ousted was a lie!”²⁰

The agreement she was referring to was the secret deal between Faith and Solidarity and the Brotherhood.

In the documentary “The Battle for the Muslims” from 2009, it became clear that there are major differences between fundamentalist leaders’ views and those of Swedish authorities on issues such as equality. Representatives of the four largest Muslim organizations explained that:

The man is the head of the family.
All music that may arouse thoughts of physical closeness should be avoided. Classical music or Islamic chants are acceptable; pop and rock music are wrong.
Men and women should not socialize alone before marriage.
Women have their duties within the home.
The man is to carry out all tasks that take place outside the home.
The man uses reason and is better suited to make rational decisions than the woman, who uses emotions.
The man has better judgment than the woman (who makes hasty decisions); therefore, it is the man who may request a divorce.
The man may correct his wife by hitting her (according to a young Muslims’ website).
Only the learned may interpret the Qur’an; there is no possibility for individual interpretations.²¹

Ibn Rushd was a philosopher who lived in Muslim Spain during the 12th century. In Sweden, an adult education association bearing the same name was established, which over the past 14 years has been awarded more than a quarter of a billion Swedish kronor in tax funds, mostly in the form of government support. The Ibn Rushd Association was founded by organizations from the Muslim Brotherhood, and much of its course offerings have therefore revolved around Islam and the Arabic language.

“The network has two main tracks in Sweden,” explains the author Lars Åberg: “To develop a separate ‘Muslim civil society’ and to portray Sweden as a racist country. Several of the organizations, among them Ibn Rushd, already contacted one of the UN’s various committees in 2013 with an alarm report in which Sweden was described as an apartheid state.”²²

“Across Europe, lawmakers are discussing how Islamist extremism—in the form of, among other things, radical mosques or Salafist organizations—should be countered,” wrote Bawar Ismail, formerly an editor at Göteborgs-Posten and now a political adviser for the Liberal Party. “One important issue for decision-makers has been how to prevent foreign financing of mosques from non-democratic states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar … but while the issue engages lawmakers across Europe, there is silence from the Social Democratic government here at home.”²³

An investigation carried out by the newspaper ETC in 2017 showed that as many as 17 of the 25 largest Muslim congregations in Sweden are financed from abroad. Qatar, Turkey, Libya, as well as Pakistan, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates finance mosques and congregations in the country, and more than one in four mosques is wholly or partly financed by Saudi Arabia. In addition, nine mosques cooperate with the Turkish Diyanet, which works to map regime critics abroad and to spread Turkish nationalism.²⁴

Saudi funds have financed at least six mosques: the Trollhättan Mosque, the Gothenburg Mosque, the Hötorget Mosque, the Bellevue Mosque, the Västerås Mosque, and the Borås Mosque.

Qatari funds have financed four: the Umm al-Mu’minin Khadijah Mosque, the Gävle Mosque, the Västerås Mosque, and the Örebro Mosque.

Turkish funds have financed four: the Fittja Mosque, the Muslim Congregation of Malmö, the Skärholmen Mosque, and the Turkish Islamic Cultural Association in Rinkeby.

Libyan, Iranian, Omani, Kuwaiti, and Pakistani funds have financed one each: the Islamic Center Malmö (Libya), the Trollhättan Mosque (Kuwait, Oman), the Nasir Mosque in Gothenburg (Pakistan), and the Imam Ali Mosque (Iran).

The United Arab Emirates has financed two mosques: the Trollhättan Mosque and the Stockholm Mosque (Zayed’s Mosque).²⁵

Fortunately, most Muslims in Sweden are not radical and simply want to practice their personal faith in mosques, but according to Anas Khalifa there are nevertheless extremists in every mosque in Sweden. Journalist Sakine Madon already raised the alarm in 2015 about an unwillingness among politicians and others to acknowledge how widespread the problem is—despite the fact that violent Islamism is regarded by the Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) as Sweden’s greatest terrorist threat, and despite warnings from residents in suburban areas about increased radicalization.

Madon describes how radical Islamists have for a long time advanced their positions in both residential areas and associations:

“Through my own network, I quickly get in touch with people who tell me how they and their relatives have been affected. The picture they give of Sweden is dark. Anyone who wears a T-shirt with the text ‘Peshmerga’—Kurdish forces fighting the Islamic State—risks being spat on or being turned away from the mosque.”²⁶

Unfortunately, the problem extends far down into the younger age groups. At Angered Upper Secondary School in Gothenburg, the principal stated a few years ago that conflicts between IS sympathizers and IS opponents were part of everyday life, and that the school had students whose families supported IS.²⁷ A survey conducted the following year showed that more than one in ten students in Gothenburg’s suburbs sympathized with IS, jihadists, and similar extremists.²⁸ To say the least, frightening figures.

As early as 2010, Nalin Pekgul invited terrorism expert Magnus Ranstorp to a meeting in Tensta to discuss terror travel. “We were attacked by people from the Muslim Human Rights Committee, MMRK, for being Islamophobes,”²⁹ Nalin Pekgul later recounted. It was the same MMRK that had been criticized for inviting, in 2010, an imam who had been convicted of terrorism offenses in both district court and court of appeal, and for having cooperated with the organization Cage, which campaigned on behalf of terrorists such as al-Qaeda ideologue Anwar al-Awlaki.³⁰

After Awlaki’s death, when it became clear to everyone what a central role he had played in al-Qaeda, the MMRK nevertheless shared a video clip on Facebook from a lecture by Awlaki entitled “Why the World Hates America,” said journalist Magnus Sandelin. “To call those who promote such views extremists is, of course, entirely reasonable.”³¹

The same year that Ranstorp was to give his lecture in Tensta, journalist Amun Abdullahi revealed on Swedish Radio that a leader at a youth center in Rinkeby had recruited young people to the Islamist militia al-Shabaab, a brutal rebel group in Somalia whose goal is to establish an Islamist state governed by an extreme, political interpretation of Islam.

As a result, Abdullahi was accused of smearing Somalis and Muslims in Rinkeby. Abdullahi, who herself lived in Rinkeby at the time, was both slandered and ostracized. Claims were spread that she had sold herself to Swedish journalists and their alleged smearing of Islam. “It was just over,” she later recounted in an interview. “I was a terrible person, a traitor. People questioned whether I was even Muslim and why I wore a headscarf.”³²

What shocked her most, however, was that even Swedish Radio questioned her information. In April 2010, the program Konflikt broadcast a report from Rinkeby in which the claims about al-Shabaab’s recruitment were dismissed as mere hearsay and rumors.

The report on Konflikt led to further threats against Abdullahi and even greater social exclusion. “I believed in journalism,” she later said in an interview. “I believed in Swedish Radio too. And I believed in myself—very much. All three were shattered at the same time.”³³ Abdullahi eventually moved back to Somalia, where she was tragically murdered in 2024.

The relatively little-known Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) in Sweden has a Swedish branch, and at a lecture held after the Quran riots—when hundreds of Muslims attacked police officers and burned cars—the violent riots were described as positive,³³ while freedom of expression was described as “a lie and something that is selectively used to tear down Muslims, whip Muslims, and scare Muslims into passivity.”³⁴

It is further claimed that freedom of expression is used in a war against Islam, and that Muslims are proud that freedom of expression does not exist within Islam. Swedish culture, it is argued, “accepts mockery, creates division, segregation, and racism.”³⁵ “We will challenge their system. We will challenge their ideology. We will show how Islam is better than them in everything.”³⁶

HuT fights for a global caliphate and a worldwide Muslim ummah (Muslim religious community). It is also considered harmful if Muslims here see themselves as a minority:

“We are not a minority. This is extremely important. One of the most important things. We are not a weak, helpless, powerless minority. We are part of the most powerful ummah in the world. We are part of the best ummah sent to mankind (…). We are part of an ummah consisting of two billion people. We carry a project that is global. We carry solutions to all of humanity’s problems.”³⁷

For HuT, it is important that Muslims do not integrate. One should not attempt to harmonize Islam:

“When they have been equipped with Islam and Islamic ideas, then we see that they will be immune to adopting the Western worldview—the Western ideology, secularism, democracy, and freedoms.”³⁸

In February 2023, a widely discussed dissertation by Sameh Egyptson was approved, claiming that the Islamic Federation in Sweden constitutes a Swedish branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. It is quite telling that when he later lectured in the Swedish Parliament, not a single representative from the Social Democrats (S), the Green Party (MP), the Left Party (V), or the Centre Party (C) was present. Egyptson pointed out that the network’s inner core in Sweden consists of between 13 and 20 individuals, and that they control a number of study associations, organizations, schools, and charities that each year receive hundreds of millions in public funding.

At the core of the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideology is the idea that individuals and societies should submit to the Qur’an and the Hadiths (historical accounts from the life of Muhammad). If this sounds familiar, it is because it is the same goal pursued by ISIS. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIS seeks to achieve this through violence. It is also important to point out that, in relation to the approximately two billion Muslims in the world, Islamists constitute a minority.

Most Muslims are not extremists but ordinary people who simply want to live their lives in peace and quiet with their families, jobs, and leisure interests, and so on. Within Islamism, however, the Muslim Brotherhood constitutes one of the most influential ideological currents. For that reason, it also becomes absurd to continue to relativize or trivialize its significance, as has long been done—particularly in Sweden.

Aje Carlbom writes:

“To dismiss or otherwise refuse to discuss Muslim Brotherhood–associated Islamic activity is to place oneself in a position hostile to knowledge. After all, we are talking about the world’s first and largest Islamist movement, which over the years has influenced a very large number of Muslims both within and outside the movement.”³⁹

After the terrorist group Hamas and other jihadist terrorist organizations attacked and massacred more than 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, honking car convoys drove through Malmö to show their joy. The same thing happened after the Iraqi Salwan Momika—who had become known for burning the Qur’an—was murdered in Södertälje in January 2025, when the perpetrators shot him in the head. Afterwards, social media was flooded with jubilant comments from people with immigrant backgrounds who praised the act and expressed their happiness over Momika’s death.

For more than a year now, we have seen numerous demonstrations in Sweden in which protesters dressed in Hamas attire and carrying flags that glorify terrorist organizations have shouted slogans against Israel and, in some cases, also expressed antisemitic ones. At the same time, in Sweden and other countries, people are being prosecuted for allegedly having said something derogatory about these same groups.

The philosopher and author Daniel Dennett once wrote:

“There are no forces on this planet that are more dangerous to all of us than the fanaticism of fundamentalism.”⁴⁰

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Extremism in Sweden – part 3

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