STOCKHOLM, September 11 (IslamOnline.net) - Swedish Muslim leaders are to meet on Sunday, September 12, to expose documented practices of racial discrimination against the community, especially after the 9/11.
The
conference will screen videotapes spotting such racial incidents as,
for example, throwing pig heads at mosques, destroying the Islamic
Center in Malmo by arsonists or organizing anti-Islam demonstrations,
organizers told IslamOnline.net.
To
be held one day after the bloody attacks on Washington and New York,
the conference is organized by the office of discrimination against
Muslims.
The
officials of the office urged the Swedish Muslims who have suffered
discrimination to lodge complaints with the government.
They,
however, applauded the positive response of the Swedish government to
such complaints.
The
office was established last April upon an initiative from the Islamic
Council in Sweden and other leading Islamic unions and associations in
the European country to probe into acts of violence, hatred to or
discrimination against the Muslim community in Sweden.
According
to the Swedish civil affairs department estimates, dozens of Arabs and
Muslims in Sweden had applied to change their names during the second
half of 2003, in an effort to escape an evident job discrimination.
Racism
Muslims
in Sweden have been facing different practices of racial
discrimination that had remarkably been increasing since the bloody
attacks on Washington and New York.
Mahmoud
al-Doubae, deputy chairman of the Islamic Council in Sweden and
advisor for the Swedish government, named several forms of racism
facing the Swedish Muslims in the country as follows:
-
Demands of some Swedish politicians to ban hijab in the state schools
and ministries, despite the fact that its is an obligatory code of
dress in Islam.
-
Calls of Swedish parties to deny Arab and Muslim immigrants asylum
status in the country.
-
Calls of some Swedish parties to close down the Islamic schools in
Sweden.
-
Demands by the Jewish community in Sweden for taking tough actions on
mosques for being hotbeds of terrorist cells - a claim vehemently
denied by the mosques and community leaders.
-
Accusations of Swedish right-wing politicians that Islamic
institutions in Sweden are supporting terrorism.
-
Some Arab passengers have been facing security harassment at airports
over their dresses or appearance.
-
The arson of the Islamic center in the city of Malmo.
-
Throwing pig heads and excrements on mosques and Islamic institutions
in Sweden.
-
Shattering deliberately the Stockholm mosque glasses more than 30
times.
-
Meting out physical assault on dozens of Muslim residents.
-
Staging anti-Islamic demonstrations in Stockholm and other Swedish
cities.
-
Publishing anti-Muslim articles on some Internet sites.
-
Claims by Jewish leaders that the Arab citizens in Sweden are posing a
security threat for their lives.
However,
Muslim leaders in Sweden boast that Islam has been growing to become
the second official religion in the country, after Christianity.
This
is in spite of the fact that the Swedish Muslim community is a
relatively new one, unlike that of other European countries such as,
France.
