Trump right about unrest in Sweden
Details wrong, but raw ethnic tensions real
Though U. S. President Donald Trump probably stumbled upon it accidentally — and though he invoked a terror attack that never happened — he was right about there being “problems they never thought possible” in Sweden since it “took in” large numbers of refugees from Muslim-majority countries.
There is little sign yet of such frictions in Canada. But as Trump’s utterances and the support he got from almost half the American electorate demonstrate, the debate now taking place across the Old World about refugees from the Middle East has already crossed the Atlantic. It will inevitably shape the discussion in Canada about immigration and Muslim refugees.
I spent a lot of time in Sweden in my twenties and was back there again twice in the past 15 months. Things are definitely not going well in that once famously progressive and tolerant society. I was thunderstruck to see that Malmo, the city I know best, is beset today with raw ethnic tensions between what Quebecers might call "Old Stock Swedes” and newcomers, especially from Iraq and now Syria.
The shift in mood and outlook in Malmo has been profound. Old friends there told me there are districts in the city where they now seldom venture. They feel uncomfortable and unwelcome because Arabic and Islamic dress and culture predominate. And the newcomers told me exactly the same thing about how they felt when they left their neighbourhoods.
Malmo has in many ways become two cities, not one. The change is remarkable. Unless a lot of reaching out is done the chasm is likely to grow. There are people on both sides working together to bridge the gap, but not many. It is the same story today in many French, Dutch, Belgian, German, Danish and even Finnish towns and cities.
When I first visited the Balkans in the 1970s I was taken with the beauty of the alpine minarets of Sarajevo and the haunting sound of the Muslim call to prayer. But this was Islam lite. Few Muslims from Bosnia or nearby Kosovo were religious then. In fact, Muslims made of point of saying that they were Yugoslavs first. Few had much interest in religion.
That was just 20 years before Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Muslims slugged it out for power in Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina while UN forces, mostly western and including thousands from Canada, tried to keep them from murdering each other.
When I returned two years ago to Sarajevo and Visoko, where Canadian troops were based during the savage war, I was astonished to see religious information offices supported by Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey on one of the main thoroughfares in the Bosnian capital. There and in many other European cities there are now many Saudi-sponsored mosques under the influence of ultra-conservative Wahhabis and Salafis who follow an extreme interpretation of the holy Qur’an.
Islamic terrorist attacks by believers in these two related ultra-conservative Islamic sects have so frightened Europeans that every significant European public attraction now has armed guards. The divide this has helped create and what it may portend is spoken about everywhere on the continent. Liberals and progressives still exist in Europe, but they are not the force they were a few years back.
The tensions in Europe are old news to people who live there, but many Canadians have an outdated view of Europe formed during pleasant trips to tourist precincts. They have until recently given little thought to how they might react if more than one million newcomers from the Middle East suddenly arrived in their midst, as happened in Germany over the last half of 2015. It is always worth reminding Canadians that compared to many European countries, they have taken in a piddling number of refugees.
The perspective in Europe is different. Europe and Islam fought each other in more than 40 wars over nearly 12 centuries. Every Austrian knows about the Siege of Vienna in 1529 by Suleiman the Magnificent and the Ottoman Empire. For their part, Muslims in the Middle East remember the Crusades.
All this is to say that this is a very old conflict. Osama bin Laden was hardly the first Muslim to speak of the wars between Islam and the Holy Roman Empire, or of what he called the modernday crusaders who fought in two Gulf Wars.
Into this space have come far right leaders in Europe such as Holland’s Geert Wilders, who would close every mosque there, stop immigration and try to force immigrants already there to live according to what he regards as Dutch cultural norms. How Wilders does in a national election on March 15 may have a knock-on effect in elections to be held later this year in France and Germany. Whatever their views, Canadians should be paying close attention, too.