Islam is not Ravaging Sweden
- Shehroz Siddiqui
- Mar 2, 2017
- 6 min read

Source: Tactical Technologies & Open Society Foundation
On February 18th, Donald Trump vaguely referred to some form of calamity that took place in Sweden linked to immigration, particularly on the part of Muslims. In a recent Florida rally, Trump said: “We've got to keep our country safe. You look at what's happening in Germany, you look at what's happening last night in Sweden. Who would believe this? Sweden! They took in large numbers, they’re having problems like they never thought possible.” Later on, Trump elaborated somewhat on the problems in question, referring to an interview Tucker Carlson conducted with film maker Ami Horowitz on Fox News the day before. At the end of the interview, Horowitz referred to Sweden having sustained its "first terrorist Islamic attack", but stated in equally vague terms, that the attack took place "not that long ago".
The majority of the interview focused on what I suspected was the real issue to which Trump was referring: the frequency of crimes committed by immigrants, particularly rape and other forms of violence. This has become an expedient tool for certain anti-Muslim factions, and deserves to be examined in a more measured way.
Later on February 21st, Tucker Carlson had another interview with Horowitz which, like the previous one, featured clips from his most recent interview with two Swedish policemen, who allegedly said that migrant crimes were frequent. Interestingly enough, the men have since stated they were misquoted, and were in fact talking about high crime areas without specific reference to immigrants. Carlson referred to another policeman who issued a Facebook post which allegedly mentioned high crime rates due to immigration and "Islamic enclaves", otherwise known as "no-go zones". Horowitz referenced Brå, otherwise known as the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention, which keeps statistics on crime levels. According to Horowitz, Brå recorded a 70% increase in murder from 2012-2016, and a near 70% increase in rape from 2007-2015. It is not clear how he arrived at this statistic. It is not explicitly stated in any Brå findings, and when pressed for details by Don Lemon on CNN, Horowitz would not offer any specifics.
The subtext of this form of argument, of course, is that Islam is somehow linked to these controversies. This is the view of many right-wing commentators, who refer to Sweden as the "rape capital of Europe", plagued by immigration, and Muslims by extension.
If Islam were to blame for the bulk of rapes and murders in Sweden, however, one would be able to find a scriptural basis for such behaviour. There is none. It is quite well known that Islam prohibits rape and murder, both of which are classified as major sins. Moreover, Muslims are bound by certain codes of conduct when living in non-Islamic countries. On the subject of dealing with non-Muslims, Islamic scholars like Faraz Rabbani remind Muslims of the teaching of the Prophet Muhammad to have: "good relations with your family, neighbours, co-workers, and society at large." Such a principle would equally apply to rioting in the manner seen recently. This alone is sufficient to dismiss any arguments indicting Islam, though it is still worth examining the situation more closely.
Despite the media sensationalism, Sweden remains one of the most materially prosperous countries in the world, and one of the safest by extension. The Global Prosperity Index has consistently ranked Sweden among the top ten most prosperous countries for years, ranking it 8th in the most recent iteration. Various indicators are used in order to discern prosperity levels, including "Safety & Security". When ranking countries by this factor exclusively, Sweden currently ranks at 10th place. Whilst having dropped from first place overall since 2012, much of Sweden's decline has largely been the result of a in a reduction education of educational quality given gender imbalances in primary schools. Moreover, Sweden's security ranking has actually risen during the period 2007-2016, despite the acknowledgment that terrorism strains this somewhat. By the standard of this particular index, Sweden still outranks both America and the United Kingdom in terms of general prosperity, in addition to security in particular.

Source: The Legatum Prosperity Index 2016
Whatever the level of crime in Sweden, there has been no increase substantial enough to degrade Sweden's overall reputation, despite its tradition of accepting immigrants. Whilst it is pertinent to look at the Brå statistics, there is no justification for portraying Sweden as verging on some form of crisis, as has been the want of certain commentators, not to mention Trump himself.
Instances of lethal violence have been a profoundly rare in Sweden over the course of the last decade. A rise in lethal violence occurred from 2014-2015, yet despite this, Brå findings state: "During the most recent ten-year period, the number of cases of lethal violence each year has fluctuated between 68 and 112 cases. In a long-term perspective, ever since the 1990's when Brå started the measurements, the trend shows that lethal violence is declining."
With regards to sexual offences, Bra states that within the Swedish system, one case may involve multiple offences, leading to burgeoning statistics: “For instance, when a single case is reported that turns out to involve hundreds or even thousands of instances of offences committed against an individual over the course of many years, every single incident is recorded as an offence in the year it was reported."
This differs from other legal systems, wherein multiple offences could be classed as a single crime. Here it is pertinent to mention Canadian journalist Doug Saunders, whose earlier coverage of this issue has provided much needed clarity. He makes a comparison between Swedish, Canadian, and German laws in this respect: "Imagine, for example, if your boss rubbed against you in an unwanted way at work once a week for a year. In Canada, this would potentially be a case of sexual assault. Under Germany’s more limited laws, it would be zero cases. In Sweden, it would be tallied as 52 separate cases of rape. If you engaged in a half-dozen sex acts with your spouse, then later you felt you had not given consent, in Sweden that would be classified as six cases of rape."
This fact is crucial, given that the Brå recorded that a significant portion of victims were subject to repeated offences: "About one-third (35%) of the persons who were exposed to sex offences were exposed more than once in 2015. Roughly one-tenth (or 12%) were exposed ten times or more." Despite these details being important, I have found few instances where any who take issue with Muslims or immigration have acknowledged them. If other countries were to adopt the same criterion as Sweden in this regard, the statistical significance of rape would likely rise in their cases. This could include countries that do not take in immigrants at high levels.
Brå also mentioned new legislation from 2005, which broadens the definition of rape in particular by including crimes previously classified as sexual exploitation. This is understood to have reflected in a statistical inflation: "The effect of the statutory change appeared in the statistics such that the number of reported offences in respect of sexual coercion and exploitation declined in the years immediately following the statutory change while the number of reported rapes increased." In 2013, the definition was also made to include cases when the victim reacted passively.
With these qualifications, Brå reported an increase in those who related exposure to sex offences from 1.0% in 2014 to 1.7% in 2015, which corresponds to 129,000 people. Levels remained under 1.0% from 2005-2012, rising thereafter. No statistics have been kept with regards to the ethnicity of perpetrators since 2005. Given that offenders with foreign backgrounds were over-represented when data was last available, it would appear more likely that this over-representation has continued.
Even so, there are other considerations, almost always overlooked by critics, that explain this problem, asides from the platitudinal recourse to blaming Islam. Saunders consulted a 2013 study by Swedish criminologists Martin Hallsten, Ryszard Szulkin, and Jerzy Sarnecki, which sought to analyse why the gap between native and migrant crime is so wide. When analysing male immigrants, the study was able to explain between half and three-quarters of crime by reference to socio-economic factors and social segregation. For females, the entirety of crime could be explained in this manner. Moreover, the study found that the crime rate was reduced by half among Swedish-born children of immigrants, who largely indulged in lesser property crimes. The crime rate of this grouping was understood to be comparable to that of native Swedes with the same family income.
Critically, the researchers questioned whether culture had anything to do with immigrant crime by randomly selecting pairs of immigrants from the same country and comparing their crime rates. From this, the study concluded by finding only a "small correlation" and further stated: "culture is unlikely to be a strong cause of crime among immigrants." This is further complimented by political scientist Henrik Selin of the Swedish Institute, a government organisation tasked with spreading information about the country abroad. According to Selin, native Swedes with socio-economic limits: "are also over-represented in crime statistics."
Another informative piece of early reporting came from Daily Beast contributor Erin Zaleski, who spoke with Martina Lindberg, a former lecturer on women, peace, and security matters at the Swedish Defence University in Stockholm. Whilst acknowledging the need for the Swedish government to adopt appropriate integration measures, Lindberg also cautioned against "a simplified approach to the asylum-seeking man." Evidently, it would have been better to look up the relevant academic views on this subject.
Crime is a serious issue irrespective of who commits it, and should be dealt with accordingly. Identity politics and polemical nonsense about Islam being to blame only serves to pollute the public discourse.
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