RUTHFULLY YOURS

The sexual abuse incidents in Europe have exposed the logical flaws in the Swedish debate about immigration and they also show how unprepared Sweden and Europe are in facing the challenges that have arisen because of the migration crisis.

After women were assaulted by “asylum seekers” in several places in Europe, it emerged that it also had happened in Sweden. However, in Sweden this had happened in August 2015 at the “We are Sthlm”  festival where about 150 girls had been victims of sexual abuse by “refugee youths” from Afghanistan.

The reason that this August 2015 incident was not reported until January 2016, was because one of Sweden’s largest newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, and the Swedish police, who had access to the information, did not report these incidents to the public.

Dagens Nyheter is known as a newspaper that romanticizes immigration and multiculturalism but the actions of the police shocked many in Sweden, because the police are one of the institutions in Sweden that many Swedes have great confidence in. The explanation that the police chief Peter Ågren gave for not reporting the sexual abuses in August 2015 was:

“This is a sore point, sometimes, we do not dare to say how things really are because we believe it will play into the hands of the Sverigedemokraterna (Sweden Democrats). We have to take responsibility for this within the police.”

The fact that a Swedish police chief was making political considerations came as a shock to a country that never had to think about what political views the police have. In Sweden, the general view is that police chiefs who let their political views affect their job are found in other countries, mostly in dictatorships, and not in Sweden. That the police chief wants to disfavor the third largest party in the Swedish parliament just makes the situation even more uncomfortable. It must also be said that Sweden’s national police commissioner, since 2015, Dan Eliasson, holds openly hostile views against the fastest rising party in Sweden. One of the famous tweets of the national police commissioner is that he wants to “vomit” over the party-leader of the Sweden Democrats.

At the same time, the Swedish police’s work with newly arrived migrants is completely classified. It is impossible for Swedes to know about the security situation in the homes where “asylum seekers” are staying, or how many of the newly arrived migrants have broken the law.

But this whole situation also reveals much about the important role of culture in the immigration issue. The migration crisis has not only created huge economic costs. Large parts of Sweden and Europe have learned in a furious pace that all migrants coming into Europe have not become feminists or liberals when they crossed the border. Many migrants have brought their cultural framework which includes a clear “non-European” view of women.

It’s really no big secret how the majority of women are treated in the Middle East and in most of the Muslim world. It is also no big secret what the content of the Qur’an and Sunnah says about women and how these writings are interpreted today by a large portion of the Muslim world. At best, women are treated as second class citizens and as property.

During 2015, 70 percent of the 162,877 asylum seekers in Sweden came from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Additionally, 64 percent of the Syrians, 82 percent of the Afghans and 73 percent of the Iraqis were men. The ordinary Muslim “refugee” to Sweden is a young man, so young Muslim men’s views against women in the Muslim world becomes relevant.

The Muslim countries’ legislation can be easily found on the Internet. There are thousands of books on what role women have in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq and the oppression they are enduring every day. Despite this, many in Sweden are surprised that this kind of sexual abuse has occurred. It is as if the Left in Sweden lacks any knowledge of how other cultures view women in other parts of the world.

One would hope that the fact that so many women have been attacked in Europe by young male asylum seekers would make the Swedish Left wake up. After the sexual abuses in Cologne Kerstin Weigl, the columnist for Sweden’s largest newspaper Aftonbladet, wrote:

“All men know that it is wrong to assault women. Yet it happens. It is done in different ways, based on different conceptions of what is accepted, what a man can allow himself, to get away with. But this is everyday life. And in at least me there is a reflex to avoid drunk Swedish men in group. The crucial difference is that Swedish women know that they can notify the police and be taken seriously.”

Two days after her column, where her message was that Swedish girls will “be taken seriously” by Swedish police, it emerged that the police had covered up sexual abuse against girls because the perpetrators were Muslim “asylum seekers”. The Swedish Left’s response to sexual abuse committed by “asylum seekers” has been to portray all Swedish men as rapists in to get away from the fact that those who were behind the latest sexual abuses have been “asylum seekers”. But it is an assertion that feels strange to the Swedish people, who have never seen similar sexual abuses like those committed by the newly arrived “asylum seekers”.

In addition to the Swedish Left’s lack of understanding that all the migrants who come to Sweden will not become feminists at the border, they have also completely missed the power relationships between cultures. 1.6 billion people are part of the Islamic cultural sphere. Sweden has approximately 9.5 million inhabitants. If someone comes to Sweden from a part of the Muslim world, and ends up in a situation where he/she has to choose between Islam and Sweden, the person will usually choose Islam, because Islam is the stronger party. What the Left in Sweden has missed is that the values of 1.6 billion people ends up being stronger than the values of 9.5 million Swedes.

As Sweden does not have a policy of assimilation and has not had any such policy since 1975, there are not many immigrants that are assimilated in the Swedish society and power relations between the Islamic world and Sweden makes it problematic for Muslims to voluntarily embrace the Swedish culture.

It is not only Swedish women who will face a “cultural challenge” in the coming years that will make their lives more frightening and insecure. Women and children who have immigrated to Sweden and live in accommodations for “asylum seekers” live risky and precarious lives as well. Despite the fact that the Swedish police does not report about the security situation in the accommodations of “asylum seekers”, there has been reports about rape attempts in these accommodations, in Swedish media.

The fact is that if you come into Europe and then migrate through safe countries all the way to Sweden, then you are not really a refugee. A refugee seeks refuge at the first safe country. Having thousands of frustrated young men with a medieval attitude towards women in a country where women have a liberal way of life creates the conditions for a cultural confrontation. We have already seen some of the consequences of such a cultural confrontation in the sexual abuses that occurred in different cities in Europe.

Sweden and Europe will learn that even if democracy, freedom, equality between women and men and human rights are things that are respected in Europe, there are cultural discourses in which these things are not respected. Sweden and Europe will learn in the near future, the hard way, why women do not go out alone on the streets of Kabul.

The difficulties that Europe will face is a consequence of ignorance and arrogance disguised as ideology. There has been an establishment that has had an illusion that people belonging to an expansionist civilization like Islam will come to Europe and then when they’re here, they’ll just embrace European values. The establishment in Europe has believed that young men who have been brought up with a medieval view towards women will suddenly start respecting women. This establishment is now colliding with reality and thus finds itself in an ideological crisis.

The multicultural ideology that gives influence to non-European cultures in European nations is under current circumstances a threat to Europe and the European nations’ identities and freedoms.

Europe and Sweden are compelled to embrace an ideology, because of the massive migration that has taken place, where the society has to stand up and support the national culture and let this culture continue to steer the development of society while having a workable policy of assimilation without empty phrases and political slogans, that can be implemented.

The sexual abuses, carried out by “asylum seekers”, in European cities are a part of a larger crisis that right now is about how women should dress, and how and where women should move, but in the long term it will be about issues that concern the entire European society. If European nations do not firmly confront this Islamic “cultural challenge,” then they will pay a much higher and painful price than they have done so far.