Sweden’s Muslim Brotherhood expanding on taxpayers’ money

Asmaa al-Batakoshi

The Muslim Brotherhood is increasing presence in Sweden through a number of charities. The Islamist group has also founded some powerful institutions, having secured financing from Swedish public institutions.

According to a report by the American news site, International Business Times, Swedish tax money goes for entities affiliated to the Muslim Brotherhood. The group, the site said, uses this money in advancing its agenda and promoting its ideology in Sweden.

A students’ federation of the Muslim Brotherhood gets annual funding of $2.3 million from the Adult Education Council, the site said.

Writing in the daily newspaper Expressen, researchers Magnus Ranstorp and Aje Carlbom said the Muslim Brotherhood-linked organization, Ibn Rushd, is targeting new arrivals in the country and marginalized Muslims living in vulnerable neighborhoods.

Both associate professors, the researchers added that Ibn Rushd has been inviting racist and anti-Semitic speakers as part of its efforts to create an Islamist parallel society within Sweden.

“Given that Ibn Rushd has been active as a study association since 2008, it is reasonable to assume that the association has long been aware that anti-Semitism is unacceptable in the Swedish majority society”, the researchers said.

The government grants are inadvertently encouraging the spread of a certain activist interpretation of Islam whose stated goal is to establish a ‘Muslim parallel society”, the report says.

It adds that the Swedish Agency for Youth and Society had refused to fund the Association of Young Muslims in 2017.

The association, which holds together as many as 30 member associations, did not follow the spirit of democracy and engaged in anti-Semitism and homophobia, the government agency had concluded.

Public funding of studies in Arabic and Islam has become counter-productive, the researchers say.

“Supporting activities that encourage further isolation from the norms and languages of the majority society thus becomes counterproductive,” they add.