{"id":10938,"date":"2012-06-18T02:00:14","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T06:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/?p=10938"},"modified":"2012-06-18T09:03:00","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T13:03:00","slug":"the-case-of-sodertalje-%e2%80%9cimmigrants-can-be-racist-too%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/mmw\/2012\/06\/the-case-of-sodertalje-%e2%80%9cimmigrants-can-be-racist-too%e2%80%9d\/","title":{"rendered":"The Case of S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje: \u201cImmigrants Can Be Racist Too\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

On the 3rd of June, four Assyrian teenagers were sentenced<\/a> to probation and\u00a0community service for attacking a Somali Muslim woman in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje, Sweden.\u00a0The attack happened on November 17, 2011. The woman, who wears a headscarf, had been out to buy some milk from a shop in Hovsj\u00f6. On the way home, a group of teenagers kicked a football directly at her back. When she tried to get away they caught up with her, and for the next ten minutes screamed racist insults, spat at and slapped and punched her. One of them then forced her mouth open and spat in her mouth.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje. Source: lt.se.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two of the attackers, 17 and 18, have been sentenced to probation, while the other two, 16 and 17, were sentenced to 60 hours of community service. All four are required to jointly pay 27 300 SEK (about 3812 USD)\u00a0 in damages to the woman. After the sentencing, friends of the four teenagers broke the windows of the woman\u2019s apartment, prompting her to move out of Hovsj\u00f6.<\/p>\n

The case has sparked renewed discussion about the situation in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje, where the majority among the immigrant population is Syriac\/Assyrian\/Chaldean. Since the Iraq war, S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje has\u00a0taken in more Iraqi refugees than the US and Canada combined<\/a>, and has been described variously as Little Iraq<\/a>, the new Christian Baghdad<\/a>, and Sweden\u2019s Jerusalem<\/a> \u2013 or Mesopot\u00e4lje.<\/p>\n

S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje has long been described as a base for organized crime<\/a>, and has been cropping up in the news for years now, especially since the police station there was shot up<\/a> in 2005; this gets widely seen as \u201cblossoms of multiculturalism<\/a>\u201d amid the far-right Sweden Democrats. There has been outrage in particular about several cases of rape<\/a>, among the victims a 12-year-old girl<\/a> who had run away from home. In 2009, LT reported that thousands are \u201cfleeing the area<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

This has been confusing for those who like their anti-immigrant racism to be in line with their Islamophobia. On the popular Swedish forum Flaskback <\/a>for example, people have been attempting to draw the lines between the categories of Arab and Syriac\/Assyrian, Christian and Arab, in a thread entitled \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with the Syriacs?<\/a>\u201d For many, the response has been to blame immigration as a whole. As one commentator puts it, \u201cit\u2019s just a little multiculturalism<\/a>.\u201d Similarly, the anti-Muslim blog Gates of Vienna<\/a><\/em> has been led into a perplexing discussion over this issue, which forces them to discuss whether being anti-immigration and anti-Muslim can become contradictory when it has to do with Christian immigrants.\u00a0In one of the blog\u2019s first posts on the topic, the recent wave of immigrants from Iraq following the war are assumed to be Muslim<\/a>. Once it is realized they are Christian, one has to fall back on anti-Arab racism<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Contrary to what you might expect, the troublemakers of S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje are not generally Muslims, but Assyrian Christians from Iraq. The violent Arab tribal culture is not confined solely to Muslims, and has infected the behavior of Assyrian immigrants to Sweden.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But this too becomes problematic when it is pointed out that they aren\u2019t necessarily Arab and that many come from Turkey. Responses then range from describing all \u201cMiddle Easterners\u201d as violent to blaming the violence on the religious persecution and oppression suffered by these communities in Muslim countries to many finally giving up and deciding that they\u2019re all just as bad as each other<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What makes the case in S\u00f6dert\u00e4le particularly noteworthy is that, in addition to the targeting of the Muslim minority in the area, there is a widening rift particularly evident in the younger generation between those who identify through their religious identity as Syriac and those who identify through national-ethnic identity as Assyrian, a conflict which is expressed through rival football clubs<\/a> such as Assyriska FF and Syrianska FC.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Donna El Jammal, the first policewoman to wear hijab, lives in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje. Source: Pitea Tidningen.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As always though, conflict is only part of this story. After all, the first policewoman (in training) with a headscarf in Sweden<\/a>, Donna El Jammal, lives in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje, although she admits that \u201cbeing Muslim and living in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje is not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

But as Rakel Chukri<\/a> describes it, the situation is changing, and \u201cthere are thousands of success stories that can balance the doomsday headlines.\u201d\u00a0By many accounts, Assyrians have been one of the most successful<\/a> immigrant groups in Sweden \u00a0and the fruits of this success story can be seen in Swedish Syriacs such as S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje-resident MP Robert Haflef campaigning for Assyrian\/Syriac minority and religious rights in countries such as Turkey<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet as the comments to this story point out, there is a need for campaigning closer to home, as more needs to be done to promote inter-faith dialogue among communities in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje itself. It is clear that minorities in the area have felt targeted<\/a>, including ethnic Swedes and\u00a0Muslims being attacked and insulted and having stones thrown at them. In 2008, in a report about Muslims leaving the area<\/a>, one of those interviewed made a point about the difference between living in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje as opposed to areas with Swedes and other groups:<\/p>\n

With the Swedes and other groups, there has never been a problem with, but here the Assyrians scream \u201cMuslim bastards\u201d and \u201cfucking Muhammed and bin Laden\u201d after us, says Ali.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A case that has stood out and been widely covered in the media is that\u00a0of\u00a0Fouad Moor and his family<\/a> who has written about the\u00a0problems Muslims experience in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje <\/a>and who finally gave up and\u00a0left the area.<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a>The saddest thing about this situation, one blogger <\/a>writes, is the perpetuation of intolerance it describes:<\/p>\n

Young men, sons of Christian parents who fled ethnic and \/ or religious oppression in their homelands, harassing this man who also fled from religious oppression \u2013 it is unbelievable that this is allowed to happen in Sweden!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ultimately as Sakine Madon argues<\/a>, whether it comes to the situation in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje where Christians are the majority immigrant population and Muslims are leaving, or in Malm\u00f6 where Muslims are the majority immigrant population and Jews are leaving, it is time for people to realize that it is not \u201cless racist\u201d for immigrants to commit a racist crime, whether against other immigrants or against ethnic Swedes, and it is wrong to describe these crimes as somehow more \u201csensitive\u201d than supposedly less complicated cases of non-immigrants committing hate-crimes. As she puts it quite simply, \u201cimmigrants can be racist too.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the 3rd of June, four Assyrian teenagers were sentenced to probation and\u00a0community service for attacking a Somali Muslim woman in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje, Sweden.\u00a0The attack happened on November 17, 2011. The woman, who wears a headscarf, had been out to buy some milk from a shop in Hovsj\u00f6. On the way home, a group of teenagers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":10940,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1772,563,1771,1278,1320,1321],"class_list":["post-10938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culturesociety","tag-assyrians","tag-hijab","tag-sodertalje","tag-somali-diaspora","tag-sweden","tag-sweden-democrats"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Case of S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje: \u201cImmigrants Can Be Racist Too\u201d<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On the 3rd of June, four Assyrian teenagers were sentenced to probation and\u00a0community service for attacking a Somali Muslim woman in S\u00f6dert\u00e4lje,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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