A fair shake
A fair shake, Israel Hayom, Annika Hernroth-Rothstein, April 24, 2016
Khan and his party are bringing Islamism into every Swede’s living room and into the halls of parliament, but the Swedish media would rather demand he shake a woman’s hand than have him denounce mass murder and anti-Semitism.
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Last week, Swedish minister of housing and development Mehmet Kaplan was forced to leave his position after his ties to the Turkish nationalist Islamist organization the Gray Wolves as well as to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged and it was revealed that he had compared Israeli policy toward Palestinians to the Nazi annihilation of Jews.
Needless to say, this resignation of a high-profile minister caused quite a stir and led to the national media focusing its gaze on Kaplan’s party — the national Green Party. After scratching the surface a bit, one disturbing detail after another began to emerge, appearing to adhere to one particular theme.
Just in the past week, Swedish journalists discovered that party member Asa Romson called the September 11, 2001 attacks “an accident” and a “tough time for Muslims.” Other key party members have been revealed as working closely with the Muslim Brotherhood and with Turkish Muslim extremists the Gray Wolves and their former party leader, Per Gahrton. They were also quoted as saying that Kaplan was forced out of office by an “Israeli conspiracy.”
All this comes in addition to the scandals that were already known, such as Kaplan comparing ISIS jihadists to Swedish soldiers volunteering for the Finnish Winter War and cozying up to known Iranian anti-Semites during his time heading up the Swedish Muslim Association.
The Green Party has slowly but surely shifted away from being the starry-eyed idealist party that focused on public transport, alternative fuel sources and a six-hour workday to becoming the party of Islamists, shunning Western ideas of democracy and inclusion. This is a frightening trend, and one that deserves to be investigated and denounced, but unfortunately the debate has shifted in an uncomfortable fashion, just a few days into what should have been weeks of investigative journalism.
Until several days ago, Yasri Khan was one of the top names in the Green Party, slated to become the next junior minister. Khan is one of the founders of Swedish Muslims for Peace and Justice, an entity well known for its anti-Semitic sentiments and having murky international affiliations, but that was not the focus when he was interviewed on national television the other day. Instead, the interview revolved around his choice not to shake the reporter’s hand. Khan is a religious Muslim, and as such, he does not shake the hands of women, and to a secular Swedish society this seemed more shocking than the fact the he represents a party closely affiliated to radical Islam and that more often than not compares Israeli policy to the Holocaust.
Arab Israeli MK Hanin Zoabi of the Joint Arab List recently declined an invitation to attend a ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day, noting the “alarming similarities” between Nazi Germany and Israel’s policies toward Palestinians and Israeli Arabs. Zoabi wrote a letter to the organizers of the ceremony, asking, “How can you teach the lessons of the Holocaust when you don’t see the alarming similarity between what is happening today and what happened in Germany in the 1930s?” This was not the first time Zoabi made such remarks, and each time her comments were met with outrage and public controversy.
This is a fascinating difference between Israeli and Swedish culture, and perhaps in a larger sense, Israeli and European culture. What ultimately cost Khan his job was not his anti-democratic affiliations or inclinations, but rather Swedish society’s anti-religious panic.
As a religious Jew, I have no issue with Khan not wanting to shake hands with women because I see it as a natural part of the religious freedom that I fight and work for every day. What I do take issue with is his attempt to take freedoms and rights away from others through radical Islamism. But in a society like mine, that point gets lost in the overall panic over someone in public office arranging their private life around their belief in something as outdated as God.
It’s ironic, really, that Sweden spends so much time criticizing Israel for its democratic deficit and mistreatment of minorities when it just got a man fired from public office over his religious convictions and not wanting to shake a woman’s hand. In Israel, the Knesset is a mix of religious and secular, Muslim, Druze and Jewish, and as a country, it caters to the different faiths and focuses on the issues rather than the handshakes, or the lack thereof.
Zoabi is being grilled about her outrageous statements, and I bet she wishes the media would focus on some miniscule detail to throw everyone off the scent. It’s easy to point to Khan’s choice not to shake women’s hands and call it an outrage, because then you can avoid talking about what is really going on. Khan and his party are bringing Islamism into every Swede’s living room and into the halls of parliament, but the Swedish media would rather demand he shake a woman’s hand than have him denounce mass murder and anti-Semitism.
Zoabi will have to answer for her statements and beliefs, but Khan was given a golden opportunity to blame Sweden for being anti-religion rather than face the people because of what he and his party really represent. And as the media calls for inclusion in the form of handshakes, they are excluding the truths and the freedoms they were sent to cover, uncover and represent.
Explore posts in the same categories: Islam and human rights, Islam and women, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Israel, Israel and human rights, Sweden, TurkeyTags: Islam and human rights, Islam and women, Islamic indoctrination, Islamic integration, Islamic supremacy, Islamisation, Israel, Israel and human rights, Sweden, Turkey
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