Islamophobia Watch: Swedish Police Investigate Mosque Attack As Hate Crime

26 December 2017

Islamophobia Watch

Swedish police said Monday that they are investigating a homemade bomb attack on a mosque as a hate crime. The attack on the Islamic Cultural Center in Saffle, Sweden, a town 45 kilometers (28 miles) southwest of Karsltad, left ball-bearings lodged in the walls of the center's prayer room.

Broadcaster SVT reported that police had completed a preliminary investigation and were treating the attack as a hate crime.

"Windows were broken and the walls were hit by explosives reinforced with BB pellets," center Chairman Abdihakem Adan said. "An average of 100 people come to the mosque and pray every day."

Sweden is a strong draw for many migrants and about 15 percent of its population was born abroad. An estimated 100,000 ethnic Turks live in the Nordic country.

Sweden has seen a spate of attacks against mosques and refugee centers in recent years, as the country has taken in record numbers of refugees, 245,000 in 2014 and 2015.

In November 2016, at a Stockholm mosque just after morning prayers on Saturday, unidentified attackers burst into the building, spray painting swastikas and hate speech on the walls and throwing firecrackers, police said.

All of the worshippers had left the mosque at the time of the attack except one, and he was shaken but unharmed, mosque officials told Swedish news agency TT.

In October 2016, police suspected arson was behind a fire that damaged a Muslim prayer room in Malmo in southern Sweden.

Sweden arrests man over arson attack on mosque

Swedish police Tuesday arrested a man suspected of an arson attack that damaged a mosque overnight in the city of Orebro, the latest in a string of such incidents in recent years. "We currently see no political or religious motives to this crime and we refrain from all kinds of speculation," Bo Andersson, the police chief of Orebro, about 200 kilometers west of Stockholm, said at a news conference.

He said the suspect was born in 1997, but declined to provide further details. He also said police were "excluding nothing" in the investigation. Images on the Sunni mosque's Facebook page showed a large part of the building burned down as smoke rose from its roof after the attack, which occurred early yesterday. The mosque can host up to 250 people inside, and has thousands of visitors every month.

"It's a sad day today for Muslims in Orebro and in Sweden. It doesn't feel good at all to wake up to a destroyed mosque," Jamal Lamhamdi, head of the mosque's foundation, told local newspaper Nerikes Allehanda. Several mosques in Sweden have been the target of arson attacks and vandalism in recent years but few of the perpetrators have been caught. No one has died in the attacks. Sweden's largest Shiite Muslim mosque, in a northern suburb of Stockholm, was badly damaged in a suspected arson attack in April. Several other mosques have been broken into, with vandals sometimes drawing swastikas inside the premises.

Turkish mosque targeted by Swedish media damaged in attack

April 11, 2017, Unknown assailants hurled stones at a mosque linked to Turkey's Presidency of Religious Affairs (DİB) in Sweden's Malmö late Monday. The attack smashed the windows of the mosque situated inside a cultural complex and comes at a time of tension for Muslims in the country.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA) about the attack, Harun Alagöz, head of the association running the mosque, said it had been the subject of a defamation campaign by the Swedish media for months. "They exhibited us as a potential target," Alagöz said. Turkish mosques all across Europe have been targets of a vicious media campaign ahead of a referendum in Turkey and following the July 15 coup attempt. Mosquegoers and imams are accused of spying for Turkey, an allegation vehemently denied by Ankara.

Alagöz did not rule out that the "ugly attack" may have been the work of assailants "out to take revenge for the Stockholm attack." He was referring to Friday's rampage on a busy Stockholm street in which four people were killed when a terror suspect driving a truck plowed into a department store.

Though attacks targeting Turks, particularly by supporters of the terrorist group PKK, are not unusual in Sweden, mosque attacks have been rare. In December, a suspect was arrested for an arson attack targeting a mosque in Malmö on Oct. 11.

Turkish mosques in Europe are often subject to attack, with Germany in particular notorious for a high number of attacks, ranging from arson attempts to the spray painting of hateful slogans and the throwing of parts of pigs, animals deemed unclean in Islam. A Turkish parliamentary committee investigating the targeting of mosques found some 297 attacks occurred between 2001 and 2014, mostly targeting Turkish mosques. German police have been criticized for their failure to identify the suspects responsible for the attacks. 

©  EsinIslam.Com

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