Swedish Chancellor of Justice: Muslim calls for “Death to Jews” are just part of the debate on the Middle East

Outrageous Swedish dhimmitude. "Open season on Swedish Jews: Swedish Chancellor of Justice: Muslim calls for 'Death to Jews' are just part of the debate on the Middle East," a press release from Ilya Mayer, with thanks to Gabrielle Goldwater:

Earlier this year Swedish Chancellor of Justice Mr Göran Lambertz decided to discontinue his department’s pre-trial investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm, where audio cassettes with highly inflammatory anti-Semitic content were being sold. After Swedish radio programme Dagens Eko unveiled the contents of the cassettes in November 2005, a charge of racial incitement was filed with the police against the Stockholm mosque. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice responded by closing the pre-trial investigation on the grounds that “the lecture did admittedly feature statements that are highly degrading to Jews (among other things, they are consistently referred to as the brothers of apes and pigs)” but pointing out that such statements “should be judged differently – and therefore be regarded as permissible – because they were used by one side in an ongoing and far-reaching conflict where calls to arms and insults are part of the everyday climate in the rhetoric that surrounds this conflict”.

Political correctness, election tactics or fear of radical Islam?

There are several comments to be made regarding the Chancellor’s remarkable statement. One is that it is important to remember in this election year that there is a sizeable Muslim minority in Sweden (Muslims number 400,000 souls in Sweden out of a total population of 9 million, whereas there are about 16,000 Jews living in that country).

Another is that at the mosque, a curse was pronounced on all Jews everywhere and the audience were encouraged to participate in Jihad (holy war) against Jews, highlighting suicide bombers as an effective weapon and praising them as martyrs. The Middle East was not singled out. This would therefore appear to be a clear case of racial incitement.

Yet the Chancellor of Justice opines that owing to the Middle East conflict, “such expressions, despite their content, cannot be regarded as racial incitement according to Swedish law”. One might indeed wonder how the phrase “kill the Jews” needs to be expressed in order to be regarded as sufficient incitement to kill Jews, according to the Chancellor, who finds nothing inflammatory in the statement.

Shaky legal foundations

Notwithstanding the above, the Chancellor is on very shaky legal ground indeed. Sweden already has a legal precedent that Mr Lambertz has chosen to ignore: a case was successfully brought on grounds of anti-Semitic incitement in 1989 in the District Court and again in the Court of Appeal (1990) against Radio Islam’s legally responsible publisher Ahmed Rami. Legal proceedings had been instituted by the then-current Chancellor of Justice and Rami was convicted on 17 counts. Here too the defence and many Swedish apologists tried to mitigate Rami’s culpability by claiming that his statements should simply be regarded as robustly expressed comments on the situation in the Middle East. They failed and he went to jail.

Hadith

One consistent theme in these recent audio cassettes is a hadith (an Islamic tradition that is regarded as a direct quote from Muhammed). This hadith claims that there can be no peace anywhere in the world until the last Jew has been killed:

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, “The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. ‘O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.’” [Hadith collected by Sahih Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 177 (http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/muslim/041.smt.html#041.6985)]

History speaks for itself

The Swedish Chancellor of Justice may want to do some homework and compare the dates of the hadith with the start of the conflict in the Middle East: the hadith has nothing whatsoever to do with the Middle East conflict, predating Zionism and the rebirth of Israel by several centuries. It is, quite simply, an age-old appeal to religious zeal aimed at fomenting anti-Semitism. To explain it away as part of religious tradition or political commentary when neither the dates nor the words fit, is more than political correctness gone mad – it is directly subversive against a Jewish minority that has lived in Sweden and fully integrated with Swedish culture for 250 years, in favour of a Muslim minority that generally segregates itself from mainstream Swedes and has lived in the country for about 30 or 40 years.

It is never acceptable to cry “Wolf!” However, if Europeans had cried out their warning 67 years ago as Hitler rose to power and his calls to arms against the Jews had been taken at face value, the world would have been a very different place today. Not only for Europe’s Jews, but for the many millions of Russians, Americans, Australians, Canadians, Japanese and Europeans – not least Germans – who would have been spared the horrors of a war fired by racist zeal and stoked by racist ideology.

Systematised Jew-hatred

Here is a case – one of many – in which Hitler’s racist-supremacy descendants are expressing the very same sentiments albeit in a different language, and the result is, once again, a politically correct shrug of public-office indifference. Hitler called upon his supporters to kill all Jews for what he claimed was the general social good. His call was to kill all Jews everywhere. He almost succeeded. In the Stockholm Grand Mosque, true believers are incited to murder in the name of religion. And they are incited to murder all Jews, everywhere. The similarity in intent is terrifying. As is the similarity in silence from those whose job it is to know better.

The international media might want to put a question or two on this subject to Swedish Chancellor of Justice Mr Göran Lambertz, email registrator@justitiekanslern.se, phone +46 8 4051000. Postal address: Birger Jarls Torg 12, Box 2308, 103 17 Stockholm, Sweden.


Ilya Meyer
ilya.meyer@transtext.se
Gothenburg, Sweden

Sign a petition to Swedish Chancellor of Justice Göran Lambertz here.

Posted by Robert at April 8, 2006 7:39 AM
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