Evil Returns to Sweden
April 20, 2020
Many thanks to FouseSquawk for translating this op-ed from the Swedish daily Nyheter Idag. It was published in December of 2018, and refers to the two young Scandinavian women who had been slaughtered by Islamic terrorists in Morocco the week before:
Ann Heberlein: Evil in Morocco
Today, Sweden is for Islamic State (IS) terrorists what Argentina and Brazil were for Nazis after the Second World War. A sanctuary where they can lick their wounds and start a new life without taking the consequences for all the abuses and crimes they committed. Instead of being locked up, the terrorists receive visits from social workers. It is high time that Sweden changes its attitude, writes Ann Heberlein.
“Evil,” wrote Hannah Arendt in Responsibility and Judgment, “is something that makes us think, ‘This should not have happened.’”
In the middle of preparations for Christmas, evil is brought to mind — first, an act of terror at a Christmas market in Strasbourg. A man senselessly shoots straight into a group of people drinking mulled wine and buying Christmas presents. Five people die and ten are wounded. This should not have happened.
Barely a week after the massacre in Strasbourg, two young women, Norwegian Maren, age 28, and Dane Louisa, age 24, are found brutally murdered in Morocco.
The two friends were to spend the Christmas holidays hiking in the Atlas Mountains. It would be an adventure, a memory of a lifetime; it ended with their deaths. Several men sit in custody, suspected of killing both girls. This shouldn’t have happened.
The common denominator for the acts is spelled Islamism. The perpetrator in Strasbourg, as well as the murderers in Morocco, are reported to be Islamic terrorists. Blinded by religious fanaticism and hatred against our Western lifestyle they consider sinful, they turn on innocent people. We are their enemies.
At the same time, home in Sweden, social services and politicians discuss how we best treat the “returnees” who are now coming back to Sweden as ISIS loses ground in Syria and Iraq.
As the Islamist dream of a caliphate seems increasingly distant, Sweden, with its forgiving attitude and its generous welfare system, is as good as a treat for the terrorists: Because that is precisely what they are, terrorists, with human lives on their consciences and blood on their hands. To call these men “returnees” — as if they studied or worked abroad for a time — is a mockery of their victims.
Since 2012 — so far as we know — about 150 people have returned to Sweden after having fought for jihadist, violent organizations in Syria and Iraq. In Stockholm, people are waiting for them to report to social services to be “de-radicalized”.
In Gothenburg, they are sought out by social workers who will “ensure that they share our values”. Well-meaning Swedish sociologists will talk Islamic terrorists into justice. “It’s about opening a way for them,” says Bettan Byvald, a sociologist who seeks out many of the returning jihadists.
In neighboring Denmark, returning jihadists lose their citizenship. In Sweden, we tie ourselves into a knot to “understand” and talk terrorists into the right way, all with the starting point of the banal faith in the innate goodness of each person. No wonder Sweden has become for Islamists what Argentina and Brazil were for Nazis: a safe retreat where they can lick their wounds and rest.
Swedish compliance and naïveté have created a good environment for so-called terror tourism. Anna Sundberg, earlier married to a mujahideen, describes in the book Dear Terrorist— 16 years with Militant Islamists how Islamists use Sweden in their activities.
Sundberg believes that “terror tourism, that is to say that terrorists commuting between a safe existence in Sweden and fighting in Islam’s name in Afghanistan and Syria, for example, or participating in terrorist acts in Europe, has been occurring since the turn of the millennium.”
The generous Swedish welfare system, in association with a widespread lack of need, makes Sweden an excellent country for an Islamist terrorist to rest between jihads. In Sweden Islamists can forge plans in peace and quiet without risking being disturbed by anything worse than Bettan Byvald, who, with his troubled head on crooked, wants “to open up a way for them”.
We must change our attitude in relation to those who leave Sweden to join Islamist organizations. We are not talking about confused teenagers who make a mistake.
These are people who, of their own free will, choose to team up with organizations that regard us, Westerners, as their enemies. We should not open up a way for them, as Bettan Byvald suggests.
We will close all doors for those who attach themselves to evil. |
