Christianity is a universal religion, therefore Christianity in Sweden should have many similarities with Christianity in other countries.

If Christianity in Sweden begins to embrace a doctrine that has nothing to do with the universal world religion of Christianity, Sweden has then invented a new religion.

If you look at how Christianity has developed in Sweden today, it seems that this is what Sweden is about to get.

Stefan Swärd is an influential Christian pastor in Sweden with a background in the Evangelical Free Church in Sweden. In an op-ed from September 2014, Swärd describes Christianity the following way:

“When congregations in Sweden meet in diversity and integration and integrate Africans, Chinese and Latin Americans, they express the very essence of the Christian community’s being.”

He continues,

“As Christians, we should work for a generous refugee policy. We will work so our churches and congregations become good examples of functioning integration, where people of different backgrounds can come together in a common life.”

In December 2014, he gathered 380 Swedish ministers from the Pentecostal movement, the Evangelical Free Church in Sweden, the Uniting Church in Sweden, the Salvation Army, Word of Faith Movement and the Swedish Alliance Mission, as well as several other churches, to sign a petition, which declared, among other things, that these denominations do not believe that Sweden applies a refugee policy that is too generous. This was written before the migration crisis in 2015, when Sweden already had the most liberal immigration policy in Europe and gave all Syrians permanent residence in Sweden.

To those concerned about the future of Sweden, where many new migrants might not be able to be assimilated or might not want to be assimilated, Swärd is regarded as misusing Christianity to argue for a liberal immigration policy.

In his recent book, Jesus Was Also a Refugee (Jesus var också flykting), Swärd and his co-author, Micael Grenholm, try to answer the following question: “What does God think about the global refugee crisis and Swedish migration policy?” The answer that the book gives is that there should be no immigration restrictions at all and that rich countries have to open their borders simply because they are rich countries.

Swärd and his coalition of ministers are not an anomaly in Swedish Christianity. They represent the norm for what much of Swedish Christianity preaches nowadays. Antje Jackelén, the archbishop of Sweden’s largest denomination, the Church of Sweden, said in an interview from January 9, 2016 that Jesus would not approve of the Swedish government’s new restrictive migration policies, which the government was forced to implement because of the migration crisis. Archbishop Jackelén stated:

“The Bible is full of stories of refugees. Jesus himself was a refugee in his infancy. To protect the stranger, the one who is not protected, runs like a thread through the Old and New Testament. There would probably be no approval from Jesus for the government policy.”

On the basis of what many Christian leaders in Sweden say, Jesus seems to have been interested in migration policies, and he seems to have thought that they should be liberal.

According to the Church of Sweden, there are even clear political positions that God has on how immigrants should integrate into a new country. Archbishop Antje Jackelén, for instance, said in an interview from September 2014 that if one requires that immigrants assimilate into the country after their arrival, it is contrary to a Christian view of humanity. Is that statement based on the Bible, or is it based on the political agenda of the Swedish liberal establishment? Antje Jackelén leads the church in which 63% of Sweden’s population are members. Her message is that Jesus has clear political positions on both migration and integration policies.

Christian leaders in Sweden have re-made Christianity into a religion that serves the political agenda of an establishment whose extreme liberal ideology lacks popular support. Left: Sweden’s Crown Princess, King, Archbishop Antje Jackelén, and the Queen pose after the archiepiscopal ordination of Jackelén on June 15, 2014 (Image source: Church of Sweden). Right: Influential Swedish Christian pastor Stefan Swärd co-wrote the book Jesus Was Also a Refugee, which advocates for a policy of no immigration restrictions; rich countries have to open their borders simply because they are rich countries.

After the June 2016 terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida, in which ISIS sympathizer Omar Mateen murdered 49 people at a gay nightclub, another influential Christian pastor in Sweden, Stanley Sjöberg, wrote on his Facebook page that homosexuals should be more low-key, not to provoke Muslims. After his statement about the Orlando massacre, Sjöberg told a Christian magazine:

“But I believe that we must adapt to the multicultural way when we’ve brought several hundred thousand Muslims here. I believe that politicians and serious thinkers agree with me that we cannot just continue with our culture, with Pride festivals, or to drink in public. We in Europe are forced to step back to show a little more considerate attitude to the environment.”

The Church of Sweden has actively tried to influence Swedish politicians to support a liberal immigration policy. When the Swedish parliament was going to vote on restrictive migration policies in June 2016, a bishop of the Church of Sweden in the Diocese of Västerås pleaded with MPs to vote against the proposal. When the media asked him why he should interfere in political matters he responded:

“It is obvious to me. Otherwise I would not carry out my duties as bishop unless I committed myself to the vulnerable.”

There are lot of vulnerable people in Sweden. 225,000 retirees in Sweden lived in poverty in 2014, and all estimates shows that this number is going to grow rapidly. So why is the Church of Sweden obsessed with vulnerable people who come from other countries?

It seems to have become part of Church of Sweden’s mission — and Christianity in Sweden generally — to make the country implement a liberal immigration policy.

But is this really the mission of the Church and Christianity? What happened with spreading the Word and letting people know that Jesus is the truth, the way and the life?

It is not even certain that Christian leaders in Sweden care so much about Jesus and his opinions. After a French priest, Jacques Hamel, was murdered by ISIS sympathizers in Rouen, France, on July 26, 2016, an initiative started in Sweden where Swedish Christians took “selfies” with a cross to show solidarity with persecuted Christians. The initiative, called “Mitt kors”(“My cross”), was started by three priests from the Church of Sweden. The Church of Sweden, however, criticized it. Gunnar Sjöberg, Head of Communications for the Church of Sweden, wrote on his Facebook page:

“I really do not know about that. This thing about Christians suddenly wearing a cross as a sign for or against something. It is actually nothing new, but the call seems seditious and un-Christian in the conflicts that already exist.”

So now, according to a senior official in the Church of Sweden, the call to wear a cross to show solidarity with persecuted Christians is “un-Christian”.

That the Church of Sweden distances itself from people who carry the cross caused Ann Heberlein, a doctor of theology and lecturer at Lund University, to write,

“The leadership of the Church of Sweden no longer wants to lead a Christian community; they want to lead a general ethical association for humanistic values of the most vulgar kind.”

The Church of Sweden’s attacks on the “My cross” initiative continued until one of the priests who had started it publicly left the Church of Sweden. In an article, Johanna Andersson, the priest who is resigning, writes:

“Church leadership has for several weeks been running a campaign against us who started the group ‘My cross.’ In this campaign, I have been discredited, called ‘questionable’, ‘unclean’, ‘agitator’, ‘un-Christian’ and attributed xenophobic hidden agendas.”

The question, therefore, is whether some Christian leaders in Sweden really care about Jesus and Christianity or whether they are using Jesus to convey a political agenda which includes a liberal immigration policy and multiculturalism.

While the Church of Sweden opposed a campaign that tried to use the cross to show solidarity with the persecuted Christians, Archbishop Antje Jackelén co-authored an op-ed in one of Sweden’s largest newspapers with four other Swedish religious leaders, including Mahmoud Khalfi, chairman of the Swedish Imam Council, who has connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.

There are many examples of how Christianity in Sweden has gone astray and become something else. One might describe Swedish Christianity as a new religion that worships multiculturalism and leftist values in general. In Swedish Christianity, Jesus has been reduced from being the son of God, to an activist fighting for multiculturalism and open borders.

In 2013, the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League had an advertisement for elections in the Church of Sweden, in which they declared that “Jesus was a Social Democrat.” Meanwhile, there are Christian leaders who claim to know exactly what Jesus thought about the current government’s immigration policy.

This is the state of Swedish Christianity today, and it is not certain that Christians around the world would recognize the religion in Sweden called Christianity. Christian leaders in Sweden have taken Christianity and made it into a religion that serves the political agenda of an establishment whose extreme liberal ideology lacks popular support among the Swedish people.

If the Swedish establishment wants multiculturalism, then Christian leaders will declare that God says multiculturalism is good. If the Swedish establishment wants a liberal immigration policy, Jesus says that he has always been for a liberal immigration policy, despite the fact that he was born more than 2000 years ago. Swedish Christianity has become a mixture of madness and deception.

In Malmö the Church of Sweden publishes a local magazine called Trovärdigt. In the latest issue, you can read that a priest, who serves at St. Peters church in Malmö, said,

“The rainbow in the Pride Flag is also a sign of the promise between God and man”.

Really? Not even the most radical gay activists believe that the rainbow in the gay pride flag is a sign of the promise between God and man. For many influential Christian leaders in Sweden, it does not matter what it says in the Bible anymore. In fact, if you take a step back and look at the overall picture, it is clear that many Christian leaders in Sweden do not worship God; they worship the romanticized, multicultural utopia they want Sweden to become. These Christian leaders betray not only the Swedish people, but they also betray the God that they promised to serve, by making Christianity into a bullhorn for the liberal elite who hold political power in Sweden.

One can have different interpretations of what Jesus did or what opinions he had, but we can all agree that he did not serve the Emperor or other earthly rulers. Too many Christian leaders in Sweden have become the servants of earthly rulers by conveying the message of the political establishment in Sweden.

Nima Gholam Ali Pour is a member of the board of education in the Swedish city of Malmö and is engaged in several Swedish think tanks concerned with the Middle East. He is also editor for the social conservative website Situation Malmö. Gholam Ali Pour is the author of the Swedish book “Därför är mångkultur förtryck“(“Why multiculturalism is oppression”).

One of the most visible effects of Muslim mass immigration into Sweden is that anti-Semitism is very much on the rise in the country. Swedish Jews are being harassed and threatened, mainly in the Muslim-dense city of Malmö, where in January 2009, the friction deepened during a peaceful pro-Israel demonstration. Demonstrators were attacked by pro-Palestinian counter demonstrators, who threw eggs and bottles at the supporters of Israel. The mayor of Malmö at the time, Ilmar Reepalu, failed to take a clear stance against the violence, and was accused of preferring the approval of the city’s large Muslim population to protecting Jews. He remarked, among other things, that “of course the conflict in Gaza has spilled over into Malmö.”

In January 2009, an Arab mob in Malmö pelted a peaceful Jewish demonstration with bottles, eggs and smoke bombs. The police pushed the Jews, who had a permit for their gathering, into an alley.

The situation in Malmö has twice been deemed so alarming that U.S. President Barack Obama sent Special Representatives to the city: Hanna Rosenthal visited in 2012, and Ira Forman came in 2015. “We are keeping an eye on Malmö,” Forman told the media.

The harassment of Malmö’s Jews was, for a long time, a mystery to the general public; Were neo-Nazis really walking the streets of Sweden’s third largest city? Many believed that to be the case, until the local daily paper Skånska Dagbladet published a series of articles, in which the Jewish community finally pointed out the elephant in the room: Malmö’s growing Muslim population.

Fredrik Sieradzki of Malmö’s Jewish community explained that when he grew up, Jews could still wear a kippa (skullcap) without anyone bothering them: “Nobody dares do that now,” he said.

Malmö Rabbi Shneur Kesselman, one of very few Orthodox Jews in Sweden who wears a traditional Hassidic black hat and frock-coat, has, in the last few years, filed more than 50 complaints with the police about various kinds of harassment. On May 31, 2016, an 18-year-old Muslim by the name of Amir Ali Mohammed was finally convicted of shouting “Jewish bastard” at Kesselman. The media, however, chose not to publish any information about Mohammed’s name or religion.

In June 2016, a report with a special focus on Sweden was published, entitled “Different Antisemitisms: On three distinct forms of antisemitism in contemporary Europe.” Its authors, Swedish researchers Lars Dencik and Karl Marosi, based the report on two studies, conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA).

The report states that the Swedish anti-Semitism, leading mostly to verbal attacks on Jews, comes from Muslims. The ADL study, encompassing eight European countries (Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Sweden and Britain), showed that Sweden has the least anti-Semitic population. Only 4% of Swedes are classified as anti-Semites, compared to 41% of Hungarians. Sweden, in fact, came in number 100 out of 102 countries studied, followed only by Laos and the Philippines.

The FRA study asked Jews in various countries what group of people had attacked or threatened them: Far-right extremists, far-left extremists, Christian extremists or Muslim extremists. In Sweden, out of 81 Jews asked, 51 stated they had been attacked by Muslims, 25 by far-left extremists, 5 by far-right extremists, and none by Christian extremists.

There can be little doubt, therefore, that ethnic Swedes do not have a problem with Jews, and that the rampant anti-Semitism in Sweden is apparently due to Muslims from the Middle East, who now make up 10% of the population.

The British current events analyst and commentator, Douglas Murray, said in a recent interview, that Muslims in Europe have big problems with anti-Semitism. He referred to an article in the New Statesman, in which Muslim Mehdi Hasan wrote:

“It pains me to have to admit this but anti-Semitism is not just tolerated in some sections of the British Muslim community; it is routine and commonplace. Any Muslims reading this article — if they are honest with themselves — will know instantly what I am referring to. It is our dirty little secret. You could call it the banality of Muslim anti-Semitism.”

Murray points out that anti-Semitism is a widespread sentiment among Muslims, even among those who have lived for decades in Europe. When asked what the West can do about the problem, Murray said:

“We may not be able to [do anything]. I wouldn’t have thought France would be able to, I cannot see any particular long-term future for Jews in France. … There will be some countries, when Muslim anti-Semitism grows, say it is not the Jews who should leave, but the people who would make the Jews leave. There are some countries where that may happen, but other countries where it will fail.

…

“There isn’t much of a desire to do anything about it. … it should also be said that the so-called interfaith outreach work, which the Jewish community places a lot of hope in, achieves almost nothing… A couple of old bearded men get together and agree on some dietary thing they’ve got in common, but it doesn’t solve the fact that anti-Semitism mainly comes from Muslim communities these days; it doesn’t solve the problem, the fact that that’s taught in many mosques and many Muslim schools, and it doesn’t address the fact that now, if you go to, if Israel does anything anywhere in the world, anywhere in its region, there will immediately be a protest of very angry young Muslims in the center of London and other British cities. You can have an old rabbi and an old mullah, you know, sitting around having tea, agreeing on dietary stuff, but that doesn’t solve why the hatred is being taught. And that’s something the rabbi and the Jewish leadership in this country, among other places, just don’t want to admit to. Perhaps it’s too bad to confront?”

The question that arises is, are the elites of Sweden in general suffering from a case of Stockholm syndrome? Are we encouraging our adversaries to Islamize Sweden, which in the long run, might result in the abolition of freedom of religion, forcing Jews and Christians to live as dhimmis [subjugated citizens] in humiliation?

Many of the Swedish elite seem to feel that it is the duty of the Swedes to take in anyone and everyone claiming to be a refugee, regardless of that person’s attitude towards democracy, freedom of speech and the right of non-Muslims to live in this country.

That a majority of Swedes welcome mass immigration is actually a myth, cultivated over the last few years, mainly because critics of immigration are sometimes branded “racists”. In 1993, the general mood was quite different: the daily newspaper, Expressen, published an opinion poll which showed that 63% of Swedes wanted immigrants to return home. The poll, which caused quite a stir, was presented under the headline, “THROW THEM OUT”. The editor-in-chief, Erik Månsson, wrote:

“How long are we Swedes going to pretend that we welcome immigrants and refugees? Because we do not. The Swedish people have a firm opinion on immigration and refugee policies. Those in power have the opposite opinion. It does not add up. It is an opinion bomb about to go off. That is why we are writing about this, starting today. Telling it just like it is. In black and white. Before the bomb goes off.”

Instead of listening to the people, the paper’s owners fired their editor-in-chief, and journalists and politicians started raising the Swedes not to speak their minds on immigration.

To their credit, many Swedes certainly do not want to repeat the mistake we made in the 1930s, when Sweden only allowed about 3,000 German Jews, fleeing from the Nazis, into the country. Once World War II broke out, Sweden changed its course, and saved, for example, almost all of Denmark’s Jews. In a huge rescue operation, orchestrated by the Danish resistance, 7,000 Jews crossed the Öresund sea in fishing boats, bound for the Swedish coast, where they received a warm welcome and avoided deportation to the Nazi death camps.

Swedish Jews are a small community. About 20,000 Jews live here, while the number of Muslims, according to some calculations, is approaching one million and rising fast. The other looming question is: If by allowing hundreds of thousands of Muslims to settle here — people much more hateful of Jews than the average German during the Nazi era — are we not in fact paving the way for another Holocaust?

The historian Ingrid Lomfors, head of the Swedish public authority The Living History Forum (created for the very purpose of informing about the Holocaust), caused a stir last fall, when she gave a speech at the event “Sweden Together” (Sverige tillsammans), arranged by the government in support of unlimited asylum immigration. (Two months later, the government completely reversed this policy and implemented border controls.) Virtually the whole Swedish establishment was present, even the King and Queen.

Lomfors stated that:

1. Immigration [to Sweden] is nothing new;
2. We are all products of immigration;
3. There is no such thing as a native Swedish culture.

Despite many politicians and historians attempting to change the narrative on Swedish history in recent years, most Swedes are aware that the country was one of the most ethnically homogenous in the world, until the late 1960s.

Moreover, in general, Swedes are extremely proud of Swedish culture. Thus, many quickly realized that what Lomfors said was simply not true. Swedes expressed their fury on social media, and Conservative (Moderaterna) Member of Parliament Hanif Bali (who is himself of Iranian descent) thought it an “absurd claim” that there is no Swedish culture. Bali told the online newspaper, Nyheter Idag that there seemed to be a contradiction in saying we will integrate people who come here, while claiming there is nothing Swedish to integrate them into.

Lomfors was forced to recant her assertion that there is no Swedish culture:

“Of course there is a Swedish culture. Right now, I am writing in the language that is Swedish and a part of this culture. A culture I value and appreciate very much, it is a part of me, and I of it.”

Sadly, Lomfors’s original statement is not unique. Many in Sweden seem reluctant to acknowledge the vast differences between Swedish and Muslim cultures, and completely deny that Muslim anti-Semitism exists, or that it is particularly prevalent in Muslim-dominated cities such as Malmö.

In February 2016, for example, the Danish-Jewish actor, Kim Bodnia, said in an interview with Israeli television, that the real reason he left the international hit television show, The Bridge (Bron), was the rampant anti-Semitism in Malmö, where much of the show is filmed.

Daniel Jonas, Administrative Director of the Jewish Congregation in Gothenburg, when asked the same question Gatestone asked Swedish politicians and the clergy, if Islam is compatible with democracy, replied:

“Absolutely! But then, that depends on what era you are talking about. One of Judaism’s periods of great prosperity was under the Muslim rule of Spain, the Moor era. While the rest of Europe was trapped in the dark ages, in Spain there was a rule that wholly accepted everybody – not because of who you were, but based on how capable you were.”

Many in Sweden also seem to believe that the best period in world history for Jews was Al-Andalus, that is, the Muslim occupation of Spain 750-1492.

This statement makes Andrew G. Bostom, a physician and author of The Legacy of Jihad, explode in anger:

“What Daniel Jonas said is idiotic rubbish. Muslim Spain was a rigid Sharia state. Period. The devastating Muslim jihad conquest of Spain during the 8^th century imposed a rigorous system of Islamic Law — the Sharia — on those non-Muslim Christians and Jews who survived the mass murder and pillage. Brutal enslavement — agricultural, construction, military, harem, and eunuch (forced human castration), with over a 90% mortality rate — took place on an enormous scale. Those indigenous, vanquished Christians and Jews who were not enslaved, were subjected to the humiliating discrimination inherent in the Sharia, and always at risk for collective punishment, and renewed full-blown jihad campaigns waged against them, if they failed to accept these discriminatory Sharia mandates.

“Jews suffered from both the chronic, grinding Jew-hatred intrinsic to Islamic theology, and paroxysms of mass killings in the 11^th and 12^th centuries, in particular. The 1066 C.E. Jew-hating pogrom in Granada — ‘inspired’ by popular Muslim preachers exhorting Jew-hating themes from the Koran — Jews as apes, or apes and pigs (Koran 2;65, 5:60, and 7:166), meriting permanent contempt and humiliation (Koran 2:61, 3:112), and “dhimmi” status (Koran 9:29), only — resulted in the slaughter of some 4,000 Jews, more than the entire sum of Jews killed in the Crusader ravages of the Rhineland villages some 30 years later, and fully liquidated Granadan Jewry.”

Bostom’s The Legacy of Jihad is a historical look back at global Islamic jihad during the last 1,400 years. It clearly shows how non-Muslims have time and again been persecuted and oppressed by Muslim rulers.

In the book, Bostom describes the dress code imposed on Jews and Christians in the marketplaces of ninth-century Muslim Spain. Non-Muslims had to wear a visible label on their clothing — a monkey for Jews, a pig for the Christians. To be sure, this is reminiscent of how the Nazis forced the Jews to wear visible Stars of David on their clothing, making Daniel Jonas’s praise of Muslim Spain difficult to accept.

Being forced to wear a label on your clothing, however, was not the worst part for non-Muslims during this period. Bostom relates how the Muslim legal scholar Ahmed ibn Said ibn Hazm wrote about the freedom of the “unbelievers” being always in peril. The dhimmi (inferior, non-Muslim) who refused or was unable to the pay special tax, the jizya, could be sold off as a slave or executed. If one or more dhimmis in a village refused or were unable to pay the jizya tax, the Muslim authorities had the right to repeal the village’s autonomy. From one day to the next, Christians and Jews in a city could lose their status as protected “People of the Book,” because one person had done something wrong. Another crime that was considered very serious, was “public outrage against the Islamic faith,” for example, displaying objects such as crosses, wine or pigs in public so that Muslims could see them.

If a person chose to convert to Islam, full amnesty was immediately given, even if he had been sentenced to death. Bostom writes:

“A legal opinion given by a mufti from al-Andalus in the ninth century is very instructive: a Christian dhimmi kidnapped and violated a Moslem woman; when he was arrested and condemned to death, he immediately converted to Islam; he was automatically pardoned, while being constrained to marry the woman and to provide for her a dowry in keeping with her status. The mufti who was consulted about the affair, perhaps by a brother of the woman, found that the court decision was perfectly legal, but specified that if that convert did not become a Moslem in good faith and secretly remained a Christian, he should be flogged, slaughtered and crucified…”

Thomas Wolff, of the magazine Jewish Chronicle (Judisk krönika), commented on fear and how it makes many Jews stay silent: “We live behind locked gates with armed guards. Because of this, we lay low,” Wolff told us. ” You cannot tar all of Islam with the same brush. People do not flee because it amuses them, but because they are in danger.”

Kent Ekeroth, a Jewish Member of Parliament for the Sweden Democrats, has long been aware of the reluctance among Swedish Jews to criticize the Islamization — even though it might be their own undoing:

“It is very difficult to understand,” Ekeroth told Gatestone. “In part, it has to do with Jews seeing themselves as a minority, thus thinking they have to side with other minorities, a naïve liberalism that does not serve them. The talk about Jews hating the Sweden Democrats is not altogether true. Many say that in public, but in private, they admit to voting for us.”

Ekeroth simply laughs at being called a sick Muslim-hater and person with ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] who might as well be a criminal.

“That is actually a first! Seriously, I am sure they too will wake up one day, but as usual, by then it will be too late. They will realize what they have done, but it will be too late. Here we have all these nationalist movements in Europe who have realized what Islam is doing to our communities, and are friends of Israel… This is really the same mechanism that is at work among all Swedes who want mass immigration. I do not know why they do it and I cannot explain it. There is no logic to it and nothing to suggest it will do anybody any good.”

Many Swedish Jews who have realized the dangers of Islamization have emigrated — or are planning to emigrate — to Israel.

The final question is, when Sweden has been completely Islamized, where will the non-Jewish Swedes go? We do not have another homeland to run to.

Ingrid Carlqvist is a journalist and author based in Sweden, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute.

Men and women, in a Swedish tradition, have swum together in public pools for over 100 years. Many people are now wondering if we will be forced to give up this practice — because young male asylum seekers have turned public swimming pools into ordeals of rape and sexual assault.

Mixed bathing in Sweden started in the small southern fishing village of Mölle. Around 1890, the “Sin of Mölle” gained notoriety. Men and women were swimming together! Out in the open and shamelessly flaunting their striped bathing attire. It was a sensation that echoed all over Europe, and people came from everywhere to partake in the exciting new activity. Danes poured in, and even the German Emperor Wilhelm II made his way to Mölle in July 1907.

It should come as surprise to no one that men from the Middle East and North Africa have quite a different view of women than Swedish men do. The only mystery is why Swedish politicians have got it in their heads that everyone who sets foot on Swedish soil will immediately embrace our values, our view of women and our traditions.

Now that it is finally beginning to dawn on them that many Afghan, Somali, Iraqi and Syrian men (the largest immigrant groups coming to Sweden now) think that women who run around scantily clad are fair game, the politicians are dumbfounded. Of course, they cannot admit that this — to Swedes — completely alien view of women has anything to do with Islam, because then they would become victims of their own claim that everyone who criticizes Islam is an “Islamophobe.”

For many years, it was possible to cover up the abuse, not least because the mainstream media chose to call the perpetrators “youth gangs,” and never mention that they were almost always immigrants from Muslim countries. In Malmö, one of the most immigrant-heavy cities in Sweden, and where Swedes have actually been a minority since 2013, the problems at public pools started at least 15 years ago.

In 2003, “youth gangs” were so disruptive to other guests at the indoor water park Aq-va-kul that on several occasions, the establishment was forced to close. Despite investing 750,000 kronor ($88,000) in taller entrance gates, a glass-enclosed reception desk, surveillance cameras, and an Arabic-speaking “pool host” to tackle the security problems, things just kept getting worse. In 2005, senior staff member Bertil Lindberg told the local daily newspaper, Sydsvenskan: “Things have escalated this year. Large gangs of 10-20 young people threaten and provoke other guests as well as the staff. They did not come here to swim; they are just looking for trouble.”

One of the problems is that young Muslim men refuse to take a shower before bathing, and keep their underwear on under their swim trunks. For obvious reasons, this is not allowed, and when the staff call out the violators on this, trouble and threats ensue. On several occasions, gangs have ambushed staff members on their way home from work, and the company was forced to hire guards to make sure employees get home in one piece. Events reached a climax in 2013, when youth gangs smashed the interior, threw objects in the water and threatened other patrons. Aq-va-kul was closed, and the pool was drained and cleaned of shattered glass. A few days later the pool was reopened, but it closed permanently to the public in 2015. Now the facility has been renovated, but is only open to competitive swimmers and swim clubs.

In Stockholm, the Husbybadet pool in the heavily-immigrant suburb of Husby was the first public pool hit by trouble. In 2007, it was reported that the municipality was forced to build a separate sewage treatment facility, costing millions of kronor. The reason was unusually high levels of nitrogen in the water, because many young people insisted on bathing with their dirty underwear on. The municipality property director told daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter:

“Nitrogen is food for bacteria and a high nitrogen level produces malodorous air and filthy water. The nitrogen comes from urine and sweat. Quite simply, we have a problem with people keeping their dirty underwear on under their swim trunks. And then they get in the 38-degree [100-degree Fahrenheit] water in the hot tub. It is like sitting in your washing machine’s delicates cycle, and we use that water all the time. People should have swimwear on, not bathe in their regular clothes.”

The attitude towards nudity in Scandinavia is very different from that in the Middle East. Sweden has many nude beaches, where men and women swim together without a stitch of clothing, without the slightest hint of sexual harassment. In the gender-separated changing rooms at public pools, there is no sign of shyness. Swedish men and women see it as a matter of course to shower and wash properly before getting in the pool, and a couple of decades ago stern overseers even patrolled the changing rooms to check the patrons’ shower habits.

In Muslim countries, nudity is an extremely private thing, and one does not willingly take showers with others, not even with members of the same sex. All the public pool personnel with whom Gatestone has spoken confirm that Muslim men and women shower with their underwear on, and then keep them on under their swimwear. Many Muslim women bathe in a so-called burkini, a garment that covers the entire body, so when Muslim men see Swedish women in a bikini, many of them conclude that they must be “easy” women whom one is “allowed” to grope.

In 2015, when roughly 163,000 asylum seekers came to Sweden, the problems at public pools increased exponentially. More than 35,000 young people, so-called “unaccompanied refugee children,” arrived — 93% of whom are male and claim to be 16-17 years old. To prevent complete idleness, many municipalities give them free entrance to the public pools.

During the past few months, the number of reports of sexual assaults and harassment against women at public pools has been overwhelming. Most of the “children” are from Afghanistan, widely considered among the most dangerous places in the world for women. When the daily Aftonbladet visited the country in 2013, 61-year-old Fatima told the paper what it is like to be a woman in Afghanistan: “What happens if we do not obey? Well, our husbands or sons beat us of course. We are their slaves.”

To expect men from a culture that views women as men’s slaves to behave like Swedish men is not just stupid — it is dangerous. Mr. Azizi, the manager of a large hotel in Kabul, told Gatestone how an average Afghan man sees sexual attacks on women:

“What the Afghans are doing is not wrong in Afghanistan, so your rules are completely alien to them. Women stay at home in Afghanistan, and if they need to go out they are always accompanied by a man. If you want to stop Afghans from molesting Swedish girls, you need to be tough on them. Making them take classes on equality and how to treat women is pointless. The first time they behave badly, they should be given a warning, and the second time you should deport them from Sweden.”

One of the first reported incidents occurred in 2005, when a 17-year-old girl was raped at Husbybadet, in Stockholm. The 16-year-old perpetrator started groping her in the hot tub, and when the girl moved to a cave with streaming water, he and his friend followed her. They forced the girl into a corner, and while the friend held her down, the 16-year-old pulled off the girl’s bikini and raped her. During the trial, it emerged that some 30 people had witnessed the attack, but the teenagers continued the rape anyway.

The 16-year-old rapist was sentenced to three months in juvenile detention and his friend was acquitted. The victim was badly traumatized and had to be treated in a psychiatric care facility, after several failed suicide attempts.

Since then, virtually all public pools in Sweden have become dangerous places, especially to women. During the first two months of this year, reports of rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment came in rapid succession. A few examples:

In Stockholm, during the first week of January, Sweden’s national swimming arena, Eriksdalsbadet, decided to separate men and women in the hot tubs. A controversial decision in Sweden, it came after several incidents in the pools had been reported to the police, mainly in November and December 2015. Conservative Anna König Jerlmyr (moderaterna), Stockholm city Commissioner in Opposition, did not believe that separating men and women was the right way to address the problems: “It is totally unacceptable for a public swimming pool to act this way. This is tantamount to giving in to the sexual harassment and sending signals in favor of a view of women that is utterly reprehensible. More staff, and banning offenders from the premises, would have been preferable,” she told the daily, Dagens Nyheter.

Olof Öhman, head of the Sports Administration in Stockholm, told the paper: “There are similar problems at all the public pools in Stockholm, even if most complaints regard Eriksdalsbadet.”

On January 14, officials at the Rosenlundsbadet water park in Jönköping reported that they would increase security. According to Operations Manager Gunnel Eriksson, the decision was mainly due to the behavior of a new group of bathers — unaccompanied refugee boys: “You can tell from their behavior that they come from a different culture; there is a cultural clash. We can see that they react to the undressed bit.” The heightened security is also necessary because many of the young migrant men cannot swim, overestimate their abilities, and end up in dangerous situations.

On January 15, a local paper, Kungälvsposten, wrote that two girls had been sexually assaulted in an elevator at the Oasen public pool Oasen, in Kungälv. The two suspected perpetrators are “unaccompanied refugee children.” Jonas Arngården, Municipal Director of Social Affairs, told the paper: “This shows that we need to step up the work concerning issues of equality and interaction among our new arrivals, in schools as well as at the asylum houses.”

The attack caused members of the Nordic Resistance Movement (Nordiska motståndsrörelsen), a supposed neo-Nazi organization, to show up at Oasen on February 13. They put on green shirts with the word “Security Host” (Trygghetsvärd) printed on the back, and “patrolled” the facility.

The municipality had not reacted strongly to the sexual assault, but the visit by vigilantes scared the municipal management, and it immediately called the Oasen management to a meeting. Mayor Miguel Odhner told the daily, Expressen/GT: “It is completely unacceptable to have some kind of disguised vigilantes at municipal pools. It is very, very serious that we have violent extremism vying for greater foothold in our municipality.”

The Eriksdalsbadet national swimming arena in Stockholm (left) has become infamous for the many incidents of migrants sexually assaulting women and children at the facility. At the Oasen pool in Kungälv (right), two girls were recently sexually assaulted by “unaccompanied refugee children.” In response, members of the “Nordic Resistance Movement” showed up, wearing shirts bearing the label “Security Host” (Trygghetsvärd), and “patrolled” the facility.

On January 18, the management of the Fyrishov public pool, in Uppsala, revealed that in 2015, it there were seven reported cases of child molestation at the facility. According to Fyrishov, the suspected offenders are all newly-arrived migrants — teenage boys who do not speak Swedish. The facility increased security in August, hiring guards and giving the staff stricter monitoring instructions.

On January 21, there were reports that the number of sexual assaults had increased dramatically at the Aquanova adventure pool in Borlänge. In 2014, one case was reported; in 2015, about 20 cases were reported. The incidents involved women having their bikinis ripped off, being groped in the water slide and sexually assaulted in the restrooms. Ulla-Karin Solum, the CEO of Aquanova, told the public broadcaster Sveriges Television that many incidents “are due to cultural clashes.”

Aquanova Staff member Anette Nohrén confirmed that all the suspects are born abroad, and complained that “it is a huge problem. It steals the focus from our primary task, which is safety concerns, when we are constantly forced to intervene to try and prevent assaults, and afterwards, to try and figure out what happened.”

Aquanova now implemented new rules; among them, that young men from asylum houses need to have a responsible adult accompanying them — one adult for every three underage asylum seekers. The adult needs to stay with them in the changing room as well as in the pool area.

On January 25, the daily newspaper Expressen revealed that a girl was raped at the now infamous Eriksdalsbadet swimming arena at the beginning of the month. The police will now increase their presence at the facility, and will patrol inside regularly.

On January 26, there were reports that a woman and two girls had recently been sexually assaulted by a group of young men who spoke neither Swedish nor English, at the Storsjöbadet pool in Östersund. Despite the incident, the young men were not removed from the premises — a lapse the staff later admitted was a mistake.

On January 27, Växjö municipality announced that it plans to hire a security guard to patrol the local public pool. After two 11-year-old girls were sexually assaulted by a group of boys. The boys attacked the girls in an area hidden from the view of lifeguards. Mikael Linnander, father of one of the girls, told the daily, Kvällsposten: “Seven or eight guys attacked the girls. Two of them touched them between their legs and groped their breasts.” The abuse did not stop until a woman swimming with her children reprimanded the boys. After the incident, the two boys were barred from the adventure pool area, but were allowed to stay at the facility.

On February 1, local media reported that at least five girls and women had been sexually assaulted at a public pool in Vänersborg during the previous few weeks. The victims were girls under 15, as well as women in their thirties. The police said they had no suspects, but stated that the case had high priority.

On February 25, another sexual assault was reported at the Eriksdalsbadet swimming arena in Stockholm. Police spokesman Johan Renberg told Expressen that a group of girls had found themselves surrounded by some 10 young men who tried to grope them. A staff member saw what was happening and called the police. The girls were able to identify the young men, whose ethnicity the paper did not report. The men were not arrested, but will be questioned at a later time.

Given the recent wave of sexual assaults at public pools, it is something of a mystery why the recently-opened Hylliebadet family adventure pool in multicultural Malmö has not reported any sexual assaults at all. Hylliebadet, which cost 349 million kronor (about $41 million) to build, had a chaotic opening week in August 2015. After only a few days, 27 “incidents” had been reported, but none involved sexual assaults.

“No, I have never heard of anything like that happening here,” a Hylliebadet employee told Gatestone. However, when we spoke to other staff members off the record, they told us they had been given strict instructions not to report certain things, and above all, never to mention the ethnicity or religion of those who cause problems at the pool. Another employee told Gatestone:

“Of course we have had incidents here, particularly involving Afghan men groping girls. Not long ago, a man of Arab descent was caught masturbating in the hot tub. But we are not allowed to report things like that. These men understand that it is forbidden when we tell them, but they keep doing it anyway. They just smile and keep on doing it.”

It seems unlikely that Swedish politicians will start deporting sex offenders. The politicians seem convinced that some education on “equality” will change the ways of men, who, since childhood, have been taught that it is the responsibility of women not to arouse them — and therefore the woman’s fault if the man feels like raping her. Such a shift in attitude seems as likely as if a Swede visiting Saudi Arabia would suddenly renounce alcohol just because it is forbidden there. The Swede would follow the rules as long as somebody was watching, and then take every opportunity to drink his schnapps, because it is a thousand-year-old Swedish tradition, and something most Swedes feel is agreeable as well as just.

Another public pool employee told Gatestone that the refugee boys frighten away ordinary patrons and that more and more Swedes are now avoiding public pools altogether.

“Even Swedes who have bought expensive season tickets stay away now, because they think the mood is unsettling. Considering that they young asylum seekers get their entrance fee paid by the municipalities, one could rightfully say that tax money is being used to drive away those who would pay.”

Ingrid Carlqvist is a journalist and author based in Sweden, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow of Gatestone Institute.