(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) Vandals scrawled swastikas on the doors of the central Stockholm mosque, Swedish police announced on Thursday, January 2, opening a hate-crime investigation on the unprecedented attack.
"It is the first time it's been this way, it is usually normal graffiti but this is quite special," mosque representative Mahmoud Khalif told the Aftonbladet newspaper, The Local reported.
The crime was discovered when Muslims arrived to open the mosque doors on Thursday morning.
The attack is not the first to target the mosque, yet, it is the first time vandalism has taken the shape of swastikas; the Nazi graffiti.
Mosque officials asserted that the mosque receives hate mail or vandalism twice a month.
Mosque administrators have reported the vandalism to the police, which are documenting the damage.
"They are documenting and they will potentially secure clues," Stockholm police spokesman Mikael Petterson told the TT news agency on Thursday.
"It is a prioritized case when it happens in such a place and with the winds blowing in society at the moment," Pettersson added.
Muslims make up between 450,000 and 500,000 of Sweden’s nine million people, according to the US State Department report in 2011.
Across the Nordic region, anti-immigration parties, which languished after Norwegian far-rightist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in 2011, are gaining support.
The Sweden Democrats have advanced in voter surveys to nearly 10 percent from 5 percent at the last election in 2010.
The anti-immigrant tone is drawing criticism in Sweden, a country known for its history of tolerance.
On December 22nd, at least 16 thousand people rallied against racism in the Karrtorp suburb of Stockholm carrying banners that read "united against racism".
The rally which was attended by politicians and artists came a week after another anti-racism protest was attacked by a group of neo-Nazis in the same suburb, resulting in two people being stabbed and 28 others arrested.
/149
"It is the first time it's been this way, it is usually normal graffiti but this is quite special," mosque representative Mahmoud Khalif told the Aftonbladet newspaper, The Local reported.
The crime was discovered when Muslims arrived to open the mosque doors on Thursday morning.
The attack is not the first to target the mosque, yet, it is the first time vandalism has taken the shape of swastikas; the Nazi graffiti.
Mosque officials asserted that the mosque receives hate mail or vandalism twice a month.
Mosque administrators have reported the vandalism to the police, which are documenting the damage.
"They are documenting and they will potentially secure clues," Stockholm police spokesman Mikael Petterson told the TT news agency on Thursday.
"It is a prioritized case when it happens in such a place and with the winds blowing in society at the moment," Pettersson added.
Muslims make up between 450,000 and 500,000 of Sweden’s nine million people, according to the US State Department report in 2011.
Across the Nordic region, anti-immigration parties, which languished after Norwegian far-rightist Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in 2011, are gaining support.
The Sweden Democrats have advanced in voter surveys to nearly 10 percent from 5 percent at the last election in 2010.
The anti-immigrant tone is drawing criticism in Sweden, a country known for its history of tolerance.
On December 22nd, at least 16 thousand people rallied against racism in the Karrtorp suburb of Stockholm carrying banners that read "united against racism".
The rally which was attended by politicians and artists came a week after another anti-racism protest was attacked by a group of neo-Nazis in the same suburb, resulting in two people being stabbed and 28 others arrested.
/149
