Israeli media is reporting that Omar Mustafa, the head of Sweden’s Islamic Association and a member of the Social Democratic Party’s governing board, resigned on Saturday from his post because of allegations of anti-gay bias, sexism and anti-Semitism. According to a Jerusalem Post report:
BERLIN – Omar Mustafa, the head of Sweden’s Islamic Association and a member of the Social Democratic Party’s governing board, resigned on Saturday from his post in the center-left party because of allegations of anti-gay bias, sexism and anti-Semitism. The 28-year old Mustafa tweeted in 2011 that Sweden should send fighter planes to Israel instead of to attack the late Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in Libya as part of the 2011 NATO campaign to protect the civilian population. The Swedish social democrats elected Mustafa last week to their governing board in Stockholm. Related: EJC president: Sweden a center of anti-Semitism EU Experts call for action against Hezbollah After Mustafa’s election to the board, however, a mushrooming series of disclosures about his cordial words for Egyptian anti-Semites, his Islamic organization’s refusal to recognize equality between men and women, and invitations to Islamists who propagate hardcore anti-gay ideologies, sparked fury in the Swedish media and with the former head of the social democrats. Mustafa ‘liked’ the Facebook page of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian theologian who has called for suicide bombings against Israelis and justified the Holocaust, saying, ‘Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler.’ Responding to the resignation, Lisa Abramowicz, the secretary-general of the Swedish-Israel Information Center, told The Jerusalem Post on Saturday that she is ‘a bit surprised, since they
were so adamant until just a few hours ago that as a social democrat he was by definition an anti-racist.’ Stefan Löfven, the head of Sweden’s Social Democrats, initially accepted Mustafa’s statement last week that he is against anti-Semitism and the social democratic leader seemed to double-down on retaining Mustafa as a board member.. Swedish media reports revealed anti-women by-laws of the Islamic Association, containing provisions for segregating the sexes and defending sexual discrimination against women. The Swedish free daily Metro reported Löfven stating,’You cannot be elected to the Social Democrats unless you can fully stand up for the party’s values of human equality and equality between women and men.Read the rest here.
The “Islamic Association” referred to above is most likely the Islamiska Förbundet i Stockholm (IFIS) and is the Swedish member organization of the Federation of Islamic Organizations In Europe (FIOE), the umbrella organization representing the Muslim Brotherhood in Europe. Abdirizak Waberi is the IFIS President and was the Vice-President of FIOE in 2010.
A post from December 2010 reported that the imam of Stockholm’s largest mosque had condemned the recent suicide attacks in the Swedish capital. A local media report from April 2006 states that although later expelled, an Al Qaeda recruiter was operating in the Södermalmsmoskén, also known as the Great Mosque, and that the mosque was known for having “fundamentalist” sympathizers as well as individuals associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The mosque is run by the IFIS. In May 2004, local media carried a report by a local Muslim who said that Hassan Moussa was giving incendiary speeches at the mosque in Arabic that were incorrectly translated into Swedish. These speeches including accusations that the US was “raping Islam.”
A post from 2007 reported on the construction of a large new Saudi-funded mosque in Goteborg, Sweden that was possibly tied to the IFIS.