Sweden: 60% think Muslims are discriminated against

60% of Swedes think that Swedish Muslims are discriminated due to their religion, according to a study by SIFO Research and Consulting made for Sensus and presented yesterday in Almedalen.

The study also shows that the answer strongly varied based on which party people voted for. 40% of Christian Democrats (KD) voters though Muslims were discriminated, compared with 87% of the Green Party and 84% of the Left Party. More than 60% of the supporters of the rest of the ruling parties thought Muslims were discriminated.

Eduardo Villanueva Contreras of Sensus says that it's good that the numbers are so high since it shows that people understand that there is discrimination and that is an incentive for them to work with these issues. But he is surprised about the large differences between the different party voters, though he doesn't want to speculate on why that is.

Daniel Poohl, chief editor of Expo magazine, which follows right-wing extremists and anti-democratic movements in Sweden, thinks that KD voters have a more negative attitude towards Muslims. Those who have a negative attitude towards Muslims don't tend to see them as a discriminated group, since they're part of that group.

He points to the Sweden Democrats as the clearest example, who don't think that there is any discrimination against immigrants or Muslims.

Another explanation might be that many of KD's Christian supporter feel themselves discriminated in Swedish society and therefore don't want to see Muslims as being discriminated.

Emma Henriksson, parliamentarian for the KD party, thinks that those who don't think Muslim are discriminated against for their beliefs might think it's due to their foreign origin instead. She says that this is her first thought when seeing the study since it's clear to her that Muslims are discriminated against.

She doesn't think the study shows that KD voters are more negative towards Muslims, since in such case their voters would go to xenophobic parties, but instead they're drawn to the larger parties.

Source: Dagen (Swedish)

See also: Sweden: Attitudes harden towards immigrants (and Jews), Sweden: When incitement is allowed, Gothenburg: 5% of immigrant youth support Sweden Democrats