Gothenburg: Xasaan Xuseen speaks at 'Islam and peace' conference

Gothenburg: Xasaan Xuseen speaks at 'Islam and peace' conference

I'll update if I find out which organization is running the conference.

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Several thousand Muslims from the Nordic countries and also further away attended a conference in the the Bellevue Mosque in Gothenburg, Sweden, which started Thursday.  The theme of the conference is peace and Islam.

However, as GP reported Thursday and Friday, some of Gothenburg's Swedish-Somalis were concerned that a leader of the Somali rebel group al-Shabaab was invited to speak at the mosque.

GP's reporter were not allowed into the conference Sunday afternoon.

The spokesperson for the conference confirms that Xasaan Xuseen was there  as planned.

Mahamud Hassan told GP outside the mosque that Xuseen has been there for the past few days, but that there are no problems.  Asked what he spoke about, Mahmud Hassan answered: About peace and Islam.

In an interview on Friday Mahamud Hassan denied Xasaan Xuseen has any connection to al-Shabaab.  He said that they did not understand that Xassan Xuseen was linked to a terrorist group and that they wouldn't have invited him otherwise.  He said it's completely incomprehensible.

Colleague Ahmed Warfa agreed: "It's baseless.  He never spoke of violence.  He isn't here to collect money". 

Both spokespeople stressed that Xasaan Xuseen wasn't invited by the ISC in Bellevue, but rather by a Nordic conference council, with several representatives from each of the Nordic countries except Island, where ISC has a vote.

Warfa says that the conference council thinks he's a good speaker and he's coming to speak about Islam and peace, the topic of this year's conference.

The two spokespeople says that his supposed links to al-Shabaab is just smears by political opponents, who know that such accusations will get attention in the West.

Mahamud Hassan says that Swedes should be aware that they're not about to bring in radical speakers.


Sources: GP 1, 2 (Swedish), h/t Muslimska Friskolan


See also: Sweden: Visit by spiritual leader of al-Shabaab

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