Anti-Immigrants Plan Pig Farm to Offend Muslims

Friday, May 8, 2015

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STOCKHOLM – New plans by anti-immigration campaigners to construct a pig farm close to an asylum center to offend Muslim immigrants have been ridiculed as reflecting ignorance about Islam and Muslims.

"This is nonsense and shows just how very little they know about Islam," Åke Sander, Professor of Psychology at the University of Gothenburg, told the TT news agency.

"It is one thing when Muslims try to stay away from pork, alcohol or gambling but there is nothing [in the Koran] that says you cannot be near pigs. This is a last-ditch effort when they [the campaigners] have no arguments left," he added.

Plans were announced on Wednesday when a group of campaigners, organizing themselves in a group called "interest group for Gullberg's survival", sent a note to the Swedish Migration Board (Migrationsverket) pledging to breed pigs nearby in order to deter Muslims from seeking asylum in the town.

The note said that it was trying to create a "probably impossible situation for some religious people, especially Muslims", according to Sveriges Radio.

"You know that Muslims are not friends with pigs," local politician Henry Sandahl from Sweden's Countryside Party (Markbygdspartiet)

The campaign was also ridiculed on social media.

Carl Göransson, a lawyer and former Moderate party politician suggested on Twitter that building "a gigantic rubbish dump" next to the asylum centre instead, designed to blow smelly winds in the direction of the angry residents.

"Monstrous" and a "total fail", wrote Johan Arenius, a political press secretary for the Christian Democrat party based in Örebro in central Sweden.

In 2013, Sweden became the first European nation to grant automatic residency to Syrian refugees and has since seen asylum requests rise to record levels, which are still expected to reach about 90,000 in 2015.

As part of its plan to further allow immigrants, the Swedish government has also announced in march to triple number of residents allowed at asylum centres from 200 to 650.

Sweden has opened its doors to immigrants for decades.

In 2012, some 43,900 asylum seekers arrived, a nearly 50 percent jump from 2011 and the second highest on record. Nearly half were from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia and will get at least temporary residency. There was a total of 103,000 new immigrants.

Some 15 percent of Sweden's population is foreign born, the highest in the Nordic region.

Muslims make up between 450,000 and 500,000 of Sweden’s nine million people, according to the US State Department report in 2011.

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