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Sweden is turning into Europe's Islamist hotspot

Isis-S is trying to influence Sweden's Somali diaspora. Credit: Getty

July 25, 2024 - 1:00pm

The threat of IS has been growing; not just in Europe, but the rest of the world too. This year, there has been an increasing number of foiled plots and threats that are coming from Islamic State networks in Africa. Proof of this came on Tuesday when the US Treasury sanctioned Isis networks across Africa, specifically in Somalia and Mozambique.

One particularly vulnerable European country to this emerging African threat is Sweden. The far-off IS branch in Somalia (IS-S) is targeting existing and potentially radical elements of Sweden’s Somali diaspora, the size of which has swelled in recent years. IS-S has been linked to a growing number of connected plots, arrests, and at least one attack.

Despite Denmark’s decision to ban burnings of the Quran last year, Sweden is still granting licences for public burnings of the Islamic text. The most recent burning took place in May ahead of the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest in Malmo. After this, and several burnings last year, the Swedish government is on high alert for terror attacks.

Sweden’s immigration problems, and the social instability that has followed, are well documented. Over the past two decades, immigration levels have soared, with a notable spike in 2015 when it took in 163,000 refugees, mostly from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Since the turn of the century, the number of people in Sweden born abroad has doubled to two million, roughly a fifth of the population. In 2022, then-Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson blamed a lack of integration and the highest per capita immigration in Europe for rising violent gang crime, claiming that “segregation has been allowed to go so far that we have parallel societies in Sweden. We live in the same country but in completely different realities.”

In recent months, the Swedish Security Service (Säpo) has made a string of arrests as it works to dismantle an IS-S network in the municipality of Tyresö, south of the capital Stockholm. In March, four members of the network were arrested for “terrorist offences” and involvement in “violent Islamist extremism”. On 17 April, Säpo’s counter-terrorism investigation led the organisation to a 60-year-old imam with deep roots in the community who has led a mosque since 2000. The case continued to develop in late May when a 20-year-old known gang member and friend to one of the suspects arrested in March was raided in connection with a shooting at the Israeli embassy. During that time, it was also revealed that there has been a marked increase in people attempting to travel and join IS branches in Africa.

Sweden is emerging as the primary IS-S hub in Europe, and related incidents are on the rise. Notably, Abdul Qadir Mumin, the branch’s founder and one of its leaders lived in Sweden for several years, later relocating to the UK where he became a citizen. Mumin then fled to Somalia after MI5 started investigating his involvement in the radicalisation of young men. Michael Adebolajo, who went on to decapitate British soldier Lee Rigby at an army barracks in southeast London in 2013, attended the mosque at which Mumin gave sermons in the British capital.

With IS-S holding extended territorial control over mountainous regions in Somalia’s semi-autonomous Puntland region and its increased authority within the global Islamic State network, there is a real threat that it could use this as a staging area for external operations in the West. From here, it could direct, guide, and encourage its networks and followers in Sweden and beyond. Sweden will continue to be a European focal point for IS-S efforts as the group aims directly at the West.


Lucas Webber is the co-founder and editor of Militant Wire

LucasADWebber

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Paul Curtin
Paul Curtin
3 months ago

Sweden in its original form is long gone due to the naive policies of the well meaning middle class (ditto the UK)
We may all yet pay quite a heavy cost throughout the West in the next decade. Watch this space. The UK & France aren’t far behind.
A Swedish passport, misused loop-hole laws and the usual bleating lawyers will ensure this is a permanent fixture in Western Europe.
Needs draconian actions to fix draconian problems and I can’t see any political will making this happen in the next 5 years here.

Emmanuel MARTIN
Emmanuel MARTIN
3 months ago
Reply to  Paul Curtin

The politicians praising this draconian actions have been outlawed, and even your post could be qualified as hate speech.

Bernard Brothman
Bernard Brothman
3 months ago

And that the problem – you can’t talk about the immigration problem without being labeled racist or engaging in hate speech.

Cathy Carron
Cathy Carron
3 months ago

Don’t you think use of the words ‘racist’ and ‘racism’ have been so overused that they are essentially meaningless? – they have come to connote ‘power play’ or ‘one-upmanship’.

Josef Švejk
Josef Švejk
3 months ago

I never thought I would ever utter the following, but it needs saying, not just in Sweden but all over Europe. If immigrants cannot adjust to the mores of their adopted country they need to be sent back to where they came from.

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
3 months ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

That would easily be 90%.

Mark Tomlinson
Mark Tomlinson
3 months ago
Reply to  Josef Švejk

“In 2022, then-Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson blamed a lack of integration
You cannot integrate a square peg into a round hole 

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
3 months ago
Reply to  Paul Curtin

Include Germany and Austria in that equation.

Archibald Tennyson
Archibald Tennyson
3 months ago
Reply to  Paul Curtin

What makes you sure that the policies were well meaning or naive?
One could equally interpret events as a concerted effort to destroy the nations and cultures of Europe. Nothing well meaning or naive about that.

Claire D
Claire D
3 months ago
Reply to  Paul Curtin

‘We may all yet pay quite a heavy cost throughout the West in the next decade. Watch this space. The UK & France aren’t far behind.’

You think..

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
3 months ago
Reply to  Paul Curtin

Nobody in Europe has the guts to do what needs to be done! Even if somebody did, the EU bureaucracy under the direction of von der Leyen (just as unimpressive as K. Harris) would put a stop to it. There is no hope; the damage is done.

Daniel Holt
Daniel Holt
3 months ago

I recently watched Ruben Ostlund’s excellent film ‘The Square’. That scene in the ballroom….everyone too scared to stand up but then, savagery.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
3 months ago
Reply to  Daniel Holt

“Triangle of Sadness” is superior to “The Square” by far.

Hugo Montgomery
Hugo Montgomery
3 months ago

Fact. Allowing large numbers of Muslims into any Western country will spell disaster. All immigration is not the same. Islam intends to conquer, not integrate. The ignorance and timidity of our Western governments is to blame. They have sown the wind: they will reap the whirlwind.

J Butties
J Butties
3 months ago

It’s us who will reap the Whirlwind not they. Millipede welcomes it as his bird chopping/whale beaching energy production plans are based on the harvest of Free Wind!

David L
David L
3 months ago

No leftist has ever explained how we benefit from the mass importation of millions of illiterate medieval savages.

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
3 months ago
Reply to  David L

We don’t. Full stop. However, don’t ever think that the leftists will be spared. They may be the last ones to come on the chopping block, but it will happen, because every revolution eventually eats its children. I find that oddly consoling, and just hope that I live to see their heads roll.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
3 months ago

If the Swedes themselves don’t care enough to do anything about it, I see no reason why others should.

Johan Grönwall
Johan Grönwall
3 months ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

In a sense you are right: it is up to us swedes to choose what kind of society Sweden will be in the future. If we choose to remain passive, we deserve what’s coming to us, no less. But sooner or later something truly sickening is bound to happen and then the time has come to choose sides. This situation just can’t go on for ever.

Matt Sylvestre
Matt Sylvestre
3 months ago

It’s one thing to allow high levels of immigration and another to not insist upon basic assimilation. The West is doing both things of course but I guess some Progressives feel good about it somewhere (likely from the safety of a gated neighborhood in West Chester)…

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
3 months ago
Reply to  Matt Sylvestre

Gated neighbourhoods won’t provide permanent protection. One reaps what one sows…

Dr E C
Dr E C
3 months ago

‘In March, four members of the network were arrested for “terrorist offences” and involvement in “violent Islamist extremism”.’

Oh look, there’s that word again: Islamism- the one we’re not meant to believe is real.

Katja Sipple
Katja Sipple
3 months ago
Reply to  Dr E C

It’s a Western word invention. In the Moslem world it’s simply known as Islam.

Sophy T
Sophy T
3 months ago

US treasury sanctioned Isis networks….’
’Sanctioned’ here could mean banned or allowed. Odd that the same word can mean completely opposite things.

Lillian Fry
Lillian Fry
3 months ago

Reading the “Grizzly Truth” followed by this is instructive.