Editor's Note: A 71-year-old Swedish man is prosecuted for hate speech for criticizing Islam. Is Sweden a cautionary tale of what Motion M-103 could lead to in Canada?
Because of Muslim migrants, Sweden has a skyrocketing crime rate, and some heavily Muslim areas are practically war zones. And this what they’re prosecuting.
“71-year-old Denny called out Islam for being a ‘fascist ideology’ – prosecuted for hate speech,” translated from “71-årige Denny kallade islam för ”fascistisk ideologi” – åtalas för hets mot folkgrupp,” Samhällsnytt, January 25, 2018: Summary: The 71-year-old read the Quran and wanted to share his perspective of Islam. Now he’s being interrogated by the Swedish police and has to answer general questions regarding his stance towards Muslims. In the end, he will potentially be sentenced to up to two years of prison time. Text: Denny Abrahamsson is living an ordinary life as a senior citizen. His residence is split between Stockholm and Thailand after a long working life — among other things, as a business owner. In his youth, he was a member of the Communist party KPML, but has since not been active in any political parties. “I used to be liberal, but in my later years I have moved further and further to the right. The liberals have completely lost their way and they have become more conservative, so to speak. I’m noticing that the liberals use censorship a lot more when they are unable to win debates,” Denny tells Samhällsnytt when they reached out to him via phone. The latter he says he has personal experience with this: in March 2017, many of his comments at the popular Facebook-group “Stand up for Peter Springare” were reported to the police for hate speech. “The reason as to why I began writing these comments is because I see a danger in Islam, and I see that people are so lost. I want to wake people up, but it is hard. “A few years ago, I also thought of Islam as any other ordinary religion out there, but ever since I read the Qur’an, I was shocked by the hatred that exists within it, the misogyny, the hatred towards the infidels. The more Islam takes over, the more we compromise. Islam is a totalitarian ideology; with it comes dictatorship. So what I’m trying to say is, our democratic system is in danger.” The person who reacted to Abrahamsson’s comments notified the police and attached many of his comments in his report. The police, however, only went forward with two of them. Here below follows an extract from the pretrial protocol that shows these two comments that the prosecutor says are related to hate speech:
Abrahamsson says that the comments in question can’t be seen as hate speech, because they criticize a religion, not a group of people: “I don’t hate any people. What I hate is an ideology, Islam. You are free to criticize fascism and Nazism, but not Islam? Why does Islam have a protected status?” The district prosecutor, Tove Kullberg, who turned in the complaint, however, has a different opinion. She says that the comments were illegal, but she can’t specify what it is in the comments that has crossed the line according to the law: “I have made the judgement that the comments as they are, are hate speech, not any specific words. Then the district court will have to try him.” Abrahamsson say that he criticizes an ideology, not a group of people. Don’t you think that you’re drawing the line between what statements are illegal and which belong to our free speech rights too harshly in this prosecution? “I think that there is enough reason for the court to try this. It’s not up to the prosecutor to decide where this line is drawn; this is for the court to decide.” Samhällsnytt has heard the police interrogation of Abrahamsson. During the interrogation, there were some questions that had no direct connection to the suspected crime; it rather seemed like an opinion interrogation. One of the questions was what Denny thinks about Muslims in general. Denny felt obligated to describe his personal perceptions to the interrogator — even though this has no relevance to the act: “Denny states that he doesn’t have anything against Muslims as long as they don’t force their religion upon him. Religion is a private matter for every individual person. Furthermore, Denny says that he doesn’t attend church because his temple already exists within his heart. If anybody wants to attend church or a mosque, that’s up to every individual person.” Denny has told Samhällsnytt that the police interrogator was himself a Muslim, and that his impartiality therefore can be questioned: “His name was Shari, and I suspect that name originates from Sharia.” Did he tell you that he was a Muslim during the interrogation? “I asked him about it and then he told me.” When Samhällsnytt asked Kullberg to comment on this information, she said the following: “I have no comment at all about that. If he thinks that there were inaccuracies during the police investigation, he himself will have to turn to me.” The prosecutor has pleaded the 16th chapter, paragraph 8, 1th criminal code, that has up to two years as the imposed penalty. Even if it’s unlikely that the previously unpunished Denny would receive prison time as a sentence, Kullberg don’t want to specify what punitive sanction will be pleaded. Denny Abrahamsson at the same time says that a prison sentence would be “disgusting.” What would you think if you were sentenced to prison? “It would be disgusting and horrible to go to prison because you express your opinions.” The main hearing will be held on the 19th of June in Stockholm’s district court.
This article was originally published on the Jihad Watch website on January 27, 2018, and can be viewed on their site by clicking here.