Swedish ministers call to end faith schools
Two senior cabinet figures back the outlawing of religious schools in the country, citing Muslim extremism
Citing Muslim extremism, two Cabinet ministers in Sweden called for closing all faith schools in the country.
At a news conference Tuesday, Secondary Education Minister Anna Ekström and Public Administration Minister Ardalan Shekarabi said they supported banning faith schools.
“The important thing for us is that in school there are no confessional elements,” said Ekström, a member of the ruling Swedish Social Democratic Party.
Her remarks were reported in the international media, including the Daily Mail, as a policy pledge to ban all religious schools. However, Shekarabi said that no such concrete plans exist and that they do not have a majority in parliament.
Shekarabi wrote in an op-ed for Aftonbladet that he supports banning faith schools, citing his experiences with gender segregation in his native Iran. Referencing phenomenons connected to the arrival in Sweden of hundreds of thousands of Muslims since the 1970s, he wrote “I see religious oppression again — in Swedish schools.”
With the exception of Bulgaria, the Swedish population of 9 million has the highest proportion of Muslims, at 8.1 percent, according to a 2017 Pew study.
Ilya Meyer, a Swedish Jew and former deputy chair of a branch of the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association, called the targeting of all faith schools to end extremist indoctrination in Muslim ones “a bizarre move by the increasingly repressive Swedish government.”
“Because the Swedish government cannot ever be seen to be saying or doing anything against Muslim intransigence because it is Muslim intransigence, its solution is to tar all religious schools with the same brush and ban them all,” he wrote on Facebook.
Administrators from Hillel, Stockholm’s main Jewish school, were not immediately available for comment when approached by JTA.
Ritual slaughter of animals is illegal in Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland. In 2013, the ombudsmen of all Nordic countries said they consider non-medical circumcision of boys a violation of children’s rights.
Thank you for helping to make Jewish News the leading source of news and opinion for the UK Jewish community. Today we're asking for your invaluable help to continue putting our community first in everything we do.
For as little as £5 a month you can help sustain the vital work we do in celebrating and standing up for Jewish life in Britain.
Jewish News holds our community together and keeps us connected. Like a synagogue, it’s where people turn to feel part of something bigger. It also proudly shows the rest of Britain the vibrancy and rich culture of modern Jewish life.
You can make a quick and easy one-off or monthly contribution of £5, £10, £20 or any other sum you’re comfortable with.
100% of your donation will help us continue celebrating our community, in all its dynamic diversity...
Engaging
Being a community platform means so much more than producing a newspaper and website. One of our proudest roles is media partnering with our invaluable charities to amplify the outstanding work they do to help us all.
Celebrating
There’s no shortage of oys in the world but Jewish News takes every opportunity to celebrate the joys too, through projects like Night of Heroes, 40 Under 40 and other compelling countdowns that make the community kvell with pride.
Pioneering
In the first collaboration between media outlets from different faiths, Jewish News worked with British Muslim TV and Church Times to produce a list of young activists leading the way on interfaith understanding.
Campaigning
Royal Mail issued a stamp honouring Holocaust hero Sir Nicholas Winton after a Jewish News campaign attracted more than 100,000 backers. Jewish Newsalso produces special editions of the paper highlighting pressing issues including mental health and Holocaust remembrance.
Easy access
In an age when news is readily accessible, Jewish News provides high-quality content free online and offline, removing any financial barriers to connecting people.
Voice of our community to wider society
The Jewish News team regularly appears on TV, radio and on the pages of the national press to comment on stories about the Jewish community. Easy access to the paper on the streets of London also means Jewish News provides an invaluable window into the community for the country at large.
We hope you agree all this is worth preserving.
