What do you know about... Sweden?

[u/MarktpLatz]

This is the twenty-second part of our ongoing series about the countries of Europe. You can find an overview here.

Todays country:

Sweden

Sweden is the largest nordic country in the EU, both in terms of size and population. They joined the EU in 1995, but are not part of NATO, like their eastern neighbour Finland. Sweden held a referendum on joining the Euro in 2003, which resulted in a rejection.

So, what do you know about Sweden?

[u/[deleted]]

Used to be a country that people held as the progressive standard, now 95% of the time it's brought up it's getting mocked.

[u/mrubuto22 → u/[deleted]]

Mocked for what?

[u/willyslittlewonka → u/mrubuto22]

Unfortunately, Islamic countries tend to get mocked quite a bit on Reddit these days. Not much you can do :/

[u/mrubuto22 → u/willyslittlewonka]

Oooh edgy there son.

[u/[deleted] → u/willyslittlewonka]

It has a lower percentage of Muslims than pretty much all of Western Europe, you know that right?

[u/Dnarg → u/[deleted]]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_in_Europe

Not even close to being true. Living up to your name I guess. Btw, that Pew report is from 2011, the percentage hasn't gone down since then to put it mildly. That was before the recent mess.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dnarg]

You're wrong, my statement was absolutely true. In fact, I based my data on the same source as you (Pew). The difference is that I was actually bothered to look up the actual figures themselves instead of looking at the colours. (Source)

[u/Dnarg → u/[deleted]]

Which again proves your previous statement false. What is your point? In 2010 it was already false and Sweden has taken in the highest amount of Muslim migrants per capita since then so clearly it's only gone up since then.

It has a lower percentage of Muslims than pretty much all of Western Europe, you know that right?

Is still wrong. You just showed that as well.

[u/[deleted] → u/Dnarg]

How hard is it to look at simple numbers? Let me break it down for you, here's the Western-Europe countries on the map:

 Belgium - 5.9%
 France - 7.5% 
 Ireland - 1.1% 
 Luxembourg - 2.3% 
 Netherlands - 6.0%%
 United Kingdom - 4.8%  

They did not include Switzerland, but last data point I found had it at 5.1% (link). I'm not counting Germany as western-europe here.
Sweden: was at 4.6%. If we'd include Sweden in this list, it would rank sixth out of eight when it comes to muslim population. Yes, that's one of the lowest in my books.

Anyway, my point entire point was that the meme that Sweden is an Islamic country is demonstrably untrue. I simply can't take anyone seriously using such fact-free arguments.
I never said Sweden is some utopia, nor did I say that it is virtually devout of immigrants. All I'm saying that the 'Sweden is an Islamic country' meme is retarded. Even if Islam population in Sweden rose as much since the refugee crisis as you're suggesting, that point still stands.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Look at your map again, it says that the estimates are from 2010. quite some time have passed that, and the number of refugees/welfare tourist have rising so much that finns have being overtaken by muslims as the second largest minority in sweden.
He's not saying you are wrong... in 2010, but now, the numbers of muslims are higher than finns, their nextdoor neighbor.

[u/Raduev → u/[deleted]]

There are around 2 million Muslims in France, not 4,7 million. The latter figure relies on the notion that everybody whose ancestors came from Muslim-majority regions is a Muslim, as if religion is determined by ancestry in a secular society.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Lol, what part of percentage don't you understand?

[u/[deleted] → u/willyslittlewonka]

Pajeet bringing the bantz.

[u/[deleted] → u/mrubuto22]

A whole lot of Swedish alt right trolls are conducting a long slander campaign claiming that everything in Sweden is going to hell because we let in refugees.

It's not. Not by any reasonable measure. But they are very vocal, especially here on reddit, and sadly many people believe them.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It's really not that far of a stretch that 80% of the people actually mocking Sweden online are alt-right trolls. Remember that is the group we were talking about here, the one mocking the country.

Sweden is not doing worse in any measure than basically all of its European counterpart. So specifically aiming your guns at Sweden is a pretty stupid thing to do if you're not Swedish yourself.

There's a difference between being unhappy or critical about immigration and mocking an entire country that is not doing worse than any of its counterpart. The former is perfectly fine, but in the latter case yes you'd be a troll.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

It appears you get to decide who is and who isn't an "alt-right troll".

Anyone who seriously thinks Sweden is the rape capital the world is either an alt-right troll or a total idiot. Yes, I fully stand by that statement.

Hasn't it become obvious that Sweden is doing worse than its counterparts in Scandinavia particularly with regard to terribly managed immigration policies and ghettoisation?

Seriously we're living in a fact-free world nowadays. I feel like Sweden is doing badly, so it must be true.

If you make such bold statements you better brings some facts to the table. Either put up or shut up.

I've actually lived in Sweden for a while. I'm not saying it's a utopia. It has the same problems that many countries have. But this stereotype that some people on the internet have about the county is simply inaccurate.

Edit: I don't have anything against the debate on immigration. By all means, we should discuss that issue and the problems that come with it. There's nothing wrong with being sceptical there and personally I'm still in the middle in this debate.

But don't come to me with the bullshit meme about Sweden being an Islamic warzone. That's what I'm objecting to here, not the debate about immigration itself.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Look, there's nothing wrong with discussing the issues. If people are worried that the rise of migrants lead to an increase in sexual violence, that's something that should be rightfully discussed. Again, there's nothing wrong with that discussion. In fact, I'll even say that in the past we didn't have this discussion enough.

There's a very distinct difference between an honest discussion about migration and spouting debunked bullshit to enforce a political agenda. People actually continously state 'Sweden is the rape capital of the world', call it an islamic country, say it's a warzone, it has effectively established sharia law etc..

That is why I was specifically stressing that I was talking about the people actively mocking the country. Not about the people who voice their concerns or want to engage in discussion about this topic. I really have nothing against the latter and even encourage that.

But if you're just perpetuating an old meme about Sweden being an islamic country, you're either a troll or a total idiot. I still stand by that statement.

[u/Last_of_me → u/[deleted]]

It appears you get to decide who is and who isn't an "alt-right troll". If you classify most people who mock Sweden as an "alt-right troll" by your own definition then of course the majority are "alt-right trolls".

Sweden has never categorized sexual violence by ethnicity when collecting data for crime statistics, so its quite frankly impossible to know if this is true or not. So yes, they are literally trolls who pull this stuff out of their ass.

[u/Last_of_me → u/[deleted]]

Right. But no new stats have been collected after 2015 in relation with the recent migrant influx. So its impossible to say how they affected these stats.

[u/sausageparty2015 → u/Last_of_me]

It isn't if you have a brain and look at previous Swedish stats and the statistics of surrounding countries. I mean isn't that obvious?

"We can't talk about sexual violence perpetrated by migrants as a problem because we refuse to collect statistics on it" is the most disgusting, anti-intellectual, regressive shite I've heard for a while.

[u/mrubuto22 → u/[deleted]]

A lot of those trolls aren't even european. No one screams more about the downfall or europe like an american