Fake news alarm in Sweden: Muslim children kidnapped for secularization

Sweden is facing a massive wave of false information and dangerous conspiracy theories spread online that the country’s social services under the LVU, Sweden’s child protection law, systematically “kidnap” Muslim children in an attempt to secularize them. Campaign posts on various social channels tell of Muslim children being moved to non-Muslim homes where they are forced to eat pork and drink alcohol. There is also a widespread narrative that girls are raped and forced to take off their veils and that children have to change their names and religions and carry a Christian cross. According to the Swedish Psychological Defense Agency, the campaign, broadcast on Arabic-language channels with millions of followers, was launched on December 28, but the pressure has increased enormously in recent weeks, “and in the comments to the posts the number is growing. calls for terrorist acts and threats to the Swedish authorities, ”said Mikael Tofvesson, director of the Psychological Defense Authority. To give it all was the interview on the Egyptian channel on YouTube Shuounislamiya, followed by over 600,000 people, to Zeinab Ltaif, mother of six children, at the helm of the organization “Mina rättigheter” (“My rights”) in to which the woman points the finger at the Swedish social services which allegedly took the children of ten families into custody without reason. According to the Malmö newspaper “Sydsvenskan”, one of the cases is that of a 13-year-old girl who, according to Ltaif, was allegedly “kidnapped” and forced to take off her veil after “jokingly” she wrote to one of her teachers that she was mistreated. at home. But in court – as reported by the same newspaper that was able to see the documentation – the same girl said that she was beaten several times by her parents and that she took off her veil at school feeling free from the oppression of the family that forced her to wear it. After the publication of the interview, a campaign was launched that united several social actors connected to violent Islamist organizations, as reported by the Swedish investigative site Doku which first reported on the wave of false information underway, “the movement is large and in growth and attitude is surprisingly often very harsh – says the site – Sweden and in particular social services and other authorities are described as racist and criminal ”. Meanwhile, on Saturday, Ltaif organized a demonstration in Malmö against the work of social services, the latest in a series of demonstrations that were also held in Gothenburg and Stockholm, however distancing itself from conspiracy theories: “it is important to emphasize that not there are only Muslim children – he told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter – there are Swedish children, Christian children and children who are not religiously educated. We do not want to Islamize the issue, it is about all children ».