page_title: Islam in Sweden
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Islam in Sweden / History
caption_attribution_description: Svenska: Göteborgs moské
context_page_description: Islam in Sweden refers to the practice of Islam in Sweden, as well as historical ties between Sweden and the Islamic world. Viking contact with Islam dating back to the 7th–10th centuries, when the Vikings were trading with the medieval Islamic world, but more recently, immigration from predominantly Muslim countries has impacted demography in Sweden.
  The Muslim community in Sweden hails from numerous countries, making it a complex and heterogeneous population. Local attitudes towards Muslims are mixed, though perceived negative attitudes, as well as overt discrimination, lead to the creation of highly segregated communities within Sweden as compared to the United States where the Muslim community is much more integrated. Swedish cities, on the other hand, are among the most extremely segregated in all of Europe. Critics frequently blame Muslim immigrants for an unwillingness to integrate, but hostility towards Muslims, and a tightly regulated housing sector, have funneled immigrants into increasingly segregated neighborhoods like Husby, a neighborhood in Stockholm.
context_section_description: Archaeological findings have shown Viking contact with Islam dating back to the 7th–10th centuries, when the Vikings were trading with the medieval Islamic world. Pre-Islamic Arabic coins originating from the Middle East have been found at Iron Age burial sites.
  The Swedish census in 1930 listed 15 people as belonging to the group "Muslims and other Asian faiths". Although the number of Muslims themselves are not known, one estimate suggests a maximum of 11 but could have been as low as 2.
  In modern Sweden, the first registered Muslim groups were Finnish Tatars who emigrated from Finland and Estonia in the 1940s. Islam began to have a noticeable presence in Sweden with immigration from the Middle East beginning in the 1970s. Further waves of immigrants came to Sweden from the former Yugoslav republics, and more recently from Somalia.
  Sweden has a number of mosques providing the Muslim communities in Sweden places of worship. The first mosque in Sweden was the Nasir Mosque, built in 1976 in Gothenburg by the Ahmadiyya. It was followed by the Malmö Mosque, 1984, and later, the Uppsala Mosque in 1995. More mosques were built during the 2000s, including the Stockholm Mosque (2000), the Umeå Mosque (2006) and the  Fittja Mosque (completed 2007), among others. The governments of Saudi Arabia and Libya have financially supported the constructions of some of the largest Mosques in Sweden.
  The first meeting between Muslim youth organizations across Europe first took place in Sweden in 1995, in which the Foreign Ministry of Sweden worked with Sveriges Unga Muslimer to hold an international conference titled "Islam in Europe." This led to the creation of the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations (FEMYSO).
  As of the year 2000, an estimated 300,000 to 350,000 people of Muslim background lived in Sweden, or 3.5% of total population; thereby included is anyone who fits the broad definition of someone who "belongs to a Muslim people by birth, has Muslim origin, has a name that belongs in the Muslim tradition, etc." regardless of personal religious convictions, of whom about 100,000 were second-generation immigrants (born in Sweden or immigrated as children). In Sweden registration by personal belief is not common and is normally against the law, thus only figures of practising Muslims belonging to an Islamic community can be reported. In 2009, the Muslim Council of Sweden reported 106,327 registered members.
  In December 2008, riots broke out in Malmö in the Herrgården section of Rosengård, when the landlord did not renew the contract for the premises of a local mosque. Angry youths occupied the premises for three weeks, at the end of which police coming to evict the occupiers were confronted by about 30 occupiers, including radical Muslims and activists affiliated with the radical leftist Antifaschistische Aktion. The occupiers attacked police with pipe bombs and rocks and the incident rapidly escalated, with protestors arriving from other cities and officials calling in riot police. Rioters set fire to cars, wagons, kiosks, building sheds, recycling stations, and bicycle sheds. After two nights of rioting, 200 adult Malmö residents organized by the Islamiska kulturföreningen (“Islamic Cultural Forum”) moved into the streets to mediate, causing the youthful rioters to desist.
  In September 2018, the mosque in Alby, Botkyrka via its Green Party member Ali Khali delivered an offer to the Moderate Party where the 3000 votes of the worshippers would be given to the Moderate Party in exchange for planning permission to build a new mosque. The Green Party forced Khalil to leave the party after the finding was made public by Swedish Television.
  In September 2018, the Social Democratic Party in Karlshamn revoked the membership of a Muslim politician after translations from Arabic showed that the politician had campaigned for the supremacy of Islam over Swedish customs, against vulnerable children being taken care of by social services and that women with Arabic heritage should wear the Islamic veil. The statements were verifie
caption: Gothenburg Mosque
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