AFP, Stockholm :
More than a thousand protesters took to the streets in Sweden on Friday to urge an end to a spate of attacks against mosques, amid growing tensions over the rise of an anti-immigration party.
The demonstrations in Sweden’s three largest cities, Stockholm, Malmoe and Gothenburg, came a day after what was believed to be the third arson attack on a mosque in the space of a week.
“We want to send the message that these attacks on mosques… are a problem for all of society and not just Muslims,” Mohammed Kharraki a spokesman for Sweden’s Islamic Association told AFP from the largest demonstration in the capital Stockholm.
“This is about people being denied their basic rights…. Everyone needs to ask themselves, politicians and citizens if this is the kind of society they want.”
Eyewitnesses saw a man throwing a petrol bomb at a mosque in Uppsala in eastern Sweden early on New Year’s day, three days after a late-night blaze at a mosque in Esloev in the south, which police suspect was also arson.
The slogan “Go home Muslim shit” was also emblazoned across the doors of the building.
On Christmas Day, five people were injured in another suspected arson attack on a mosque in Eskilstuna, west of the capital Stockholm.
More than a thousand protesters took to the streets in Sweden on Friday to urge an end to a spate of attacks against mosques, amid growing tensions over the rise of an anti-immigration party.
The demonstrations in Sweden’s three largest cities, Stockholm, Malmoe and Gothenburg, came a day after what was believed to be the third arson attack on a mosque in the space of a week.
“We want to send the message that these attacks on mosques… are a problem for all of society and not just Muslims,” Mohammed Kharraki a spokesman for Sweden’s Islamic Association told AFP from the largest demonstration in the capital Stockholm.
“This is about people being denied their basic rights…. Everyone needs to ask themselves, politicians and citizens if this is the kind of society they want.”
Eyewitnesses saw a man throwing a petrol bomb at a mosque in Uppsala in eastern Sweden early on New Year’s day, three days after a late-night blaze at a mosque in Esloev in the south, which police suspect was also arson.
The slogan “Go home Muslim shit” was also emblazoned across the doors of the building.
On Christmas Day, five people were injured in another suspected arson attack on a mosque in Eskilstuna, west of the capital Stockholm.
