To Readers:
Originally, this article claimed erroneously that Sweden awards the Nobel Prize. This has been changed thanks to your alertness. However, it has nothing to do with the life threatening issue at hand.
We all used to think of Sweden as a very “progressive” country. Now, alas, the word “progressive” has come to mean other, certain things.
In May, 2011 Sweden hosted and funded the notorious “Palestinian” terrorist, Leila Khaled. As a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, she hijacked an airplane in 1969.
In September, Sweden held the first official welcoming ceremony for a “Palestinian” representative. The government expressed support for efforts towards Palestine’s statehood.
In November, the Swedish government funded an anti-Israel brochure titled “Colonialism and Apartheid. The Israeli Occupation in Palestine.”
In the last two decades, in the name of “multicultural relativism” and “politically correct diversity”, Sweden has allowed Muslim anti-infidel separatism to fester; of course, Swedish Jews, in Malmo in particular, have been cursed and assaulted by hostile Muslims.
Now, Sweden has once again demonstrated its failure to recognize a “good” Muslim from a “hostile” Muslim or terrorist. Rather than welcome the pro-Western Pakistani Khalid Saeed, who seeks political asylum, the Swedish Migration Board has turned down his application for political asylum. An appeal is underway.
A number of European and Scandinavian Free Speech societies, asked me to write a letter on his behalf to the Swedish government. Here is a partial version of that letter.
Letter To The Government of Sweden and Migration Board:
I am writing to you on behalf of Khalid Saeed’s petition to remain in Sweden, a petition which you have denied. I implore you to revisit his case.
His life—and Sweden’s reputation for fairness and morality are both at stake.
Khalid Saeed and his family have been living in Sweden since 2009. Saeed joined the 5% of the Swedish population who are Muslims. However, unlike Muslims who have rioted and/or who have refused to assimilate in Sweden, Khalid is a pro-Western apostate.
This is precisely why he fled Pakistan. Apostasy is a capital crime in Islam, and so is any preference shown to Western ways of thought.
Khalid Saeed was a car dealer in Islamabad, Pakistan. He is married and has three children. Once he made his views known, he was threatened. He fled. In his own words, he claims:
“I have never worshipped Allah nor do I or my wife, Asia, believe in Islam as the only truth for mankind. I have distanced myself from Islam years ago. That is my curse. My wife, the mother to our children, agrees. She will not see her daughter brought up in a society where women are only half humans and neither will I.
"As parents we also do not want to stand (helpless) on the side line and watch our two lovely and open-minded boys being forced into any kind of holy jihad group or society whose only objective is to oppress, threaten, and intimidate others to blindly follow the pitiless words of the profane muslim prophet Mohammad and his followers’ medieval Islamic sharia laws.”
An apostate in Pakistan, or in any Pakistani Muslim community in the world is a dead man.
Anyone who sounds like this in Pakistan, or in any Pakistani Muslim community in the world is a dead man.
And yet, you have refused him asylum in Sweden. I strongly disagree with your ruling on his application for asylum.
I assume you are familiar with the fate of apostates: Muslims who convert to Christianity or who describe themselves as “humanists” or “secularists,” or who believe in freedom of religion.
Sweden’s own 2010 Report on Human Rights in Pakistan confirms that religious minorities are severely persecuted in Pakistan as are any people who are in favor of free speech, academic freedom, and independent thought. For example, the governor of the Punjab (in Pakistan) was assassinated when he wanted to pursue reforms against blasphemy laws.
The International Humanist and Ethical Union, which was founded in Amsterdam, spent years campaigning for the life of physician and human rights activist Dr. Younus Sheikh who languished on Death Row in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
We know that many Muslims are not friendly toward any infidel religion, including Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, etc. Christians have been—and still are—being savagely persecuted in Muslim lands. I and many others have written about this often. Author and apostate Nonie Darwish and ex-Muslim secularist Ibn Warraq have both spoken out about this burning issue.
Christians are being savagely persecuted in Egypt and all across the Middle East and Islamic world.
In Pakistan, Christians have literally been crucified, teenaged Christian girls have been kidnapped, raped, then forced to marry their rapists and convert to Islam.
Saudi Arabia, Iran, Afghanistan, do not allow Christians, Jews, or other “infidels” to pray openly or to build any or new houses of worship.
The Arab Muslim Middle East is almost completely “Judenrein,” (free of Jews) since more than 800,000 Arab Jews were exiled or forced to flee their countries between 1948-1968.
In 2010, in Pakistan, a Muslim mob attacked a Christian man and slaughtered him with pick-axes for refusing to convert to Islam.
According to Mina Nevisa, an Iranian Muslim convert to Christianity who wrote a book about her experiences, both she and her female cousin were attending an underground church in Teheran. Nevis fled Iran together with her husband. Her cousin was not so lucky. “She was arrested on charges of Apostasy and taken to Evin prison, where she was raped, tortured, and then killed by a firing squad. The pastor was also killed.”
The situation for Muslim apostates in Europe is also perilous. High profile apostates, such as Egyptian-Italian Magdi Christiano Allam, who was converted to Catholicism by the Pope, lives with six round-the-clock bodyguards. Aayan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch-American apostate-secularist, also requires a full time security detail. People who do not have public profiles, who are not academics, intellectuals, politicians, or public speakers, also face similar problems.
In 2001, “Sabatina James” (a pseudonym) fled from Austria to Germany and went into hiding to escape being honor-murdered by her family after she converted from Islam to Christianity. Her family had immigrated from Pakistan.
“Sabatina’s” troubles began when she was 15 years old. Because she dared to wear lipstick and blue jeans, she was mercilessly beaten. When she rejected marriage to a cousin, “Sabatina” was sent to a Qur’anic school in Lahore, where she was repeatedly flogged. She finally agreed to the marriage—but only in order to be able to return to Austria. Then, when she was 19 years old, she fled.
In 2009, Iraqi-born Vian Bakir Fatah was stabbed to death by her Iraqi ex-husband in Norway. She had converted to Christianity and had a new boyfriend. Her ex-husband murdered her in the presence of their four children.
In the past, Sweden has presumably been at the forefront of human rights activism and legislation. Now, in this case, it seems that Sweden has failed its own stated ideals.
Given the information that I and others are providing, I strongly urge you to reconsider Khalid Saeed’s case. If not, his blood, and the blood of his wife and children will be on Swedish hands.
Signed: Professor Phyllis Chesler