A Minaret is a Symbol in Sweden

An Islamic cultural centre in Karlskrona wishes to build a mosque with a minaret which will be 18 metres high.

Local residents are urged not to be alarmed, however - the minaret will not issue the call to prayer, it will simply be "a symbol".

A symbol of what, exactly?

The Islamic Cultural Association in Karlskrona (Sweden) wants to buy the building it's currently using as a mosque, part of a former school, and build their new mosque there. However, the city plans to place the mosque on the same property as residential housing. The mosque is planned to have an 18 metre high minaret. The city plan still needs to be approved.

Lennart Ahlqvist, chairman of the Swedish Homeowners Association in Karlskrona says that the mosque is not an issue, but a minaret is something else completely. How many people want to move to a place with a call to prayer five time a day? Instead of increased integration he's afraid it will have the opposite effect.

Carl-Göran Svensson (M), chairperson of the environment and building committee says that noise levels will have to abide by the law. He says that as far as he knows, the church clocks have been seen as disturbing, though people live next to it.

Imam Abboud Sleiman responds: "The minaret is a symbol. It is prohibited to have the call of prayer from it. We will have the call to prayer inside the premises at a normal conversational level, there will be no difference with how it's been before. According to our religion we must not disturb our neighbours."

There we have it.

The minaret, a symbol of Islamic dominance over certain areas for centuries, is just the same as a church steeple, the Islamic call to prayer would be the same as church bells.

Of course.

Only one of those things comes from Swedish and Western culture, however.

Only one represents the domination of parts of Sweden by unassimilable cultural aliens who will bide their time as more and more of their minarets soar skywards, and anyone who objects is dismissed as a crank, a racist, a xenophobe.

Sweden is a society which is determined to commit national suicide, however.

Only yesterday it was announced that the Swedish state would expend great energy and resources ensuring that the children of illegal immigrants in the country got a Swedish education - all at the expense of the taxpayer, of course:

The Swedish government has appointed a commission with the task of establishing the right of children of illegal immigrants to attend school.

Education minister Jan Björklund is confident that the proposal will eventually become law, Sveriges Radio reports.

"It is maybe a question of several hundred, or perhaps thousand, children who are in Sweden but currently have no right to go to school," Björklund said to Ekot.

"We reason that all children in the world, regardless of where they live and regardless of their parents rights or wrongs, have a right to a school education."

The commission of inquiry will consider the rights of children whose parents have come to Sweden illegally and may not have applied for residence permits, or may have had their applications rejected. There are no figures as to how many children there are, Sveriges Radio reports.

Jan Björklund categorically promises that if the Alliance government remains in power after the next general election (in September 2010) then legislation will be passed to enable all children in Sweden, regardless of status, access to schooling.

The plans were welcomed by Christina Heilborn, a lawyer at Unicef.

"We are very happy and welcome this decision. This is also something that we have previously demanded," she said.

Of course, a sane state would deport illegal immigrants it managed to track down - but those words certainly do not describe modern Sweden, which is now in support of the active violation of its own laws.