Stockholm
I have been an immigrant in Stockholm for 20 years and witnessed the major changes that have taken place during that time.
It's not only that we now have a fine mosque, which we didn't have then. The changes have taken place across a much broader spectrum and at a much deeper level. In the '80s, we were strangers in a strange country; now we have firm ground under our feet. We have become used to Sweden, and Sweden has become used to us.
Fifteen years ago, there were 20,000 Kurds in Sweden; now we are 50,000. All this means that various nationalities — Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Pakistanis, Iranians — have been able to form regular immigrant communities, and we have become visible. We have established associations, become organized and entered political life.
In the current Swedish Parliament, 28 members are immigrants or children of immigrants. Our mosque makes me proud. It is a gathering spot, a wonderful place to go on Fridays to worship and to meet friends. The Swedes also come to visit. They don't see it so much as a house of God than as a house of culture. For me their coming here is acceptance, what I call integration.
SODERMALM In the 1960s and '70s, foreign workers from Turkey and Pakistan poured into northern Europe to fuel the economic boom. In Scandinavia, particularly, the new ethnic groups were highly visible elements in a culture that was unaccustomed to outsiders. In the 1980s, Muslim Turkish and Pakistani immigrants were joined by a new group of refugees from the Middle East, and with them came even more interest in practicing their faith. Islam is now Sweden's second-largest religion. In Stockholm, a visible sign of Islam's importance is the stately mosque that opened in 2000 in a former electrical power plant in the central Södermalm district. The building's unusual architecture made it perfect as a mosque: designed in 1903 in the Art Nouveau style, it already had Middle Eastern touches such as green-and-white geometric tile work and vaulted ceilings. And in the best Swedish tradition, the building even has a sauna, which is strictly segregated between males and females — ULLA PLON
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