Swedish Archbishop Abused for Her Tolerance to Islam
"I was not prepared for this spite and hatred," Archbishop Antje Jackelén told Sveriges Radio P4 Kristianstad.
“It's clear that I am being personally referred to, it is hard to protect yourself when there is so much aggression,” she added.
Jackelén, a 58-year-old mother of two, became the first female archbishop of the Church of Sweden after she appeared as a clear winner of October's archbishop election where she clocked up 55.9 percent of the vote.
Planned to take up the post next year, German-born Jackelén is presently a bishop in Lund in southern Sweden.
An early advocate of social media she posts regularly on Twitter and her number of followers has doubled to 5,600 since her election triumph.
Known for her religious tolerance, she has been the target of abuse by users on xenophobic online forums and Twitter who have slammed Jackelén for her beliefs and even her hairstyle.
"Choose Muhammed instead so we can be spared from your ugly old man's haircut," posted one user on a message board while another asked for her to be burned at the stake.
Not only abuse, she has been the subject of several death threats on social media with a lot of the abuse coming via Twitter.
"I know that there have been death threats which were then removed," she said.
Jackelén added to P4 Kristianstad that most of the abuse is motivated by "nationalism and an incredibly great fear and hatred of Islam."
Muslims make up between 450,000 and 500,000 of Sweden’s nine million people, according to the US State Department report in 2011.
Across the Nordic region, anti-immigration parties have been targeting Muslims to attract supporters.
In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats party’s manifesto describes Muslims as “seriously jeopardizing the Swedish nation”.
The party has also sought a ban on face-veil and halting immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.
Source: On Islam
