Radio Islam News and Agencies | 10 Rabi ul Awwal 1439/29 November 2017

A politician in Sweden has been forced to step down after he said in a live TV debate that Muslims were not “fully human”.

Martin Strid, a member of the right-wing Sweden Democrats(SD), sparked the controversy when he ranked ‘Islamists’ on a scale of humanity ranging from “0 to 100” while speaking at a party national conference.

“On one end you are 100 per cent human, a person, everything that’s part of that concept. At the other end, you are 100 per cent Mohammedan,” he said, according to a translation of his comments by the Swedish edition of The Local, cited by the Independent.

Mohammedan is a disparaging reference to Muslims once quite common in the parlance of orientalists.

Strid continued by saying that “all Muslims are somewhere on that scale” and that members of terror group ISIS “are close to being 100% Mohammedan.”

“If you are an ex-Muslim you have come quite far towards being fully human,” Strid said.

He added that he wants to “free Muslims from Islam, the goal is for them to join SD instead.”

He was speaking at the party’s national conference in Norrköping, Östergötland in the south east of Sweden. The speech was broadcasted on SVT, the Swedish national public TV broadcaster, who said that Strid was reported for hate speech on Sunday.

Strid later apologised for his statement. “It was very unfortunate, I expressed myself very clumsily,” he told news site TT.

“If you are stressed and in a hurry, you can sometimes express yourself wrongly,” Strid said.

“I know a lot of Muslims and am good friends with a lot. People are people, of course,” he added.

Strid reportedly quit the party just a few hours later.

Mr Strid’s party colleagues immediately denounced his comments, with its secretary Richard Jomshof saying the statement amounted to “racism”.

“Everyone has fundamental human worth, the same for everyone. If you think that someone has a worse value based on a certain skin colour or the community they are part of, that is racism for me. We will not accept that,” Mr Jomshof said

SD board member and MP Aron Emilsson later officially distanced the party from Mr Strid.

“It is a statement we, from the party leadership, take a clear distance from. Categorising people and human values based on what religious beliefs you have is a way we cannot argue,” it said, according to a report by SVT. “It is contrary to our basic view of human dignity.”

Party leader Jimmie Åkesson went a step further claiming he had “never heard of [Strid] before” his speech, TV4 reported.

“In this case it is very clear that if it isn’t racism it is very close to racism,” said Åkesson.

Sweden is set to go the polls in a general election scheduled for September next year, with Sweden Democrats recently becoming the most popular party in the country, according to one poll.

According to Newsweek, the SD, which has been criticized repeatedly for racism and for its  “Nazi roots,” has more than doubled its votes in the 2014 general election, but remains isolated and shunned by every other party in parliament. 

In the wake of the developments, several commentators on social media criticised the Nazi undertones of Strid’s comments, highlighting the eventual consequences of such dehumanisation.

“Nazis described Jews as Untermenschen, or “subhumans,” as a means to prepare the groundwork for genocide,” wrote one user.

“Martin Strid’s claim that “Muslims are not ‘fully human'” is verbatim the Nazi playbook. This is not “free speech.” It is incitement to terrorism.