DN's favorite team has started to “sound like an angry friend of Sweden”

Published 1 May 2024 at 11.47

Domestic. At Dagens Nyheter they are now angry that the imam Salahuddin Barakat – whom the left-wing newspaper previously hailed as an example of integration – suddenly no longer sounds so warm and liberal. Now he preaches against the Swedish media and completely refuses to appear for interviews himself.

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“Malmö imam Salahuddin Barakat was the strongest Muslim voice against extremism and radicalisation. Today he sounds like an SD debater”, writes DN's Erik Helmerson in an editorial.

Helmerson states that “the famous former the bridge builder, the Muslim voice against extremism”, now sounds “like an angry 56-year-old Swedish friend with a lot of time, four anonymous Twitter accounts and half a can of strong beer”.

In a report in DN, it is described how Salahuddin Barakat did not longer expresses himself as a liberal cozy uncle who fights against extremism and for “integration”.

Instead, he preaches on YouTube that Muslims should boycott SVT – which he calls fake news – and other Swedish media. The Malmö imam also condemns homosexuality “so harshly that some Muslims have stopped following him”, claims DN.

“Has Malmö's Muslim bridge builder become a bridge burner?” reads the headline of DN's report.

Salahuddin Barakat himself has begun to boycott Swedish media and no longer responds to inquiries.

The decision to withdraw apparently came in connection with the war in Gaza was launched last fall.

Barakat was previously involved with the Amanah integration project, which crashed last fall when the Jewish community's representative quit.

Amanah received seven-figure sums in grants from the General Heritage Fund to ” prevent anti-Semitism and Islamophobia”.

Salahuddin Barakat's former integration partner, Rabbi Moshe David HaCohen, is disappointed that the Malmö imam has withdrawn from liberal contexts and now condemns homosexuality.

– I think that as a bridge builder, you have a responsibility for the bridge you have built, says the rabbi to DN.