The New Stockholm Syndrome: Issuing Tickets while Sweden Burns

by Ralph Sidway, guest contributor

It’s been a busy week for many of the counter-jihad bloggers, who daily have had to revise their headings on the “Youth Riots” in Sweden, as they entered their third, fourth, fifth, sixth nights of car burnings, vandalism and mass psychosis. Of course, as we all have become accustomed to deciphering, the “Youths” are actually Muslims, and this is the same type of behavior seen in Muslim quarters of Paris and elsewhere, as all across Europe and England, Muslim areas have become “No Go Zones” even for the police. The same is nearly true now in some American cities such as Dearborn, Michigan, where Muslims population growth and influence of local government and police has resulted in persecution of Christians, stonings, and arresting of Christians for exercising their Constitutional rights to free speech on public sidewalks.

Then, just when you think the world might be starting to wake up to the true nature of the Islamic threat, after not only the week-long Muslim car-burning riots in Sweden, but also the rapid succession of the Boston Marathon Jihad Bombing, the broad-daylight beheading of a British soldier to cries of “Allahu Akbar,” and the stabbing of a French soldier by a Muslim in Paris, we read the most stunning statement of capitulation and self-emasculation:

”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible.” – Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Lofving (Swedish newspaper Expressen, Tues. 5/21/13)

Well, it’s hard to imagine living down to a lower expectation, but in fact, this inventive strategy of non-intervention has been exceeded by the same Stockholm police:

Swedish parking laws, however, continue to be rigidly enforced despite the increasingly chaotic situation. Early Wednesday, while documenting the destruction after a night of rioting in the Stockholm suburb of Alby, a reporter from Fria Tider observed a parking enforcement officer writing a ticket for a burnt-out Ford.

When questioned, the officer explained that the ticket was issued because the vehicle lacked a tag showing its time of arrival. The fact that the vehicle had been effectively destroyed – its windshield smashed and the interior heavily damaged by fire – was irrelevant according to the meter maid, who asked Fria Tider’s photographer to destroy the photos he had taken. (Fria Tider, 5/24/13)

This two-pronged approach of Stockholm’s finest is a depressing metaphor for the overall response of the West — Europe, the United States and Canada — to the adherents of Islam exploding, butchering, stabbing and beheading all around us:

1. Do as little as possible,
2. Prosecute the victims.

We see approach #1 in play via the Obama Administration purging from its national security lexicon any reference to Islam, treating the Ft Hood massacre as “workplace violence,” and doing nothing to protect Ambassador Chris Stevens and the U.S. Benghazi consulate staff, neither by providing adequate security to begin with, nor through sending a team to defend/rescue them. The Obama administration has sought to engage with the Muslim Brotherhood to promote Islamic regimes throughout the Middle East, while doing as little as possible to protect Christians and other religious minorities, or to hold accountable the extremist Islamic governments they have helped sweep into power. Aside from drone attacks (which pose their own set of issues) and the killing of Osama bin Laden, the Obama administration’s ambition, like the Stockholm police, seems to be to “do as little as possible” to deal adequately with what is a major national security threat, and what is quickly turning into a religious cleansing movement if not outright genocide.

We see #2 in the pressures being brought on free speech here and abroad. The arrest of a Coptic filmmaker in the wake of the Benghazi attack for producing a video about Muhammad which had nothing to do with prompting the attack, and the Obama administration’s support of UN Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, which called upon Western nations to criminalize “defamation of religion,” i.e. criticism of Islam. Even without Islamic blasphemy laws codified on the books, the relentless charges of “Islamophobia” leveled against any and all who report truthfully on Islam’s texts, teachings, culture, historical practices and current atrocities has a dampening effect on free speech, and in essence prosecutes the innocent for standing up for preserving our culture and liberties.

The old saying, “Nero fiddled while Rome burned” can now be applied to the willfully blind leaders of the tottering remnants of Western Civilization. In the new Stockholm Syndrome, they’re writing tickets and persecuting the victims while Muslims burn the world down.

Ralph Sidway is an Orthodox Christian researcher and writer, and author of Facing Islam: What the Ancient Church has to say about the Religion of Muhammad.  He operates the Facing Islam blog.