The following is a question which appears in a 9th grade Swedish religion-class schoolbook in the 'Judaism' chapter. Under the title "Who has a right to the land", the student is asked:
"Imagine that you ask a Jew and an Arab who has a right to the land that is now called Israel. Write what you think they'll answer and what motivates their view. What does the girl that's about to blow herself and others up think?"
The question is accompanied by two images. On the left, "Jewish man". On the right, "Arab girl". The image actually shows a group of people getting on a bus.
To make it clear: the topic is Judaism. Not the Jewish-Arab conflict, not the history of the State of Israel. The student is asked to empathize with the Jewish connection to their homeland. Then the student is asked to empathize with the Arab link to "Israel". And then, to top it off, the student is asked to empathize with and justify a suicide bomber. There's no mention of Islam, no mention that the suicide bomber in question aims to kill Jews. The image in the book is completely unrelated, and the girl is not dressed like an Arab or Muslim at all.
Let's repeat this again: The student is asked to empathize with a young girl, about his age, in Western dress, who has decided to murder Jews.
And now comes the second part of this weird story. The book hit the news (GT here and here), because a Palestinian complained that it's racist and Islamophobic. It sets Jews and Arabs against each other, but even worse: the book implies that all Arabs are terrorists. Not only that, they chose a young girl, which teaches that the Arabs are so dangerous, even their kids are dangerous and satanic. The girl isn't even given a good reason for committing a suicide bombing. The context is completely neutral.
The author, Leif Östhammar was, of course, shocked at the accusations. He says that he wrote the book a decade ago, when there were many bombings, and therefore he was thinking of this girl.
He was not thinking of the Jews. It did not occur to him to ask what the Jewish terror victims were thinking when there were 'many bombings'. The only question he could come up on this subject, for the chapter dedicated to Judaism was: what does a suicide bomber think.
What leftists don't understand is that justification of Arab terrorism is actually racism. Leftists 'understand' why Arabs murder Jews. They see nothing wrong with it. They don't even think Arabs need a 'good reason'. That is real racism, and that is real "Islamophobia". It's also antisemitism, but that doesn't seem to bother anybody nowadays.
The opposite of Islamophobia would be to have the same expectations from Arabs and Muslims as you would from any other Swede. It's no wonder that a Palestinian living in Sweden was shocked at this question.
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