Islamic Foundation slams President’s comments
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, with the Saudi Ambassador. Photo: forseti.is
Icelandic President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson has been criticised for stirring up mistrust of Islam and “suspicions” regarding funding received from Saudi Arabia for the building of a new mosque in Iceland.
The Islamic Foundation of Iceland posted an open letter to the President on its Facebook page yesterday criticising recent remarks made by Grímsson in Icelandic media in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Paris.
The letter accuses the President of unfairly conflating Muslims in Iceland and neighbouring countries with “the most extreme version of Islam” and of taking a hypocritical stance on the dangers posed by Islamic terrorism.
The Foundation is reported to have recently received funds from Saudi Arabia to finance the building of a new mosque in Iceland. President Grímsson told Icelandic media that he considered it “unnatural for a foreign state that to get involved in this way in the operations of religious congregations in Iceland”.
The letter points out that foreign gifts from other countries to Icelandic religious institutions are “hardly a novelty” and that Iceland has in the past funded Icelandic Lutheran churches abroad.
The Saudi money was given without any conditions, says the Foundation, and not in order to “interfere with the religious life of Icelanders, let alone to radicalise young men into a holy war against a European society of human rights, tolerance and freedom”.
The authors wonder at the President’s failure to make special warnings about other types of religious extremism or religious-motivated terrorism, such as those committed by Christians in Utøya, Norway (2011) and Colorado Springs, USA (2015).
Directly singling out Islam as a source of extremist terrorism is “undeniably unfortunate”, says the letter.
“Let us cast aside childishness and immaturity, and foster understanding, open-mindedness and tolerance,” conclude the authors of the post.
