A propos Eurovision in Malmo:
In May 2009:
For a glimpse of the future, consider the (for the moment) bizarre circumstances of the recent Davis Cup First Round matches in Sweden. They had been scheduled long ago to be played in the Baltiska Hallen stadium in Malmo. Who knew which team the Swedes would draw? Could have been Chile, could have been Serbia. Alas, it was Israel.
Malmo is Sweden's most Muslim city, and citing security concerns, the local council ordered the three days of tennis to be played behind closed doors. Imagine being Amir Hadad and Andy Ram, the Israeli doubles players, or Simon Aspelin and Robert Lindstedt, the Swedes. This was supposed to be their big day. But the vast stadium is empty, except for a few sports reporters and team officials. And just outside the perimeter up to 10,000 demonstrators are chanting, "Stop the match!" and maybe, a little deeper into the throng, they're shouting, "We want to kill all Jews worldwide" (as demonstrators in Copenhagen, just across the water, declared just a few weeks earlier). Did Aspelin and Lindstedt wonder why they couldn't have drawn some less controversial team, like Zimbabwe or Sudan? By all accounts, it was a fine match, thrilling and graceful, with good sportsmanship on both sides. Surely, such splendid tennis could have won over the mob, and newspapers would have reported that by the end of the match the Israeli players had the crowd with them all the way. But they shook 'em off at Helsingborg.
Now
I may not know much, but I know Malmö - although eighteen years ago one of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's many in-house lefties, Jill Singer, accused me of exaggerating the city's transformation. I offered to fly the late Ms Singer and an ABC crew to Sweden so that she could accompany me on what, by 2006, had already become my annual ritual in Malmö. The eminent presenter declined, being more concerned, fulminating-theocrat-wise, by George W Bush, on the grounds that "a faith-based US President ...scares the bejesus out of me". So, as in previous years, I walked my walk alone:
After that conference with Lars in Copenhagen a couple of years ago, I took the train over the water to Malmö in Sweden. Malmö was one of the first Christian cities in what was then Denmark. It's now on course to become the first Muslim city in Sweden. I sat and had a coffee in a nice little place in a beautiful medieval square in the heart of town. Aside from a few modernist excrescences, it would not have looked so different in the early days of the Lutheran church. I got lucky, and fell into conversation with a couple of cute Swedish blondes. Fine-looking ladies. I shall miss Scandinavian blondes when they're extinct. At dusk, and against their advice, I took a 20-minute walk to Rosengård. As you stroll the sidewalk, the gaps between blondes grow longer, and the gaps between young bearded Muslim men grow shorter. And then eventually you're in the housing projects, and all the young boys kicking a soccer ball around are Muslim, and every single woman is covered – including many who came from "moderate" Muslim countries and did not adopt the headscarf or hijab until they emigrated to Sweden, where it's compulsory, at least in Rosengård.
Do you remember the rationalization Israel used at the Oslo Accords? "Land for peace"? In Sweden, which is about as far as you can get from Gaza and the West Bank, they're also trading land for peace, and as in Gaza unlikely to wind up with either. The Jews are already fleeing Malmö: Soon it will be like Tangiers or Baghdad or any other Arab town with a weed-strewn, decaying "old Jewish cemetery" and no one left to tend it. But it's not just the Jewish graveyard that's destined to be abandoned, but the Lutheran ones, too.
I would urge anyone to do that twilight walk from downtown Malmö to Rosengård, as the blondes thin and the bearded men multiply. That's Europe's future walking toward you.
https://www.steynonline.com/14291/malmo-and-me