[I flaired this effortpost even though it's not as academic and full of sources backing something up like my previous effortposts, because I thought it was relatively high effort and made some kind of argument. If that's wrong, mods can reflair it or I can repost if needed or something]

Edit: Please stop bringing up Islamism as a counter to my comments on how people see Muslims. Islamism and Muslims are not inherently linked, nobody on this sub supports Islamism, obviously, we all know Islamists fucking suck, but the argument that Islamophobia is fake because Islamophobes just hate Islamism is also stupid

Also, the number of replies I've got with clearly bigoted comments (eg. that we shouldn't deal with Islamophobia in the west because Muslim countries are bad, comparing Muslims to nazis, associating western Muslims in general to terrorists and Islamist regimes, just proves my point about this being normalised.

Thought I had to say this. Might end up being a long one but the frankly pretty disheartening stuff I'd seen in the two Sweden riots threads so far made me want to do this.

My point really is that, regardless of what you think or don't think of the specific current issue, I think this is just showing itself as another example where discussion of immigration, race, ethnicity, Muslims etc. on the topic of Europe often comes with borderline bigotry. You see this on places like r/europe, in the politics of European countries, and unfortunately, on this sub as well. This'll probably end up getting long, but do read on before attacking me or whatever, I've actually been thinking about this for the last couple of days.

The actual issue of the riots themselves is a bit beside the point. That said it's the issue that prompted this so it's probably worth discussing.

Obviously, rioting for almost any reason in a liberal democracy is bad. The riots should be stopped by police force if necessary, and anyone caught taking part arrested and punished according to the law. Almost everyone who lives in and supports a liberal democracy agrees with this.

I do think the way it's been talked about on here has frankly oversimplified things somewhat to its detriment though. Calling it 'just someone burning a book' that caused it is a bit disingenuous when like, it's caused by a far right group (that officially supports turning Scandinavia into ethnostates and deporting all non-whites including citizens [(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Line_(political_party)#Philosophy)] going round cities with large ethnic minority populations on purpose. Does that justify violence? No, of course not, but if you portray it a bit more charitably it changes the picture. Imagine some KKK guys going to a black neighbourhood in the US on purpose for some kind of dumb protest thing, and then it causes a violent backlash [Example of KKK 'peaceful' protest being attacked in recent times]. We would not condone it, but we would understand it a bit more right? Perhaps that case is more extreme than this one, but I think it shows how these things change how you'd view this stuff.

However, we're all ultimately on the same page. Rioting is bad, it's rightly illegal, rioting because of someone burning a book is unacceptable and rioters should be punished.

I do think that, in a lot of European (and non-European) politics in general, and on this sub in particular, a lot of very wrong and ultimately kinda bigoted conclusions have quickly come out of cases like this though.

On this sub alone, I've seen upvoted comments saying various things like this proves that Muslim immigration to Europe is destabilising its society, even implying that all Muslims are inherently violent. I've seen people arguing that because most Muslim-majority states are backwards, that means western Muslims must be too. I've seen people calling for much harsher restrictions on immigration to prevent destabilisation in Europe. How is this not a watered down version of the great replacement myth? That Europe's being swamped by crazy Muslims that are going to destroy its society?

I've seen people upvoted for supporting Denmark's 'ghetto' laws as a blueprint for Sweden and stuff. What, the law that would limit the number of 'non-western' people in a neighbourhood (which, by the way, includes Danish citizens of non-European descent, this is literally discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity).

And what's the 'proof' that Muslims in Europe are a threat and Muslim immigration is a destabilising force? That there have been some riots by Muslims for a dumb, unjustified reason? Ok but compare that to how the sub and most people talk about other riots. I remember a few years ago when the BLM riots were happening, people were rightly condemning violent rioters and looters, as they should, I do too, but people who said the BLM movement as a whole is violent and a threat were being downvoted, as people pointed out some violence from some members doesn't mean you can generalise. Now imagine if someone said "this is proof that the African American community has a violent, extremist culture and they're a threat to American society." because that's basically the equivalent. How would that go down? I have to imagine not well.

Or look at other riots for even more ridiculous reasons. A few years ago millions of French people rioted across the country for months because the tax on diesel was increased. More than 100 cars were burned in a single day in Paris. Was there a reaction of people saying "this proves French culture is backwards and violent, we should deport French people from other countries?" No because that'd be ridiculous. Nobody thinks the yellow vest protests were justified, but nobody thinks they indicate French people are inherently violent and collectively guilty either.

What about when football hooligans in Europe riot for the 1000th time because their team lost a football match? That's even more ridiculous than rioting because someone burned a book, but nobody says football is a threat to the social fabric of Europe, people just condemn the drunk idiots who riot.

Think about it, is it really fair to extrapolate from incidents of violence like this, and argue that European Muslims are collectively a problem, or their immigration to Europe represents a threat? When Trump said that Mexicans are rapists bringing crime to the US but 'some are good people', he got condemned across the planet as a racist. How is this not the same? Well as someone who lives in London, one of Europe's most diverse cities, a city which is 15% Muslim, and has known a dozen or more young Muslims, I can tell you that they were on the whole just as liberal and open-minded as anyone else. Are they a threat to you?

The frustrating thing here is that, from my perspective in the UK, we've been here before. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a huge racist backlash against non-white immigration. The idea that too many immigrants from Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia would flood the country and destabilise its society because of their 'foreign' and 'backwards' culture was very popular. Thatcher pandered to it, even though she may not have completely believed in it. Earlier on, Enoch Powell compared immigration to barbarians invading the Roman Empire and called for it to be halted and civil rights protections to be abolished to stop the downfall of the UK, and polls found something like 70% of Brits agreed with him. And there were riots. The tensions between a powerful racist far right and the oppressed, poor immigrant communities meant violence flared up. A lot of people pointed to violent riots by Black and South Asian immigrants to say "look, they're violent, they're destabilising, they're attacking police and burning stuff, we need to kick them out."

Well what happened? Society settled down, we moved forward, we created a diverse, multiethnic Britain with one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the world, very little ethnic/religious violence, people of all backgrounds were integrated into British society. Now there are multiple top cabinet members who are Muslim, as well as high-ranking members of British society. We still do get flare ups of Islamophobia and anti-immigrant racism like everywhere in Europe, of course - it certainly contributed in small part to brexit among many other things, but overall I think it has been well and truly proven wrong. Are Sadiq Khan and Sajid Javid threats to British society because they're Muslim?

We had BLM protests in the UK, including some violent rioting, even though the original trigger for BLM wasn't even here, and comparatively speaking, police brutality is far less of a problem. There were still protests against the racism that does exist here, and some of that escalated into riots. Did Brits go back into ranting about how this proves the black British community is a violent threat? No, of course not. The Conservative PM openly supported and sympathised with the grievances of the BLM movement, while specifically condemning violence.

The idea that immigration from 'backwards' countries will destabilise your society is a myth. It was a myth before in Britain (and indeed the US - see Chinese exclusion, fear of Catholics etc.) and it's still a myth. But it's a myth that's pervasive still. You have the Danish social democrats openly calling for racial discrimination within their own cities, and openly exempting Ukrainian refugees from the restrictions refugees from the Islamic world had because they're "from the local area." This myth of the immigrant threat, now applied to Muslim immigrants to Europe, is still often used, from the top of real life politics down to internet users. Look at how violent and anti-immigrant r/europe and such are - people on there call for the sinking of refugee boats to stop the evil Muslim refugees getting into Europe, and this is on an apparently mainstream, relatively 'liberal' European subreddit. This sub might not be as bad as that, but some of the talking points I've seen have been close.

Xenophobia and bigotry isn't acceptable just because it's in Europe rather than the US and covered in a veneer of liberal language. But you see that rhetoric everywhere, in real life European politics, on reddit in general and, unfortunately, over the last couple of days, on the sub. I think it's time to have some introspection on that. I am a mixed race Brit of immigrant background. I'm not Muslim, but having known many British Muslims who were great, liberal people, I wouldn't want them to be seen negatively because of some silly racist backlash to a riot. I also think that the conclusion that immigration of people of 'foreign' 'backwards' cultures can irreversibly destabilise European countries is generally extremely dangerous - it's been used many times to attack immigrant communities and fuel far right movements. I think it should be consciously and strongly avoided.