Sweden to crack down on Islamic schools

Sweden plans to ban groups who do not support gender equality from starting or running schools, the country’s education minister said on Sunday.Gustav Fridolin made the call as he launched an inquiry into tightening the regulation of religious schools in the country.  “The regulatory framework will be tightened,” Gustav Fridolin wrote in an article in the Aftonbladet newspaper. “Those who do not support fundamental values around equality and human rights should be stopped from running free schools in Sweden.”  The proposal comes as the debate around religious free schools continues to rage in the country, most recently over the decision to let the Islamic headmaster and former Moderate party MP Abdirisak Waberi start a new Islamic school in the city of Borås.  Waberi has been criticised in the past for attempting to explain why under Islam it is permitted for a man to marry four women but not for a woman to marry four men, and for expressing a desire to live in a state governed by Shariah law. In 2006, he told Ottar magazine that he thought men should be the heads of their families.  “In my opinion, it is the man that is the strong person in the relationship. He controls the relationship, and the woman stands as a base,” he said.

Source: Sweden to crack down on Islamic schools – The Local