Cecilia Uddén has worked as a foreign correspondent in the Middle East for Swedish Radio for thirty years. Over the years, she has seen how the countries there have changed.
– It is even more gloomy there than in the rest of the world. I feel great hopelessness, she says.
The correspondent has also seen how the image of Sweden has changed since 2022 when Rasmus Paludan was the first to burn the Koran.
– Many are extremely angry and many are sad – upset. The image of Sweden has of course changed dramatically, she says.
However, Cecilia Uddén believes that the image of Sweden is fundamentally positive and that many she meets do not want to judge Sweden by Koran burnings. She tells about a man she met in Gaza last spring.
– He said: “If we were to judge the whole of Sweden by what a crazy Koran burner does, it would be like you were to judge the whole of the Middle East by what IS does”.
Politicians increase disappointment in Sweden
According to the foreign correspondent, people are generally not as angry and vengeful as what you can get the picture of when you listen to the terror warnings. She says that when she has interviewed people about their image of Sweden, many have been positive.
– It was even the case that I met a representative from terror-labelled Hamas and asked why they had not condemned Sweden. He then looked at me in surprise and said “why would we do that?”.
Despite the still partly positive image of Sweden, Cecilia Uddén believes that there are some Swedish representatives who worsen the image of the country. For example, in mid-August the Liberals’ Carl B Hamilton stated that the limit of what kind of discrimination the party could tolerate was at Jews, for which he later apologised.
– Among other things, this statement naturally reflects the disappointment that exists in the Western world, and now Sweden in particular – when it comes to the attitude towards the Muslim world, says Cecilia Uddén.