Sveriges Radio’s (Swedish Public Radio) morning devotional on 1 October was held by Mariam Salem and titled “All are equal in the eyes of God.” This is what she had to say about the pilgrimage to Mecca:
“We human beings are never as equal as when we stand in prayer before God, and we can never experience a more concrete act of equality than when we are in Mecca during the pilgrimage.”
She is free to express that view, of course, but it is a rather curious position – at least if you subscribe to the Wikipedia definition of equality:
Because Mecca is not just any city. It is one of the most aggressively, institutionally unequal places in the entire world. Non-Muslims must stay at least 15 kilometres away. Women cannot move freely without a male guardian. Those who are atheists, believe in the wrong god, or love someone of the wrong sex are persecuted, oppressed and murdered, in accordance with religious law.
In light of this, it’s rather strange to frame prayer in Mecca specifically as a beautiful manifestation of equality. The only equality to be found there is the kind you see among people who believe the same thing and celebrate an authoritarian ideology together. For the others – those who do not bow obediently in prayer – there is no equality in Mecca. There, they have no right to be equal; they do not even have the right to live. It is a full-scale, and very real, Handmaid’s Tale-type dystopia.
Despite this, Mariam Salem is given a platform on Swedish public radio, to speak, unopposed, about Mecca as a paradise of equality. Unfortunately, it seems that even in highly secular Sweden, you can get away with expressing opinions in the name of religion that would otherwise, rightly, be considered entirely unacceptable.
Imagine a radio devotional where a white nationalist speaks dreamily of a country and a city where no non-nationalists are permitted, where anti-nationalists and homosexuals are legally murdered, where women have no rights or freedoms whatsoever.
Could such a thing ever have been broadcast on Sveriges Radio, as part of an ostensibly pensive morning programme, without caveats, without immediately being followed by critical discussion? I don’t think so – and I’m happy that’s the case.
The fact that these kinds of ideas are allowed to slide by, under an innocent shimmer of spiritual warmth, just because they happen to be religious, is harmful. The ideas expressed in Mecca are not harmful by coincidence.
They are part of a religious worldview wholly intolerant of all forms of equality. There is no freedom of religion, no sexual freedom, no freedom of speech or opinion. These ideas are used to oppress people – women, non-believers and non-heterosexuals – in places like Mecca above all, but also among believers in Sweden and elsewhere. They are used to terrorise people into not showing their love, not thinking freely, not questioning religious teachings.
It is therefore especially unfortunate that public service broadcasting, where many leading voices frequently highlight the importance of defending democracy and equality for all, lets something like this air without so much as a word of commentary. Salem is of course free believe that the pilgrimage to one of the world’s most unequal places somehow magically becomes an expression of “concrete equality” – but someone at Sveriges Radio could at least have asked her to define equality.