Sweden: A Handshake with Democracy

 The controversy caused by the former Green Party politician Yasri Khan, who chose another form of greeting a female Swedish reporter over the common handshake, is sweeping the country with resentment and subtle racist comments.

This is understandable in a country that prides itself on gender equity like Sweden. Swedes see in Khan’s refusal to shake hands with a woman a serious threat to the equality between the sexes that they worked hard to achieve. For them, this refusal is an act of disrespect to women and a separatist behavior, however, there are more pressing questions that need to be answered once the waves of anger have subsided leaving a place to a more objective and calmer analysis of the situation. 

One is tempted to ask whether this reaction stems from a prejudiced viewpoint of Muslims and Islam in general. A viewpoint that sees that being a Muslim (or a religious person) means by default carrying anti-equality and misogynistic views and therefore the act of the religious Green politician has only confirmed to the public the pre-set stereotypes about a segment of the Swedish society. This opinion was affirmed when I asked some of my Swedish friends on their reaction if it were a woman who refused to shake hands with a male reporter. They responded that they would have thought she was a victim! This indicates that Muslims are often caught in the dichotomy of oppressor-victim.

Feminist scholarship has often warned against this naïve presumption that eliminates the cultural differences and the complexities that characterize human societies. Western Liberal Feminism is by no means the sole grid of evaluation by which a certain society is deemed egalitarian or not. Understanding this fact in the 21^st century is paramount to dissolving barriers that are still erect in many so-called modern democracies in the world.

This mixture of emotional, stereotypical and even populist discourses has blocked the most important discussion, which is the question of democracy and minority rights to perform in the different political platforms.

If a Green politician states that global warming is not real or that shaking hands with a person of the different sex is polluting, we would then have an issue of conflicting principles with the political party. Dismissing this politician becomes necessary because their views harm the party’s ideology.

If, on the other hand, a person be it a man or a woman, Green or otherwise chooses a certain form of greeting others because it is their way to get closer to their god, then we need to ask ourselves whether we are pushing minority groups to the margin by denying them the right to practice their faith under the law of a democratic state.

It is often difficult to listen to the voice of reason when we are caught in a whirlwind of emotional and populist discourse. The Swedish debate should shift its focus to a debate around the model of democracy best suited to an era of multiculturalism and diversity. Democracy is not about casting a vote in a ballot box, it is rather a daily practice. The handshake incident cast a shadow on latent issues such as that of post-immigrant Sweden and most importantly on minority rights to pursue a political career. How we deal with politicians from minority backgrounds in the political arena is an essential question in this millennium.

Some aspects of the current debate and the dimensions they took may be pushing the society to the "classical" democracy model in which the majority dictates on the minority its set of views and values. This model poses a problem when the minority aims for political leadership. They are often met with reservation and even rejection because they possess personal religious values that differ from mainstream thinking.

An alternative to this model is the “deep” democracy in which the voice of the minority is heard and processed and both majority and minority voices are equally valued.

Political actors are aware of the many other different models, and adopting a specific model may not be the solution, but Sweden, which has a short history of migration and is undergoing a state of confusion with new diverse norms brought by the waves of migration, needs to activate its political imagination to find solutions to the current challenges which are facing its post-modern society. Maybe we should start thinking of democracy as an ongoing process rather than an end-result that keeps eluding us.

In the light of this incident the Swedish PM Stefan Löfven declared " In Sweden, we shake hands with both men and women", perhaps it is high time to shake the mind and change the motto to, In Sweden, we shake hands with both majority and minority through democratic and inclusive processes.

Hana Al-Khamri, a Yemeni writer and the founder of The Yemeni Salon in Sweden.

Chahrazad Abdelrim, An Algerian teacher and doctoral student on Postcolonial Literature.