Just days after a senior Green Party minister was forced to stand down for his Islamist beliefs, another member of the same party has retired early from politics after his views prevented him from shaking hands during a television interview.
Green Parliamentary candidate Yasri Khan stood down from politics yesterday after he was recorded by Swedish television rejecting the offered hand of a female journalist, instead placing his hand to his heart in greeting. His Green Party masters have now admitted they know about his extreme views on contact with women, but decided to select him for election anyway, and have now admitted doing so was a “mistake”.
Committee chairman Joakim Larsson said of the prospective parlimentarian that “I have received strong reactions from the members who have expressed dissatisfaction… It is obvious that the Committee erred on this. That is why we have received so much criticism from the party the last day”.
He said he didn’t know if there were any other members of the party who objected to shaking a woman’s hand, reports AftonBladet.
That there has been some objection to the incident seemingly came as a surprise to the senior spokesman of Sweden’s ostensibly feminist Green party. Gustav Fridolin – who was also called upon to defend his ‘Islamist’ colleague Mehmet Kaplan before he was forced to stand down on Monday – said of Mr. Khan’s decision: “I had not realised how offensive some women would think it was”.
Speaking to Swedish television’s ‘Good Morning’ programme today, Mr. Fridolin said the nation was presently on a “difficult journey”, and the job now at hand was to “manage the clash of cultures that exists in Sweden and also within the Green Party”.
The resignation of Mr. Khan came amid more bad news for the coalition-partner Green Party, as it was revealed among the controversy over former cabinet minister Mehmet Kaplan the party had attempted to pressure Sweden Television into “dropping” coverage of the story, reports Expressen. Now the party has had to suspend press officer Magnus Johansson after the SVT television revealed he had attempted to change the subject of the news.
Former minister Mr. Kaplan had stood down on Monday, having weathered revelations about his eating dinner with known “neo-Nazi” Turkish nationalists. While he explained away this as a chance meeting, this and other long-standing accusations that he was a crpyto-Islamist become too much to bare after revelations on Monday about his anti-Semitic views.
The issue of Muslims refusing to shake hands in Europe is becoming a political flashpoint, as it is perceived as a significant outward sign of a failure of integration. The Breitbart London Migrant Crisis Livewire reported this week that Switzerland had frozen the migration application process of an Imam and his family, after his sons refused to shake hands with their teacher at school.
News of their refusal sparked a national debate on the traditional Swiss action of shaking hands with your teacher, and the integration of foreigners. The family may face deportation, depending on the outcome of their migration review.