Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Swedish Politician Fighting Racism Denies Calling Jews ‘Impure’

(JTA) — A Swedish politician from Malmo who has worked on integration of immigrants denied saying that Jews and Armenians have “impure spirits.”

Muhammad Khorshid, who represents the Liberals on the city council of the municipality in southern Sweden, told Expressen that the comment in his name from 2016 on Facebook belonged to a fake account. The person behind that account wrote in Turkish about the two ethnicities: “We call them out for their impure spirits,” the daily reported Thursday.

The issue is the subject of an internal probe within the party, the report said.

Malmo has about 350,000 residents, of whom about one-third are from Muslim-majority countries. The relatively high prevalence of anti-Semitic incidents has exposed the city to international scrutiny.

The City of Malmo has directed thousands of euros to integration and anti-racism projects headed by Khorshid, whose origins are in Iraq and who is active within Malmo’s Muslim population.

The statement about Jews and Armenians appeared on Khorshid’s account in response to a comment by an Islamic preacher who wrote: “There are still Jews and Armenians who live under Turkish flag. This has to be questioned. The only true owners of this country are the Muslims.”

According to Expressen, the comment about impurity appeared under the name Muhammad Samanci – one of two names by which Khorshid self-identifies. “Fake Facebook accounts have been created in my name,” he told Expressen. “My name is Mohammed Khorshid, nothing else, he says, meaning that the account with the name of is false.”

But in a recent interview with a television channel from Azerbaijan, he was introduced as Muhammad Khurshid Samanci, Expressen reported.

Alyssa Fisher is a news writer at the Forward. Email her at [email protected], or follow her on Twitter at @alyssalfisher

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.