"Look how quickly Sweden has been falling apart." I just checked out the Gross national happiness ranking of Sweden, and they don't seem to think they are falling apart. http://worldhappiness.report/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/03/HR-V1Ch2_web.pdf. I do think too much openness to immigration and throwing out benefits to all and sundry is going to make for long term problems, especially when combined with a certain amount of racism and a lot of ghettoization. You get a huge group of marginalized people, any people and there will be problems. The cracks in the policy are definitely showing.
Being generous in letting people in, while effectively maintaining a segregated society is going to cause problems. Do I think there were good intentions? Yes. But humans are kind of persistent in our flawed humanity.Poverty and a lack of opportunity combined with a weariness of the costs involved and the issues that the overwhelming poverty brings is going to result in issues. Throw in some fear (which is fair enough, after all the immigrants know better than most that there is a real danger when an outside group quickly starts using up resources and plays by different rules.) Then you have the normal thugginess of young people who are un or underemployed and bored and yep, there are issues. The country is not falling apart, but they are responding to some real issues.
Sharia law is not really the issue. Economics is the issue. No one is afraid of women wearing burkhini's or even burquas. That's just the excuse to further marginalize Muslims by hostile non-Muslims.
I don't wear headcoverings unless I am in a place where folks commonly do (When in rome and all that). NO ONE in my life has tried to force headcoverins on me. TWO men I know, who are very devout and lived or live in my home (not my husband) both think I should, but they treat me respectfully and we can agree to disagree. The folks in my 'circle' are not dogmatic about it and regard it as a choice for me to make. In the Quran, the mention of modesty was in order for women to be given proper respect and not harrassed. If wearing it is going to get me abused (or people playing chicken with me as I cross a parking lot, which happened once while covering in Texas) then I think it is obedient in spirit to not wear it, if someone tries to press the ONLY verse in the Quran about this subject on me. I know it better than they do:)
BTW, I have no use for cultural traditions disguised as religion. If a cultural tradition promotes good things and discourages evil things, I'm all for it. As good culture. Many traditions just support misogyny, racism, agism, nationalism and disrespect for others. They incorporate cultural sense of superiority and prejudices. I discourage and educate against that at every turn, whether in class or working with young women in my community.I have a first generation immigrant family that I work with a lot and the girls have a really smart and well balanced attitude about their family traditions vs. their faith. Even RELIGION vs. faith. I am happy to see that kind of critical thinking.
Classism and racism happens everywhere, even in Sweden. Take out religion altogether though and they are still going to be torked about the immigration issues, and they have a reason to be as terrorism aside, there are very real risks when rapidly bringing in a huge group of economically disadvantaged people whose language and culture are vastly different and who have been uprooted from their lives and family and homes. They will get over it. Mostly. Like we did with most of our minority groups. Still some rocky roads there, though, and still people will make disparaging remarks about an entire HUGE group of people and think they are morally superior in every way. Humanity is an ongoing process:)