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RELIGION

Swedish tax money benefits Scientology

Swedish taxpayers have been indirectly supporting the Church of Scientology though local government contracts given to front organizations with ties to the group.

According to a Sveriges Television (SVT) documentary set to air on Wednesday, 156 of Sweden’s 290 local councils have contributed more than 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) to the Scientology movement.

Much of the money has been channeled through contracts with Narconon, a company which offers a controversial treatment method for drug addicts.

According to SVT, Narconon also serves as a front organization for the Church of Scientology and contributes 10 percent of its earnings to the main branch of the movement.

“I don’t actually think that politics can dictate what they do with their profits,” said Cecilia Lund, a Social Democratic council member from Eslöv in southern Sweden, to SVT.

Eslöv has paid Narconon more than 1.5 million kronor for its services in the last five years

The SVT report also details other organizations with ties to the Church of Scientology that have received contracts with various municipalities in Sweden.

One such organization is the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), which attempts to discredit all forms of psychiatry and claims that psychiatry is to blame for the Holocaust and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

SVT has interviewed people who have abandoned Scientology who explain that the movement relies on front organizations to raise money and recruit members.

“If they [municipalities] give money to Scientology front-organizations, then the Scientologists will increase their control in Sweden in a very disingenuous way,” said Los Angeles native and 24-year Scientology veteran Michael Pattinson to SVT.

Scientology is a body of beliefs and practices created by American author L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s. Many outsiders accuse the group of being a cult which brainwashes its members

The movement has several celebrities among its ranks, including Tom Cruise and John Travolta.

RELIGION

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

The Sunni Muslim world's most prestigious educational institution, Al-Azhar in Egypt, has called for the boycott of Swedish and Dutch products after far-right activists destroyed Korans in those countries.

Al-Azhar university calls for Sweden boycott over Koran burning

Al-Azhar, in a statement issued on Wednesday, called on “Muslims to boycott Dutch and Swedish products”.

It also urged “an appropriate response from the governments of these two countries” which it charged were “protecting despicable and barbaric crimes in the name of ‘freedom of expression'”.

Swedish-Danish far-right politician Rasmus Paludan on Saturday set fire to a copy of the Muslim holy book in front of Turkey’s embassy in Stockholm, raising tensions as Sweden courts Ankara over its bid to join Nato.

EXPLAINED:

The following day, Edwin Wagensveld, who heads the Dutch chapter of the German anti-Islam group Pegida, tore pages out of the Koran during a one-man protest outside parliament.

Images on social media also showed him walking on the torn pages of the holy book.

The desecration of the Koran sparked strong protests from Ankara and furious demonstrations in several capitals of the Muslim world including in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Yemen.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry “strongly condemned” the Koran burning, expressing “deep concern at the recurrence of such events and the recent Islamophobic escalation in a certain number of European countries”.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson condemned Paludan’s actions as “deeply disrespectful”, while the United States called it “repugnant”.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Monday said the burning was the work of “a provocateur” who “may have deliberately sought to put distance between two close partners of ours – Turkey and Sweden”.

On Tuesday, Turkey postponed Nato accession talks with Sweden and Finland, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned Stockholm for allowing weekend protests that included the burning of the Koran.

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