Imam Mahmoud denies he committed a crime and says that he was only quoting the Koran.

In a sermon, the Malmö imam Basem Mahmoud called Jews “offspring of pigs and apes.” Now he is being charged with incitement against a people. Mahmoud denies the crime and says that he was only reading the Koran.

“When one reads the Koran, one cannot change anything,” states Mahmoud.

In October of 2020, Imam Basem Mahmoud gave a sermon in his mosque in Malmö that was hostile to Christians as well as anti-Semitic. He accused Christians, Jews, Shia Muslims, and police authorities of conspiring with each other in a “snakes’ nest” — synagogue — against faithful Muslims.

The imam talks about “the great battle” when all non-Muslims will be forced to submit themselves to Muslims and prays to Allah that the Islamic God will defeat or destroy Christians and Jews.

In part of his sermon, the imam calls Jews “the offspring of pigs and apes.”
“In all times, the same deceptive villains stand in the way of the faithful. Everyone knows that Jews run the Western countries. Jews are their rulers. Jews are the offspring of pigs and apes. They are hostile to Muslims, but they will stand helpless against Islam,” he says.

The following video is the portion of the sermon, which was also uploaded to YouTube and for which Mahmoud is now being charged.

In a police interrogation, Basem Mahmoud denies the crime. He claims that he is only citing a passage from the Koran, which states that Allah transformed people who did not believe in him into apes and pigs.

“When one reads the Koran, one cannot change anything,” he says in the interrogation.

He also says that he “cannot change his religion for the sake of Jews” and points out that he usually doesn’t call Jews he meets on the street “apes” or “swine.”

It is not the first time that Basem Mahmoud has made controversial statements. Among other things, he previously defended the brutal murder of the French teacher Samuel Paty in 2020. As previously reported by RAIR Foundation USA, a Chechen Muslim refugee living in France decapitated Paty after he taught his annual course to high school students on freedom of expression.

“A person who loves his religion gets angry and slaughters the teacher with a knife in the gutter because the teacher is unclean, and the gutter is the only place he deserves,” he commented on the brutal murder.

“It is a simple equation. One from their side sinned by insulting the Prophet, and one from our side sinned and killed the teacher who insulted the Prophet.”

In another sermon, he went on the attack against social services and schools in Sweden and stated that Muslims are taking over the country.

“Sweden is ours. It is ours, whether they like it or not. In ten to fifteen years, it is ours,” he said in a sermon earlier this year.

In December of last year, Basem Mahmoud’s 17-year-old daughter was taken in by social services. The reason was that the girl reported that she “had been abused psychologically and physically in the home for a long time.” According to court proceedings, the girl lived in a strongly honor-controlled environment.

Basem Mahmoud originally came from the Jordanian capital of Amman. He immigrated to Sweden in 1989 by marrying a Swedish woman who converted to Islam. He has been a Swedish citizen since 1983.

Mahmoud has seven children with the Swedish woman, but the pair are now divorced. According to the woman, Mahmoud, over time, “became more religious and controlling.” Several times she has asked for a restraining order against her former husband, but the court has refused her.