Fredrik Lindström, linguistic researcher and stand-up comedian, once said about Sweden: "The worst people in the world live in the best country in the world." What he meant by this is that while civilization is highly developed in Sweden, the people living there fail to meet the basic abilities of members of even the most primitive of tribes: social isolation is common, depression is on the rise, especially among teenagers, the police only solve six percent of all heavy crime, and the isolationist mentality among Swedes fears conflict and authority at all costs. The Swedish people are intelligent, creative and polite, but socially and emotionally neurotic.

The social problems are reflected in the Swedish culture, now clashing with the growing segment of the population that is foreign-born. The latest controversy is about a new television show called Halal-TV, showing three young muslim girls who document Swedish society from a Muslim, suburban perspective. The famous Swedish tolerance was immediately put to the test:

Controversy about Halal-TV erupted even before the first episode aired on Monday night when author and commentator Dilsa Demirbag-Sten, a Kurdish immigrant from Turkey who moved to Sweden at the age of six, pointed out that one of the show’s hosts had previously said she thought that stoning a woman to death was an appropriate punishment for adultery.

The show is meant to show how the three women view their Swedish homeland through the lens of their Muslim beliefs. SvD described Halal-TV as a “road trip” through Swedish society, with the three lead figures at the wheel which ultimately is meant to help deconstruct the often monolithic view of Muslims held by many Swedes.

In one of the segments, Awad and El Khabiry refuse to shake the hand of Aftonbladet newspaper columnist Carl Hamilton, electing instead to greet the guest by putting their hands on their chests, leaving Hamilton’s extended hand hanging in the air and prompting a sharp exchange.

Typically, this show was not really about cultural norms and religion, but more to do with class and the impact of the rich/poor gap on education and lifestyle. Living as most suburban immigrants do in Europe, the three TV hosts expressed resentment against the Swedish middle and upper class, who clearly enjoy a better material standard. The same old Marxist-Socialist rhetoric was the center of the show, demonstrating that it's nothing more than a tool for the corporations to "educate" immigrants into integrating with Western society to become cheap labour instead of welfare recipients.

What's striking about the response to the show is how both journalists and the Swedish public react negatively against watching radical Muslims appearing live on television. What are we, I ask as a Swede, afraid of? Did we think all Muslims would convert to law obiding Social Democrats the minute they crossed our borders? We now have over a million immigrants, more than half of them coming from non-European countries, and recent studies show foreign-born women have more children than native-born women. In other words, our new friends are here to stay. Clearly neither our politicians nor our public have considered what we're doing. This is not a small mark in the chapter of Swedish history. Like in France, Italy and Great Britain, it means a radical transformation of the entire nation, but contrary to our neighbours in Denmark, we wouldn't dare to speak up if we felt threatened, since we value social politeness more than being realistic.

I may be one of the few Swedes who appreciated watching these three Muslims express their opinions on TV. Aside from the tedious socialist propaganda and the poor journalism, it reflects the feelings, behavior and attitude of a great portion of the people who've come to stay in this country since the late 70's. These people are no longer portrayed as hard working wannabe-Westerners without cultural roots. They represent their cultural and religious identity, and do so with pride. Even more, they refuse to accept our culture. Such a silly social act as shaking hands, which in Sweden is a very important formal signal that you welcome a person in question (not shaking hands is the same as expressing resentment towards that same person), sparked a lively debate among people. "Why can't they accept our social traditions?" The answer is: they already have social traditions of their own, and we're morons if we thought they'd abandon these on the whim. Opposed to us, they are proud of their culture, while we spend hours on television condemning ours.

While I'm proud to be a Swede, I'm of the opinion that modern Swedes in general are cowards--for evolutionary reasons, to be fair, but socially incapable of embracing the harsh reality that surrounds their every day life. The Swede is a person who keeps quiet for the sake of not offending anyone, even if it means he ends up in deep trouble. The Swede is a person who prefers compromise instead of following a clear direction. As Hamilton noted during the Halal-TV show, the Swedish public loves the message of pluralism, but when it comes to daily life, they hide away from foreign culture and express concern as soon as immigrants reveal they have a culture of their own they want to preserve and express. Hypocrisy, all the way through. As a result, Sweden celebrates the new black president in America, but cannot even accept when someone refuses to shake their hand:

If the US election were held in Sweden, Barack Obama would likely win by a landslide, according to a recent poll.

At the weekend, the Dagens Nyheter newspaper published the results of a Synovate survey showing that 71 percent of Swedes wanted to see Obama as the next President of the United States, while only 5 percent said they stood behind John McCain.

Nevertheless, 73 percent of Sweden’s parliamentarians said they supported Obama.

Our Social Democratic government has programmed the public to always support the underdog. Obama is an underdog and that is why the Swedes love him, just as they gladly hold Gay Pride events in their capital city and praise Tibet's independence against China (but participating in the Olympic games seemed unproblematic). Our social culture is built around an obsessive worry about keeping everyone within the safety net and building a future together, even though reality says we have sky-rocketing rates of criminality, nationwide integration failures, social and emotional problems among young and elder, and an education greatly lagging behind our neighbours in Finland, Norway and Denmark. Sweden is the socialist paradise everyone wants to live in, but ironically because of that, it has undermined its once low-tax welfare system and left it open to abuse. It's a modern civilized country hiding people having problems with the most basic of human behavior.

Maybe a metaphor for the entire Western civilization, Sweden remains somewhat of a political ideal to the outside world, but underneath its facade is a lack of social trust that permeates the everyday life of its morally proud and politically correct citizens. Unsurprisingly, the cognitive dissonance in this country couldn't possibly be deeper. It's hard to understand this phenomenon for an outsider, unless you study the strange relationship Swedes have with their foreign citizens; Obama-loving and multicultural down to the core, yet recent figures reveal the patriotic and anti-immigration Sweden Democrats are already passing the 4% limit to be able to enter the government next election. Swedes remain silent in public and vote radically at home. This is the home of institutionalized hypocrisy--possibly the only place in Europe openly denying its own ethnic existence and cultural history, while desperately trying to conserve the same behind locked doors.

For change to happen, real change, the people in the West need a new spirit, for what we ultimately have lost, besides independence and pride, is exactly this: the spirit to be creative and think positively. Let us resurrect that, focusing on what's real and not what's socially acceptable. Positive logic must win over the apocalypse we doom ourselves to if we refuse to change the status quo. Radicalism is growing all across Europe, and a new black president in America isn't going to stop it. The crisis we face, environmentally, culturally, and economically, is severe, and will impact the rest of the world. But we can't change society unless we first change our life as individuals and how we socially and culturally interact with other people. Each one of us needs to change our life, here and now. Together, through our thought and action, we slowly conquer tomorrow.