Swedish politician fighting racism in Malmo 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 ethnicit[ies]: “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 there — dozens are reported annually, although the city only has a few hundred Jews — has exposed the city to international scrutiny.

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