In this issue, we let two people speak who have received death threats as a result of artistic representations in which Islam has been derided and criticised: Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Lars Vilks. Both have been handled roughly in the Swedish media.

In December, Hirsi Ali was described by Per Wirtén in Expressen’s cultural review section as ideologically allied with the “anti-liberal nationalist right in Europe – with Åkesson, Wilders and Le Pen. She now stands on the side of intolerance and unfreedom”, all the while being said to express a “hatred of Islam [that] is as deeply entrenched among the educated elite as anti-Semitism was in the 1930s”. The reason was that she had described the most identifiable symbols of Islam – minarets, burkas and crescent moons – as symbols of power for a political ideology with totalitarian and anti-democratic overtones.

In this issue of Axess, we let Hirsi Ali herself c...