OPINION: In the Sweden Democrats’ map, we are not people, only 'red dots'

If you zoom in on Google Earth, northwest of Stockholm, you eventually arrive in Järfälla, a quiet municipality. Zoom a little closer and you reach Söderhöjden  –The Southern Heights – where a message is inscribed into the pavement in concrete letters: "If you ever feel sad, hopeless, or lost, don’t forget: you have made it this far, all the way to Söderhöjden. Stand tall and continue."

It’s a simple inscription, but one that has become part of my own morning ritual. Before I drive to Vaxholm to study drawings of asphalt and concrete, I walk a small circle around those words, bend my head, read them again, and remind myself: "Yes, I can walk tall. I have made it all the way here! And I am thankful for it."

From that quiet square of reassurance, if you zoom in a little closer, you will find my home. There you’ll see me, Faisal ‒ an engineer building infrastructure that carries thousands of Swedes each day; my wife, Shakiba, a public-school teacher in Järfälla; and our three children – Bahar, Meelad, and Marjan – whose lives, manners, and ambitions are, in every sense, deeply Swedish.

And then there is Cleo, our Norwegian Forest Cat, who patrols the neighbourhood with the confidence of a local authority.

Bahar came to Sweden at age two, after we fled an endless war. She has grown up entirely here – her politeness, her quiet self-discipline, her love of Swedish crossword puzzles all shaped by this country.

She is now close to finishing medical school, preparing for a future in thoracic surgery. Meelad, born at Karolinska, carries himself with the gentle reserve often associated with Sweden. He visited Afghanistan twice – the birth country of his parents – only to be met with illness, bacteria, unfamiliar scents, and the overwhelming density of life there. Yet he never complained.

“It was an interesting experience,” he said. This summer he will graduate as an engineer from KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Marjan too was born at the Karolinska hospital in Solna and she may be the most Swedish of us all – soft-spoken, principled, rule-bound, politically aware, gentle to a fault. She visited Afghanistan once, for one week, and fell so gravely ill that we rushed her back home – to her actual home: Järfälla, Söderhöjden, Sweden.

At Karolinska, after tests and treatment, the doctor explained it in the simplest possible way: “It’s difficult to adjust to foreign soil.” Foreign soil – referring not to Sweden, but to the land of her ancestors.

Her ambitions stretch even further: she hopes to become both a doctor and an immunology researcher, finding cures for diseases still unknown.

If we stayed with this map – the map of streets, homes, and lives – our story would end there: a Swedish family, ordinary in every way, living quietly among thousands of others just like themselves. Even, perhaps, a small Swedish success story – a man and a woman once uprooted from everything they knew, who, through sweat and tears, rebuilt their lives and made a home far from the one they lost.

But now, shift the map. Replace Google Earth with a different kind of map: the migration map, launched by the Sweden Democrats. According to Charlie Weimers, Member of the European Parliament for the Sweden Democrats and the self-declared architect of this cartographic tool, this map “shows the demographic shift” – what he calls the immigrant takeover.

And here, the view changes dramatically. In this map, if you zoom in far enough – down to a single pixel representing my household – you will no longer find a surgeon, two engineers, a teacher, an immunologist, or even a cat.

According to this map, we're just 'immigrants', five metaphorical red dots posing a risk to Sweden. Five “warnings”. Five “risks". Five supposed threats to Sweden’s future.

Weimers insists he draws no such conclusions. He repeats it so often it becomes a ritual in itself: The map is neutral. The map is just data. It is for observers to draw their own conclusions. And yet, the moment he speaks, the neutrality dissolves. In a ten-minute interview on Riks, the YouTube channel formerly owned by the Sweden Democrats, he gestures toward New York City, declaring that “extremist Islamists and communist socialists,” united by their “singular agenda – Gaza,” have taken control there.

This, he warns, is what demographic change produces. Not today, not tomorrow, but “one day soon,” he insists, “it will happen here too.” Immigrants will outnumber Swedes and “will do as they see fit.”

The argument collapses under its own weight. It is not a theory, it is a story. A story built not on evidence, but on fear. Still, he urges Swedes to discuss the map “openly” – on television, in newspapers, at fika, in lunchrooms. Once people see the red dots, he says, they will no longer feel “shy” or “awkward” about expressing their concerns.

Fear, in this telling, only needs a visual language. And that language is built on engineered raw data – pulled from official stats authority Statistics Sweden, then stripped of context, nuance, and any sense of proportion until the numbers can be made to serve as warning signs.

The criteria could not be more blunt: everyone born outside Sweden, and everyone born in Sweden to at least one parent born elsewhere, a stricter definition than Statistics Sweden's, which only counts those born in Sweden to two foreign-born parents.

By this logic, Bahar, Meelad, and Marjan – three children shaped entirely by Swedish society – become potential threats. Not aspiring professionals. Not contributors. But shadows of an imagined future ruled by “Sharia-style law,” reinforced by communism, socialism, and a foreign policy defined solely by Gaza.

Behind all this lies a larger mythology. Jimmie, Charlie, and their allies want Swedes to believe in a fictional place they never name outright but constantly invoke: IMMIGRATIONSTAN! A land that does not exist, but which they hint at as if it were real.

According to their narrative, its people arrive disguised as refugees, students, or workers. Their hidden purpose? To outnumber Swedes, take over the country, and impose a hybrid ideology that no political scientist on earth could possibly explain – half Islamist, half communist, composed of Chinese, Brits, Indians, Pakistanis, Americans, Afghans, Iranians, Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, Ugandans, Congolese, Finns, Somalis, Arabs, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Jews, and atheists alike, and somehow, impossibly, entirely about Gaza.

The narrative fractures under the weight of its own absurdity. I don’t need to disprove it; it collapses by itself.

The truth is simpler. People come to Sweden from hundreds of nations for hundreds of reasons ‒ war, dictatorship, studies, opportunity, work, safety, love.

The inscription in the Söderhöjden square captures that better than any political map: Some have journeyed here over land and sea. Others through mountains and valleys. If you ever feel low, keep your head held high. Never forget that you’ve made it all the way to Söderhöjden. From here, you can go anywhere. Life’s rest stop is here. Our square is a place for meetings and for joy – Söderhöjden, the summit of Jakan.

The only thing most refugees truly share is this: they had to uproot themselves entirely, leave their homes, their memories, their identities, in search of safety, dignity, and the chance to begin again.

As for my own family, my wife and I once came to Sweden as refugees. But as Swedish law rightly prescribes, we are no longer refugees. We are contributing citizens of this country, citizens who work, who build, who teach, who raise children, who pay taxes, citizens who belong. And no matter what colour Jimmie or Charlie choose to paint us on their map, we will continue to cherish Söderhöjden. We will continue to walk tall.

Two of my three children were born here, and all were raised here, educated here, and shaped entirely by Sweden.

But the map does not see this. It draws no distinctions. It marks even Finns, Norwegians, Danes, Germans, Britons, French, Spaniards as red dots – European and Nordic immigrants transformed into warnings. And it sweeps up even their own. Consider Nima Alipour, the Sweden Democrat Member of Parliament with Iranian roots. By his party’s own logic, he too is a danger – and so would his children be, if he has any.

Yet he defends the narrative with fervour, repeating its lines in broken, sometimes unintentionally comic Swedish – the kind of Swedish the party’s base might mock if it came from anyone else. It is a man arguing against his own reflection. A self-erasure framed as loyalty. A paradox only possible in the politics of fear.

This logic, applied consistently, even reaches into the royal palace. Queen Silvia is foreign-born. By the Sweden Democrats' colour code, her children, Crown Princess Victoria, Prince Carl Philip, Princess Madeleine, would each glow on the map. Three “warnings”. Three “risks.” Three supposed threats to Sweden’s future.

We return to my family. Zoom in close enough and the SD map shows: a future thoracic surgeon, a future KTH engineer, a future immunologist, a teacher, an engineer building Sweden’s infrastructure, and a cat who has never left the country… all flattened into the same swathe of "immigrants", pressed into a story of takeover that has nothing to do with who we are.

The map does not show a family. It shows a fantasy of fear. It reveals not the Sweden we live in, but the Sweden some want others to fear. Sweden deserves better: better than imaginary enemies, better than demographic superstition, better than politics that turn neighbours into threats and children into warnings. Sweden deserves better than Jimmie. Sweden deserves better than Charlie. And Sweden deserves better than Nima.

What we need is not maps drawn in fear, but truths drawn from reality – truths found not in misleading percentages, but in the lives we actually share, in the country we actually live in together.