Mahmoud Aldebe

Mahmoud Jamil al-Debe (Arabic: محمود جميل الدبعي, born 10 August 1954) is the chairman of the Muslim Association of Sweden (SMF). He was previously vice chairman of the Muslim Council of Sweden, an umbrella organization with the Muslim Association of Sweden as one of its members. In the mid 1980s, as the chairman of SMF and in conjunction with the National Swedish Immigration and Naturalization Board (the former name of the Swedish Migration Agency) he authored the leaflet "Islam i Sverige" (Islam in Sweden) wherein he expresses the view that Islam is an all-encompassing belief system which gives firm instructions which are to be followed in all aspects of daily life: moral, spiritual, political and economic. In 2006, as the chairman of SMF he authored a letter to every party in the Riksdag where it was demanded that Muslims receive a special set of laws and rules: imams must approve divorces, schools should teach Muslim children Arabic and religion in segregated groups and that boys and girls should not have lessons in swimming together. Aldebe also demanded that employers give Muslims two extra days of paid days off to celebrate Islamic holidays. Aldebe's ideas of an all-encompassing Islam and demands that Swedish ideas about what belong to the secular part of society must be reformed, are founded in the ideology of islamist Hassan al-Banna. Aldebe was born in Jordan and immigrated to Sweden in the late 1970s together with his wife Ebtisam Aldebe. His wife was a candidate for the Centre Party in the 2006 Swedish parliament elections, but didn't receive enough votes to get a seat. She participated in the campaign for Muslims having a parallel legal system in Sweden. His wife was a lay judge at Solna district court, where at a trial March 2018 she acquitted a...