It's no surprise that U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital has sparked violence in the West Bank and Beirut, or even protests in far-flung Indonesia, which is majority Muslim.
But Sweden? Yet the western Swedish city of Gothenburg, headquarters of Volvo Car AB, saw the firebombing of a synagogue on Friday. The same evening, demonstrators in Malmo, in Sweden's far south, called for their own "intifada" and threatened to shoot Jews.
What's going on in Sweden reflects a changed demographic and psychic reality. The "Arab street," if that abstraction ever existed, is no longer restricted to Arabic-speaking countries. Arab and other Muslim immigrants now living in Europe increasingly play just as active a role in enacting collective political opinion as their counterparts who did not leave their home countries.