Left Party MP Praised Cleric Who Called Scantily Clad Women a Danger

STOCKHOLM - The Left Party requires all its representatives to be feminists. Yet its newly elected MP Mohamed Ali shared a clip praising an Egyptian professor of Islamic law who told viewers that a scantily clad woman is a bigger danger to society than a woman in a niqab.

Ali now tells the tabloid Expressen that he has changed his views. Party secretary Maria Forsberg wants him to prove it.

In the Egyptian TV debate, a female professor of comparative Islamic law argues that a Muslim woman can choose for herself not to wear the niqab, the veil that covers the face so that only the eyes are visible.

Her opponent Ahmed Karima, a professor of Islamic law at Cairo's al-Azhar University, instead turns the conversation to what women wear when they go out in public.

He describes two women. One wears a niqab. The other wears perfume and tight, revealing clothes. He asks which of them is the bigger temptation - and answers the question himself.

"I swear by God, the scantily clad woman is a greater danger to society than the woman who wears the niqab," he says, according to Expressen's translation.

When Ali shared the clip on Facebook, he added a tribute to Karima in Arabic: "Blessed be your tongue! May God bless you."

Party demands feminists

In the same debate, Karima argues that society should be raised according to Islam, even against people's will.

Blaming a woman's clothing for how others react to her is a long way from the principle the Left Party itself puts at the heart of its feminist politics - women's right to decide over their own bodies.

"The values expressed do not belong in the Left Party. It is important that Mohamed shows he has changed his outlook and shares the Left Party's values," Forsberg wrote to Expressen.

Ali replied in writing through the party's press office. He says his views have changed, that he now stands behind party policy and that he deleted the posts himself before the paper started digging. According to Expressen, however, several of them could still be read on Friday.

READ ALSO: Left Party MP Spread Hamas Conspiracy - Backed Pride Flag Ban

"Somalis have betrayed their origins"

The review also covers posts Ali wrote himself. Ahead of last year's mayoral election in Minneapolis, he wrote that Somalis must back the Somali-born candidate Omar Fateh.

When Fateh lost to incumbent mayor Jacob Frey, Ali turned on the city's Somali community. Frey's win showed how "Somalia is losing its significance as we reject our common identity", he wrote, adding that "the Somalis in Minneapolis have not broken the law - but they have betrayed their origins".

Expressen also found other posts Ali shared. One falsely attributed to Amnesty the claim that the US and Israel had supplied the terror group ISIS with weapons worth a billion dollars. Another blamed the CIA, without evidence, for 95 percent of the world's terror attacks.

Claimed Israel wanted to look like the victim

Two days after Hamas's terror attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, Ali claimed on X that Israel's Mossad, the American CIA and Britain's MI6 knew in advance what would happen. According to Ali, Israel wanted to look like the victim ahead of a war it was itself seeking.

When the tabloid Aftonbladet highlighted the post, Ali admitted the claim was baseless. He said he realised this shortly after posting but forgot to delete it.

The Left Party's parliamentary group leader Samuel Gonzalez Westling said he believed Ali regretted it, and that the post being written long before he entered parliament counted in his favour.

From the same account, Ali replied "Yes pls" in November 2024 to a question about whether pride flags should be banned on all government buildings. Freelance journalist Joakim Lamotte linked the reply to the question using archived material after the account that asked it had been suspended.

Party pays toward his debts

Criticism of Ali inside the Left Party has also focused on his responsibility for his own children. His court-ordered debt restructuring with the Swedish Enforcement Authority includes a large number of unpaid child support claims.

So that he can pay them off, the party lets him keep the share of his parliamentary salary that Left Party MPs normally pay into the party coffers.

Frida Holmgren, former deputy chair of the Left Party in Dalarna, has questioned how a party that calls itself both socialist and feminist can defend the arrangement. When the party waives its share, she says, the members end up footing part of the bill.

"It is absolutely unbelievable," she told Expressen.

Ali says he intends to complete the debt restructuring and make things right. The question is why he did not do right by his children as a parent in the first place.

READ ALSO: Left Party Lets Somali MP Skip Party Dues to Pay Child Support Debts

Leapfrogged the party's top name

The row in Dalarna goes back to the election campaign. Members had put the party's climate spokesperson Kajsa Fredholm at the top of the parliamentary list.

Although party guidelines urge candidates not to run their own campaigns to change the list order, Ali explicitly asked voters on Facebook to give him their personal preference vote.

The personal votes were enough for Ali to take the Left Party's Dalarna seat from Fredholm. He has put his success down to visiting towns and knocking on doors. Fredholm has since announced she is leaving politics.

Ali's personal-vote campaign has also been dogged by suspicions of clan voting and claims that people were offered money to vote for him.