Sweden Reviews State Funding for Muslim Groups After Polygamy Exposé

STOCKHOLM - When Samnytt asked last year how Sweden's new democracy conditions for state grants would apply to mosques, the agency in charge had little to say. Now the tone has changed.

Since SVT's investigative programme Uppdrag granskning showed an already married man being offered help to take a second wife, the Swedish Agency for Youth and Civil Society has summoned the national organisations involved and opened a special review.

Posing with a hidden camera, the reporters contacted 15 mosques across Sweden. They said a man and his wife had not been able to have children, and that he therefore wanted to marry another woman.

Six mosques said no, citing Swedish law and the requirement for a legal impediment check. In nine cases, imams, sheikhs or advisers offered to perform the wedding or passed the man on to someone who would.

In Helsingborg, the mosque referred the reporters to a sheikh who had lectured on marriage. During the session he tried to persuade the reporter playing the wife to accept her husband's wishes, even though she objected.

READ ALSO: Nine of 15 Swedish Mosques Offered Help Marrying a Second Wife

The mosque told SVT the sheikh is not employed there and that it will review which advisers it refers people to. In Uppsala, two mosques have let the imams seen in the programme leave their posts.

National organisations summoned

Some of the local congregations in the programme belong to faith communities that receive state grants. On 11 November, the day the programme aired, the agency announced it is investigating whether the revelations could affect their right to continued funding.

"In light of what has emerged, we have summoned the national organisations and also opened a special review," said director-general Magnus Jägerskog.

To receive state support, a faith community must meet the democracy conditions. How its representatives act within the organisation can also be weighed in, including whether they violate fundamental rights and freedoms.

The agency is now gathering information from the organisations. Whether any community will lose its funding remains an open question.

"See comment above"

The announcement marks a clear shift in how the agency talks about Muslim congregations and the democracy conditions.

When Samnytt raised the issue in August 2025, much of the debate was about how conservative Christian congregations would be judged. Pastor Micael Lahtinen had warned that churches could lose their grants for holding on to a traditional Christian view of marriage and sexuality.

Samnytt asked the agency where the line went for a mosque. Could gender-segregated prayer affect funding? How would it judge a sermon saying a wife must obey her husband, or that homosexuality is a sin?

The agency said every application is assessed individually and that religious affiliation does not decide the outcome. To each concrete example, the same reply came back: "See comment above."

At that point, no Muslim congregation applying for project grants had been tested under the new conditions. Since 1 January 2026, the agency has also taken over responsibility for state grants to faith communities.

Where Samnytt was given a general reference to the rules last year, there is now a concrete case on the table. The agency must decide what the advice on a second wife means for those communities' right to taxpayers' money.