What does it mean to be a....?

Sweden is facing a large number of immigrants coming from the Middle East, and they are bringing their religion of Islam with them.  The Swedes are not sure how exactly to deal with this problem.  They are a country who has one million immigrants out of their total population of nine million.  Sweden traditionally is a very accepting and tolerant country, but with this influx of immigrants and their religion and the violence associated with it a new political party called the Sweden Democrats has emerged that wishes to keep the Muslim population subdued and keep the Swedish identity the same as it has always been.  There has been violence against the Muslim population by Swedes as well as violence against the Swedish population by Muslims.  The Swedish people have to decide how to deal with the Muslim population and feel as though their decisions will be an example for the rest of Europe.

In an age where peoples from different countries are constantly moving to new countries to live it is getting harder and harder for people to retain their national identity.  For example there’s the cliché question of “what is an America?”  It’s a hard question to answer because everyone has different ideas about what it means to be an American.  The Swedish are now asking themselves the very same question.  They want to know just what it means to be Swedish and there will be some political duels between different ideals for a time until they come to a consensus and decide where they want their country to go.  I completely understand their desire to retain their national identity, I know that I would not want to lose who I feel I am just because some people who have a different idea of what I should be move to my country.  But then again we can’t just ostracize those people, we need to find a way to keep our national identity without compromising too much to the ever demanding minorities.