By Busra Nur Bilgic Cakmak

(AA): Some 22% Swedish people are not open to the idea of having a neighbor who is either Muslim or has a Middle Eastern background, according to a recent study.

Most participants said it does not matter where their neighbors come from, according to a survey by polling company Novus published in The Local news website.

Only 4% participants said they would like to have neighbors with Muslim or Middle Eastern backgrounds.

Some 16% participants said they would not want neighbors from African backgrounds, while 4% said they would welcome them, with 16 percent saying they’d have negative feelings about this.

Meanwhile, 19% of the participants said they would feel positively about having Swedish background neighbors; 12% of them also responded positively about having Christian neighbors.

Some 1% of the participants said they would feel negatively about having Christian neighbors and as many said they would feel negatively about having Jewish neighbors.

Among all respondents, 9% have said they are open to having Jewish neighbors.

“Inclusion is about living as neighbours, going to the same school and being at the same workplaces. We aren’t equally open here. This makes me worried for Sweden’s future, it’s something that needs to be investigated more deeply,” Ahmed Abdirahman, CEO and founder of The Global Village Foundation, told Dagens Nyheter.

Additional report by The Muslim News

[Map of Sweden by P S Burton/Creative Commons]