STOCKHOLM – An Islamic school in Vällingby district in the western part of Stockholm Municipality has accused a far-right group of targeting its facility with hateful posters, spreading fears among young pupils.

“They started filming children in the schoolyard and then they kicked a football away from some guys,” Al-Azhar school vice principal Jane Almquist told newspaper Stockholm Direkt, The Local reported on Thursday, April 6.

“When I saw them they were at the entrance and were putting up their stickers and then I called the police.”

Almquist said the men were from far-right group Soldiers of Odin, an anti-immigrant vigilante group.

A Soldiers of Odin spokesperson confirmed that two of its members had been there on Wednesday, but denied filming the children.

Police said they had checked the identity of the Soldiers of Odin members but said they were not arrested because no crime had been committed, reports Stockholm Direkt.

“We have had a crisis meeting and police have been here to discuss the threat. They think it’s incitement of racial hatred but that there is no serious threat. So we’ll have to continue to pay for our own guards,” vice principal Roger Lindquist told Stockholm Direkt.

“There is much fear and insecurity. From the students there’s also a lot of frustration and anger against us as school management because we have, as of today, chosen to start integrating gym classes – boys and girls will from now on have gym classes together – and they think we are going against their will and right to pupil influence.”

The school describes itself as having a “Muslim profile”, but is open to students from all backgrounds. Around 80 percent of the staff are non-Muslims, according to Lindquist.

“It is important to point out that the staff is not driven by religion but a passion to work with cultural and integration issues. It is also important that the school is not based on Muslim values but democratic ones,” he told the TT news wire on Tuesday.

Sweden’s free school system of state-funded but privately run schools was introduced in 1992 and paved the way for religious organizations to operate schools as long as they stuck to the secular Swedish curriculum.

In August 2016 there were 66 religious free schools in Sweden, 11 of which were Muslim, according to the education ministry.

Muslims make up between 450,000 and 500,000 of Sweden’s nine million people, according to the US State Department report in 2011.