After the Second World War, the concept of multiculturalism gained support in among the Swedish public and the Swedish government. By the 1980s, the presence of Islam became visible in the Swedish society for the first time and was met with mixed responses. Jonas Otterbeck, a Swedish historian of religion, claims that most Anti-Muslim sentiment in the country were derived from an opposition to traditional Islamic clothing such as the hijab and a belief that Saudi Wahhabism (a extremely conservative movement within Islam) was representative of the entire religion.[11] At the end of the 1980s, extremist xenophobic groups began targeting Muslims as a severe societal problem and causing the recession in Sweden’s economy.[12]