When Salahuddin Barakat founded the Islam Academy in 2013, he located it on the edge of Rosengard, a predominantly Muslim neighborhood that has been a flashpoint in Sweden's sharpening debate over immigration.
It wasn't his first choice, he said, "but people in central Malmo said we don't want to rent to Muslims."
Like other madrasas, as Muslim religious schools are known, the academy teaches the Koran, traditional Sunni Islamic spirituality, sharia law and Arabic.