“We left everything to be safe, and we came here to start a new life,” said Miriam, an Assyrian Christian who did not want her full name used because her husband and two of her three sons had not yet managed to leave Iraq. “In Iraq, we were deprived of even the simple right to go to church, and we want to hold on to our religion.”

Sweden grants asylum to all Iraqis except those from the relatively stable Kurdish areas, and the immigration authorities do not even register their religious affiliation.

But Sodertalje has been a magnet for Christian refugees since the late 1960s, when Assyrian immigrants from Lebanon, Syria and Turkey established a thriving community here. After the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and now, as extremists in Iraq step up their persecution of non-Muslims, more and more are trying to get here.

“They come here to survive,” said Jalal Hammo, the chairman of St. John’s, a Chaldean Catholic church, who arrived from Iraq in 1994. “The terrorists do all they can to make all Christians leave Iraq.”

Culture shock for newly arrived Iraqis is felt far less here than it would be practically anywhere else in Sweden — or the West, for that matter. Here, they can speak their native Arabic almost everywhere, and have their choice of churches for the Christian denominations common in Iraq: Chaldean Catholic, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic.

In addition, they can see the games of two successful Assyrian soccer teams at the local stadium, as well as Suroyo TV, an Assyrian satellite TV station. But even though Sodertalje is the choice for many Iraqi Christians, it is becoming increasingly clear that their new lives present many challenges — partly as a consequence of Sodertalje’s status as a haven of choice.