Three Danish lawmakers, all members of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, have been reported to police for making remarks comparing Muslim women’s headscarves with swastikas. Parliament member Soeren Krarup was cited in daily Politiken and other Danish media on April 18 as saying that Muslim women’s headscarves, like Nazi Germany’s swastikas, symbolized totalitarian repression. Fellow lawmaker Morten Messerschmidt and a party representative in the European Parliament, Mogens Camre, repeated Krarup’s comments in Danish media today.
Krarup made his comments after Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a Muslim politician from the Red-Green Alliance Party, said she would wear her headscarf if elected to Denmark’s parliament. Krarup confirmed today on his party’s Web site that he believes there are “common features between the Muslim veiling of women and other totalitarian symbols. The Danish People’s Party would like to underline that this is not a critique of the individual woman, who may wear a headscarf, but a general critique of Islam’s veiling of women,” he said.
See also DPA, 20 April 2007