Danish government backs veil ban

A majority of parliament is ready if necessary to ban face-covering Muslim niqab veils after a family care worker refused to remove hers on the job. Politicians at parliament are prepared to give employers the right to ban Muslim niqab and burka veils for employees as a result of yet another incident involving the culture clash between conservative Islam and the West.

Odense municipality requested that the Ministry of Consumer and Family Affairs rule on a case where a Muslim woman refused to remove her veil for her job as a family care worker. Odense indicated it was not certain whether it had the authority to reject the woman as a legitimate caretaker on the grounds of her veil under the existing provisions.

Politicians had already been in an uproar over an incident last week where a Muslim parliamentary candidate indicated she would continue to wear her headscarf if she were elected. The niqab covers all of the wearer’s face except the eyes.

Carina Christensen, the Conservative family affairs minister, indicated she would not get involved in the case, which angered many parliamentary members. Conservative leader Bendt Bendtsen made it clear that his party would not accept family care employees hiding their faces from their charges. “We say no to burkas and veils in family care. Care workers are role models and accordingly must promote a proper image of women,” Bendtsen told Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Bendtsen has the backing of the prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who believes public institutions should be able to determine the dress of their employees. “The burka does not belong in family day care nor in public care institutions,” Rasmussen told Politiken newspaper. “We will naturally ensure that there are provisions in the law that allows Odense municipality to forbid the veil.” “I personally believe it’s quite fair that children should be able to see who is caring for them,” said the prime minister.

The far-left Red-Green Alliance also understood the need to have strict regulations in the matter, but did not commit to supporting any change in the law. “This is neither about special treatment or religion. It is a well-founded desire to stress that it is important in family care situations to see the caretaker’s facial expressions,” said Jørgen Arbo-Baehr, the party’s integration spokesperson.

Copenhagen Post, 3 May 2007

Far right Danish MPs compare Islamic veil to Nazi swastika

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.

Bloomberg.com. 20 April 2007

See also DPA, 20 April 2007

Danish editor who published Prophet cartoons wins prize

The Danish newspaper editor who published controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed in 2005 was awarded on Monday a free press prize for his “determination and courage.” The Danish-based Free Press Society awarded Flemming Rose the inaugural international Sappho Prize, worth $3,568 (€2,685).

The publication of the 12 cartoons in the daily Jyllands-Posten in September 2005 prompted an international dispute.

Lars Hedegaard of the Free Press Society said the prize honoured a “journalist who combines excellence in his work with courage and a refusal to compromise.” Hedegaard compared the pressure placed on Rose and his newspaper to apologise for publishing the cartoons to those voices calling for the appeasement of Nazi Germany at the dawn of World War II.

“Decisive to our decision was Rose’s courage to print the cartoons and to stand his ground under the worst storm any journalist has ever endured,” Hedegaard said.

Today’s Zaman, 20 March 2007

Islamophobic political party launched in Denmark

“As a consequence of the lack of political leadership in Denmark in general, and within the Government in particular (not meeting the increasing Islamization of Denmark), the resistance group ‘Stop islamiseringen af Danmark’ (SIAD) has decided to stand for Parliament…. In Parliament – as well as outside of Parliament – we shall fight every initiative to sell out Danish values to the Islamic power.”

Gates of Vienna, 11 February 2007

Islamophobia takes a grip across Europe

EUMC report December 2006Muslims are suffering physical attacks, verbal taunts and widespread discrimination as a climate of Islamophobia takes a grip across Europe.

A new report lists a host of examples of crime and intimidation from arson and suspected racist murder in Germany and Spain to pork fat being smeared on a mosque in Italy.

Thugs in Ireland beat up one man after calling him “bin Laden” while a bogus email in Denmark outlined fake primary school reforms to help migrant children. A maths question read: “Jamal has an AK47 with a 30-shot magazine. If he misses 6 out of 10 shots and he wants to hit each cup 13 times, how many cups can he shoot before he needs to reload?”

The report from the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia called on leaders to strengthen policies on integration, and on Muslims to “engage more actively in public life.” It also highlights the lack of reliable data, pointing out that only one country – the United Kingdom – publishes criminal justice data which specifically identify Muslims as victims of hate crime incidents.

The Muslim population of the EU is estimated to run to around 13m, around 3.5 per cent of the total. Since September 11 many feel “they have been put under a general suspicion of terrorism,” according to Beate Winkler, director of the centre.

The report says that Muslims “experience various levels of discrimination and marginalisation in employment, education and housing” and are “vulnerable to manifestations of prejudice and hatred in the form of anything from verbal threats through to physical attacks on people and property.”

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Intolerance in Europe

The Washington Post examines “the blatant bigotry of many mainstream political leaders, journalists and other elites against Islam and its followers” in Europe.

The article continues: “Sometimes the bigots portray their crude attacks on Muslim beliefs and culture as a defense of freedom of speech – as when a Danish newspaper last year chose to publish gratuitously offensive cartoons about the prophet Muhammad. Sometimes they claim to be promoting better communication, as when British parliamentarian Jack Straw recently asked Muslim women to remove their veils when visiting his office. Luckily for the enemies of cynicism and disingenuousness, there is also the Dutch government – which no longer bothers to disguise its ugly prejudice.”

Editorial in Washington Post, 25 November 2006

Anti-Islam Danish book withdrawn

A Danish publishing house has decided to withdraw a book offensive to Muslims after protests by Muslim leaders in the Scandinavian country. “After scrutinizing the complaints, Malling Beck Co. decided to take Os og Kristendom (Us and Christianity) 5 off bookstores,” the publishing house said in a statement obtained by IslamOnline.net. Malling Beck Director Lars Tindholdt had initially defended the authors before reconsidering his position after the mass-circulation daily Politiken ran a report on the contents of the book on Monday, November 20.

The book was listed on the curricula of third-ninth grades under the Christianity subject. It tackles Islam in a chapter entitled “terrorism.” The first pages of the chapter remind students of the grisly Beslan massacre in Russia, when armed Chechens took hundreds of students hostage. The book associates Muslims with terrorism and also outlines the terrorist 9/11 attacks with a profile of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. The newspaper said the first thing Danish students learn about Islam and Muslims is all about horror and panic. “It sends the message that Muslims are the root cause of terrorism in this world,” it added.

IslamOnline, 21 November 2006

Danes’ anti-immigrant backlash marks radical shift

An anti-immigrant backlash, bordering on xenophobia, is sweeping across Europe. Sentiments once associated with ultra right-wing parties are becoming mainstream. Many taboos are being broken – nowhere more starkly than in Denmark – the erstwhile poster child of the welcoming and nurturing welfare state.

Currently, the nation’s best-selling book is called Islamists and Naivists. “We compare Islamism to Nazism and communism because they are all three of them a totalitarian ideology,” says Karen Jespersen, who co-wrote the book with her husband, Ralf Pittlekow.

Their politically incorrect analysis would suggest they’re right-wingers. But they’re diehard Social Democrats – proud veterans of the student protests of the 1960s. Jespersen, a feminist and a former interior minister in charge of immigration issues, says the radicals’ goal is the Islamization of Europe.

NPR, 20 November 2006

Fascists applaud result of Danish cartoons court case

“Denmark continues to lead in the way in defending the long cherished European concept of free speech after a court ruled yesterday (26th) that a Danish newspaper did not libel Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed that unleashed a storm of protests in the Islamic world. Seven Danish Muslim organisations brought the case against the Jyllands-Posten, saying the paper had libelled the world’s one billion Muslims with the images, which included one depicting the Prophet with a bomb in his turban, by implying Muslims were terrorists.”

BNP news article, 27 October 2006