Islam in Denmark

A Mosque in Hvidovre outside Copenhagen run by the Ahmadiyya. Constructed in 1967, this was the first mosque in the Nordic countries, although some Islamic authorities consider the Ahmadiyya to be heretics.

Approximately 5% of the population in Denmark are Muslims. Islam is the largest religious minority in Denmark.

History and background

Religious freedom is guaranteed by law in Denmark, and as of 2005, nineteen different Muslim religious communities had status as officially recognized religious societies, which gives them certain tax benefits. However, unlike the majority of countries in the West, Denmark lacks separation of church and state, resulting in economic advantages for the Church of Denmark not shared by Muslim or other minority communities. Although they are compensated by tax benefit.

The majority of the Muslims living in Denmark are first-generation immigrants from Muslim-majority countries.

There are three phases in the Muslim immigration to Denmark: the foreign workers, the asylum seekers and those coming through marriage.

During the early 1970s, many Muslims emigrated from Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco and Bosnia to look for work in Denmark. Denmark halted free immigration in 1973.

During the 1980s and 1990s a number of Muslim asylum seekers came to Denmark. In the 1980s mostly from Iran, Iraq, Gaza and the West Bank and in the 1990s mostly from Somalia and Bosnia. Some of those who sought asylum had been charged with terrorism in their home countries.

The asylum seekers comprise about 40% of the Danish Muslim population.

Previously, the majority of Muslims who immigrated to Denmark did so as part of family reunification. The Danish parliament has passed a law in 2002 making family reunification harder. It was also implemented to counter forced marriages by ensuring that both parties are at least 24 years old and so considered old enough to enter a marriage without being forced to do so. The new law requires the couple to both be above the age of 24 and requires the resident spouse to show capacity to support both persons of the couple.

Religious issues

In 1967 the Nusrat Djahan Mosque was built in Hvidovre, a Copenhagen suburb. This Mosque is used by adherents of the Muslim Ahmadi sect .

Other mosques exist but are not built for the explicit purpose. It is not forbidden to build mosques or any other religious buildings in Denmark but there are very strict zoning laws. One piece of land has been reserved for a grand mosque at Amager (near Copenhagen), but financing is not settled. Danish Muslims have not succeeded in cooperating on the financing of the project and do not agree on whether it should be financed with outside sources, such as Saudi money.

Seven Danish cemeteries have separate sections for Muslims. Most of the Danish Muslims are buried in those cemeteries, with about 70 being flown abroad for burial in their countries of origin. A separate Muslim cemetery was opened in Brøndby near Copenhagen in September 2006.

Schools

The first Muslim private school was founded in 1978 - Den Islamisk Arabiske Skole (the Islamic Arabic School) in Helsingør and accepted students from any country. Today there are about 20 Muslim schools, most of which are located in the major cities. The Muslim schools are big enough today to enable catering to students according to their country of origin. In the 1980s, schools for Pakistani, Turkish and Arabic speakers were founded. Furthermore, Somali, Palestinian and Iraqi schools were founded in the 1990s. Today 6 or 7 nationalities dominate the Muslim schools.

The biggest school is Dia Privatskole in Nørrebro with about 410 students. Two Pakistani schools teach in Urdu as mother tongue and several Turkish schools have Turkish instruction. Most other schools cater to Arabic speaking students..

Conflict

As a country with a highly homogeneous population, Denmark, like several countries, is dealing with the presence of a substantial and visible minority. As first and second generation immigrants, many drawn from the ranks of refugees, some Muslim groups in Denmark have failed to achieve the economic and political power proportional to their population. For example, they remain over-represented among the unemployed, and under-represented in higher education, and among permanent residents holding citizenship and the right to vote. They also remain over-represented among prison populations. Such disenfranchisement is typical of minority groups immigrating to new nations, as is evident in the United States and Western Europe. Scandinavian immigrants do not always fully assimilate into other cultures. For example, Solvang, a town in California, is a mostly Danish community that has not fully assimilated after a few generations of immigration, however there have been no restrictions on construction of traditional Danish buildings or practicing Danish culture. Similarly, there was an influx of Scandinavian immigrants to the Unites States, particularly Minnesota, Wisconsin, and North Dakota due to famine conditions and over population in Scandinavia in the mid 1800s. There were stereotypes of "dumb Swedes" as depicted by the fictional character "Yon Yonson" and some Americans were critical of some of the new inhabitants' cuisine, such lye-cooked fish, known as lutefisk. In the 1980s, actress Betty White portrayed a naive and obtuse n^th generation Scandinavian immigrant, Rose Nylund from St Olaf, MN. After over 100 years in the United States, many American Scandinavians have persisted their cultural practices of consuming lutefisk. Pride and nationalism amongst Scandinavians is well documented, as well as divisiveness between Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians, both in Europe and America. For example, the stereotype of the drunken Swede vs drunken Dane, which has roots in various religious temperance movements in Scandinavia. Furthermore, the homogeneity of individual Scandinavian nations creates a common culture which gives rise to nationalist movements. This may explain the unwillingness to give up certain customs even after over 100 years of immigration in the United States as well as the resistance to multiculturalism. The recent rise in Danish nationalism has targeted many other groups such as Jews, Sri Lankans, and Asians. Soren Krarup, a member of the Danish Parliament states that:

It is absolutely grotesque that people from Somalia, Sri Lanka and the Far East should be able to call themselves refugees in Denmark.

As Danish immigrants are given some time to integrate into society, the demographic data presents some evidence that the immigrants can hold jobs more effectively than ethnic Danes. Recent data shows that there has been a higher increase in unemployment among ethnic Danes (84%) than immigrants (20%), which is attributed to the hard working nature of immigrants:

"Integration consultant Hans Lassen told public broadcaster DR that immigrant workers were ‘highly motivated’ to enter the labour market and hang on to their jobs, and it was something other Danish workers could learn from. ‘Here we have some people [non-ethnic Danes] who want it and want to hang on to it. There’s no doubt that it could maybe inspire some ethnic Danes,’ he said." .

Some ethnic Danes feel threatened by aspects of Muslim culture, setting the stage for conflict. Partly as a reaction to this situation, recent years have seen the rise of a political party (the Danish People's Party) with nationalistic and anti-immigration policies. This party currently supports the ruling centre-right Liberal-Conservative coalition which has implemented stricter policies to reduce the number of immigrants—particularly by enforcing stricter criteria permanent residence status to mixed couples where one of the spouses has not previously resided in Denmark. This is known as the 24 year rule, since it applies to persons younger than 24 years only. Other policies have aimed at promoting competence of the Danish language.

The Danish People's Party is accused of generating propaganda, and this claim is well substantiated. An advertisement promoting policy to curtail construction of mosques featured a digitally altered photograph on the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. The image was altered to include two crossed swords at the top of the dome, where no such objects exist. Daniel Pipes, an American academic, has provided fabricated data in slanted position papers such as "Muslim Extremism: Denmark's had Enough" which Danish MPs have claimed contains fabricated data, as the Danish government simply does not collect statistics on religion:

The authors claim that 40% of Danish welfare expenses are consumed by Muslim immigrants. Denmark has a much broader spectrum of welfare costs than countries in North America. We include not only unemployment benefits and social security but also substantial allocations to housing, transport, homecare, early retirement, protected workplaces, daycare and other smaller schemes. Muslim immigrants do not receive 40% of those allocations even though they represent a substantial part of the clients. The main reason being: It is hard to compete on a job market not interested in employing immigrants.

The further assumption that more than half of all rapists in Denmark are Muslims is without any basis in fact, as criminal registers do not record religion.

Much media attention has been focused on arranged marriages, practiced by some Muslims (as well as Hindus, Jews, and other cultures), and laws have been implemented trying to prevent this practice. The choice of some Muslim women in Denmark to wear or not to wear various traditional head covering, e.g. in the workplace, has also been the subject of debate and action. The Danish military has refused to allow Muslim women to wear a traditional head covering. In public schools, teaching is conducted in Danish, and the government opposes the use of immigrant children's native language in Danish primary schools. However, Muslim schools where Danish is not the primary teaching language do exist.

A Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten printed 12 caricatures of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in September 2005. These cartoons sparked an international controversy, ultimately resulting in the scorching of two Danish diplomatic missions, a boycott of Danish goods in several countries, and a large number of protests around the world. Violent protests in some countries have caused rising support for the anti-immigration Danish People's Party and, by some accounts, a more critical approach towards Islam in Denmark. However, the cartoons were criticized as insensitive by world leaders like G.W. Bush and the U.S. Ambassador to Denmark, James P. Cain, who remarked "Americans in some point of our history decided that it was more important to have an ordered, integrated, diverse, peaceful, secure, harmonious society – harmonious racially, harmonious from an ethnic perspective and harmonious religiously – than it was to each have the individual right to insult our neighbours, to incite violence, to draw offensive cartoons just for the heck of it."

Organizations

• Foreningen af Demokratiske Muslimer (The organization of democratic Muslims), founded by Naser Khader in 2006. Its current chairman is Moustapha Kassem.
• Islamisk Trossamfund, Sunni Muslim, with strong Salafi tendencies, run by Mostafa Chendid, a Moroccan-born Danish imam.
• Muslimer i Dialog (Muslims in Dialogue),, largely Sunni, run by Noman Malik and Abdul Wahid Pedersen. Their spokesman is Zubair Butt Hussain.
• Hizb ut-Tahrir, mainly Sunni, but have a Shia Muslim minority.
• Foreningen Salam (Salam Association) is run by Shia Muslim women.
• UngeMuslimer Gruppen, (Young Muslims Group), Shia Muslim, based in Copenhagen.
• Ahmadiyya Muslim Community Denmark, run by the Ahmadi Muslims.

Noted Danish-Muslims

• Ahmad Abu Laban
• Naser Khader
• Asmaa Abdol-Hamid
• Hüseyin Arac

See also

• Religion in Denmark
• Islam by country
• Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy
• Stop the Islamification of Europe - Political group