Danish 'not that open'
2006-02-21 10:52
Copenhagen - Muslims here joke that the only minarets you will find in Denmark are at the flying carpet ride at Tivoli, Copenhagen's famed amusement park.
Immigrants brought Islam to Denmark four decades ago, but a major mosque to serve the Islamic community has yet to be built. That results partly from divisions within that community, but some also see it as emblematic of the struggle Muslims face in gaining respect in Denmark, which is now engulfed in its biggest international crisis since World War II over the Prophet Muhammad drawings.
As the red-and-white "Dannebrog" - one of the world's oldest national flags - is being burned, trampled on and ripped to shreds by raging mobs from Jakarta to Beirut, Denmark's self-image as a bastion of tolerance and open-mindedness is being challenged from within.
"It's a big lie," said Farhid Rajai, a 29-year-old multimedia student from Iran, working part-time in a Persian music store in Noerrebro, a Copenhagen immigrant neighbourhood where women in headscarves push strollers past halal butchers and crowded kebab shops.
Difficult to integrate
After five years on temporary student and tourist visas, Rajai is about to give up trying to get a permanent residence permit and move to Sweden where it is easier to get one.
"I try to integrate here, but I get no help from the Danes," Rajai said. "Maybe because I have black hair."
His concerns, echoed by immigrants from the capital in the east to the Jutland Peninsula in the west, are at odds with what Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been telling the world recently - that Denmark is an open and tolerant nation.
Indeed, the controversy over the Muhammad cartoons, published by a Danish newspaper in September and reprinted later by other European media, has upset Danes' views of themselves, both among the estimated 200 000 Muslim residents - about 4% of Denmark's 5.4 million population - and among ethnic Danes.
Many Danish Muslims - even some moderates - see publication of the 12 cartoons, including one showing Muhammad in a bomb-shaped turban, as the culmination of years of prejudice verging on Islamophobia.
"There's been so many things said from some of the elected parliamentarians that you wouldn't believe it," said Zubair Butt Hussain, 31, a Danish-born Muslim of Kashmiri descent.
Meanwhile, polls show that among Danes as a whole, the violent Muslim reaction to the Muhammad cartoons has increased the popularity of the right-wing parties that have long complained that liberal immigration policies threaten to overwhelm the country with Muslims.
Muslims 'like the plague;
The strongest rhetoric has come from the Danish People's Party, a populist anti-immigration group that became Denmark's third largest party in 2001 and is allied with Fogh Rasmussen's Liberals. Its leaders have compared Muslims to the plague, warned of Muslim immigrant plots to take over Europe, and often derided Islam as a relic of the Middle Ages with no place in modern democratic society.
"The only thing that can truly fight extreme Islamism is by closing the border, period," Soeren Espersen, the party's foreign policy spokesperson, said in a recent interview in his office, decorated with an Israeli flag, ancient maps of Denmark and a framed photograph of Israeli paratroopers.
"We very strongly recommend tight immigration laws because we do not want to see a majority of Muslims in this country and then run the risk of our democracy ending in a dictatorship with (Islamic) Sharia laws."
In the 1990s, the party successfully tapped into a growing anti-immigration sentiment in Europe that fuelled nationalist parties like the National Front in France, Austria's Freedom Party, the Flemish Bloc in Belgium, and the party of the late Pim Fortuyn in the Netherlands.
Today there is a wide backing for restrictions on immigration adopted by both the previous Social Democratic government and the centre-right coalition that took power in 2001.
The reuniting of immigrant families, once the most common path for entering Denmark, has become an arduous task under a 2002 law. To bring in a wife or husband now, both spouses must over 24 - an age limit aimed a preventing forced marriages - meet certain financial criteria and prove that they have closer ties to Denmark than their country of origin.
The effect has been clear. In 2001, Denmark granted residence permits to 11 000 people joining relatives already here. In 2005, the number dropped to 3 500. In the same period, approved asylum cases fell from 6 200 to fewer than 1 200, with the biggest groups of asylum-seekers from Serbia-Montenegro, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.
Integration Minister Rikke Hvilshoej said the new system is providing a "balance" of immigrants. "We are now much better off and have much better opportunity to put quality into integration," he said.
The new rules were a reaction to failed integration policies of the 1990s when a flood of immigration overwhelmed government resources, and non-Western immigrants dropped out of school with alarming frequency and had a jobless rate 30-40% above ethnic Danes.
Unwilling to learn Danish
Some immigrants also were unwilling to learn Danish language and customs - a problem that persists today.
Now, even some in the Muslim community are calling for immigrants to work harder to become part of Danish society, such as Syrian-born Naser Khader, who is one of three Muslim members of the 179-seat Danish parliament.
"I don't think that Denmark is less tolerant than other countries," Khader said last week in announcing the formation of a bloc of moderate Muslims. "Had that been the case we would have seen burning flags in Danish streets."
Still, many say the cartoon crisis has created irreparable damage and distrust between Muslims and ethnic Danes.
With Denmark's reputation in tatters in the Islamic world, future waves of Muslim migrants may steer clear of the country, and even some Danish-born Muslims question whether their future should be elsewhere.
"About 20% of the population vote for the Danish People's Party," said Farhat Khan, a 26-year-old technology project manager in Copenhagen. "And that worries me, because I don't know if this is the place where I want my kids to grow up."
- AP