Islamophobia Watch

Jacob Wheeler interviews Asmaa Abdol-Hamid.

In These Times, 28 March 2008

COPENHAGEN — Danish Muslims link the racist murder of a Muslim teen last week to an increasing Islamophobic atmosphere fanned by the reprinting of a cartoon satirical of prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).

"Deniz Ozgur Uzun was killed because of his dark, Middle Eastern skin," Jihad Abdelalim Alfara, the chairman of the Islamic Council in Denmark, told IslamOnline.net. Uzun, a 17-year-old Turk attending a technical high school, was distributing newspapers in the Amager district of Copenhagen Wednesday when he was verbally harassed by three Danes, aged 15, 17 and 18.

"They tried to provoke him with racist slur," said Abdel-Hamid Hamdi, head of the Shura Council of the Islamic Council in Denmark. "He ignored them and went his way before they stopped their car and started assaulting him."

A friend of Uzun, identified by the media as Mohammed, said the three attacked Uzun with a baseball bat and a hammer, leaving him unconscious. The Muslim teen was put on life support at a hospital in Copenhagen with "severe brain damage" before he was pronounced dead the next day.

Alfara, the Muslim community leader, believes the racist attack is directly linked to an Islamophobic atmosphere in the Scandinavian country fanned by the recent reprinting of the prophet cartoon. "Was it necessary to have someone killed for people to realize that racism is on the rise in Denmark following the cartoon crisis?"

Islam Online, 24 March 2008

Jordan Shilton examines the resurgence of the Danish cartoons controversy.

World Wide Socialist Web Site, 28 February 2008

COPENHAGEN — Tension about the possibility of a Muslim politician addressing the Danish parliament in a headscarf has flared again, but Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen tried to calm the debate on Tuesday.

"It's up to parliament to decide dress codes, and if some people were to get up on the podium wearing a [Muslim] headscarf, I would not leave the room," Rasmussen told reporters. "In my opinion, people's ideas and points of view are more important than what they wear," he said, adding however that "it would be beneficial for Danish society if the public sphere were exempt of some religious displays."

Rasmussen's comments came after his liberal-conservative government's ally, the extreme-right Danish People's Party (DPP), rekindled a row over whether women wearing the Muslim headscarf, or hijab, should be allowed to address parliament. DPP spokesman Soeren Espersen said last week that Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a Dane of Palestinian origin, should not be permitted to address parliament while wearing a hijab.

She failed in her bid to become the first headscarf-wearing Muslim in Europe to be voted into parliament in last year's general election, but there is a possibility that she could stand in temporarily for a parliamentarian from the small far-left Unity List Party.

Daily Times, 26 February 2008

See also Islam in Europe, 24 February 2008

Update:  Thew Copenhagen Post reports that Asmaa Abdol-Hamid has decided to take a one-year break from party politics. She is quoted as expressing her "disappointment in the left wing" over its response to Islamophobia, stating: "while there's all this hubbub out there over Muslims, with one over-the-top suggestion after the other, the Red-Green Alliance has been disturbingly silent."

"The 10 members of the Danish parliament's Foreign Policy Committee, including Denmark's former Foreign Minister Mogens Lykketoft, erred when they canceled a trip to Iran two days prior to scheduled meetings. The purpose of the trip was to meet with members of the Iranian parliament as well as to look into such issues as the country's human rights and uranium enrichment.

"During this same time period Danish police arrested two Tunisians and a Dane of Moroccan descent on Tuesday, accusing them of planning to kill a cartoonist who drew a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad that was published in Danish newspapers two years ago.

"One presumes that Denmark upholds due process, and that in Denmark arrests are not equated with guilt, but remarkably 15 Danish newspapers reprinted this very same cartoon on Wednesday in protest against the alleged plot. The alleged plot.

"Even if these papers had waited for a guilty verdict following due process, it would remain the case that an infantile provocation of this magnitude is beyond reproach. Considering the vast difficulties worldwide that derived from the initial printing of these cartoons, there are simply no words to describe the decision of not one or two deranged editors, but a coordinated effort among 15 newspapers in what is generally regarded as a modern nation. Publication of the cartoons two years ago led to protests and rioting in Muslim countries around the world. At least 50 people were killed and three Danish embassies attacked.....

"For a government to stand behind actions that are so patently reprehensible as a unified media decision to offend religious believers around the world, and then to poison international relations by canceling a high level diplomatic mission is a near perfect error, a disgrace to the West, an offense, and a missed opportunity."

Frank Kaufmann in the Middle East Times, 18 February 2008

In the wake of the reprinting in Denmark of one of the 12 cartoons satirising the Prophet Muhammad, BBC religious affairs correspondent Frances Harrison finds the country's Muslim community dismayed but determined.

BBC News, 18 February 2008

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Denmark's leading newspapers Wednesday reprinted a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad that triggered rioting in Muslim countries two years ago. The newspapers said they republished the cartoon to show their firm commitment to freedom of speech after the arrest Tuesday of three people accused of plotting to kill the man who drew the cartoon depicting the prophet wearing a turban shaped like a bomb with a lit fuse.

The Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which first published the drawings on Sept. 30, 2005, reprinted Westergaard's cartoon in its paper edition Wednesday. Several other major dailies, including Politiken and Berlingske Tidende, also reprinted the drawing."We are doing this to document what is at stake in this case, and to unambiguously back and support the freedom of speech that we as a newspaper will always defend," said the Copenhagen-based Berlingske Tidende.Tabloid Ekstra Bladet reprinted all 12 drawings. At least three European newspapers – in Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain – also reprinted the cartoon as part of their coverage of the Danish arrests.

Intelligence police arrested two Tunisians and a Danish citizen of Moroccan origin in western Denmark on Tuesday for allegedly plotting to kill Westergaard. The Danish suspect was released Tuesday after questioning, his lawyer Henning Lyngsbo said."He has no knowledge about the case," Lyngsbo told The Associated Press. "It doesn't seem that the evidence is very strong."

Associated Press, 13 February 2008

"Tariq Ramadan differs a bit from militant Islam, at least in method, although not in the final outcome; both are all about Islamic dominance. Tariq Ramadan opposes the Muslims' use of violence in Europe because in the long run violence might be devastating to the prospect of Euroislam.... Euroislam is the vision of Islam’s religious and political dominance over Europe."

Kirsten Sarauw in the Kristeligt Dagblad, 11 January 2008

COPENHAGEN, Denmark — Raving xenophobe or fearless defender of Danish values Nationalist leader Pia Kjaersgaard's anti-Muslim outbursts have earned her many labels – and many votes. Despite predictions of her populist Danish People's Party's demise, Kjaersgaard remains a powerful force in domestic politics after winning 14 percent of the vote in last week's election.

"The most important thing for the Danish People's Party is to maintain the Danish identity," Kjaersgaard, 60, told The Associated Press in an interview. "I am convinced that the Islamists want to sneak Sharia (Islamic law) through the back door, that they want to combat Western society and they want Islam to become the main religion," she said.

But critics say the Danish People's Party has polarized Danish society by bashing Islam and stereotyping immigrants as welfare cheats. "She is a scare-mongering populist and opportunist," said Holger K. Nielsen of the left-wing opposition Socialist People's Party.

She rejects accusations of racism and comparisons to far-right parties across Europe such as the National Front in France. "There is nothing racist about what I have said, I know that. I have a clean conscience," she said. When asked if she thought Islam can contribute to Danish society in any way, she replied: "I don't think so at all."

Associated Press, 23 November 2007

COPENHAGEN — The Danish government's far-right ally in parliament has made immigration, especially by Muslims, its main target of attacks ahead of next week's legislative elections. In its election campaign for the November 13 poll, the Danish People's Party (DPP) blasts Muslim immigrants for not respecting Danish traditions and for taking advantage of the Scandinavian country's generous welfare system.

One poster shows a woman wearing a Muslim headscarf withdrawing money from a cash dispenser machine drawn with the logo of the welfare benefits office, with the caption: "Make demands on the foreigners. Now they must contribute!". Another shows a group of veiled women under the headline: "Follow the country's traditions and customs or leave."

Two days after the government called snap elections for November 13, the DPP presented a series of law proposals aimed at Muslim immigrants, including bans on using the Muslim headscarf in public places and on special worship areas for Muslims in the workplace. The party also called for a ban on halal meat in daycare centres and on special locker rooms for Muslim schoolgirls. "There is every reason to tighten the screws, because Danish values are under pressure," said deputy head of the party Peter Skaarup.

AFP, 11 November 2007