The burka ban comes to Denmark

The opening of the Danish Parliament in the first week of October is traditional occasion to take stock of the political situation: the balance of power, the administration’s intentions and its chances of fulfilling them. This year a leading theme is a rift in the Liberal Party, the largest party in the government coalition. The week before, the party’s immigration spokesperson, Marcus Knuth, commented favorably on Facebook on the success of the xenophobic AfD (Alternative for Germany) party in the German election.

Knuth’s colleague, Jan Jørgensen, responded “WTF” (in English – maybe it’s becoming a global trope in political commentary at this historical juncture). Knuth walked back his remark: By a “better balance” in the German Parliament, he meant that he hoped that the conservative parties would get tougher on immigration in order to pre-empt the rise of far right.

Those cartoons again

Around the same time, Inger Støjberg, the outspoken immigration minister, also took to Facebook to comment on an exhibition on blasphemy at the Skovgaard Museum in Viborg. She noted that the show omitted the most famous example of blasphemy in Denmark in recent times, the cartoons of the prophet Mohammed in Jyllands-Posten in 2005 that led to riots in the Arab world. It wasn’t enough for her to reiterate her dedication to the principle of freedom of expression. She also shared a screenshot of her iPad background – the most famous of the cartoons, the one by Kurt Westergaard with a bomb in Mohammed’s turban.

The reaction from the media and opposition figures was to criticize Støjberg for gratuitous provocation – even egotistical and childish grandstanding – or to make fun of her for not having a more personal photo on her iPad. Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen made a suitably politic response (DK): He wasn’t “proud of any cartoons” himself, but he was proud to live in a country with freedom of expression.

Rounding up a majority

This was only a warm-up for one of the main items on the parliamentary agenda: a ban on burkas and niqabs. The far-right Danish People’s Party has been pushing for this for a while, but the Liberal Party had resisted. Similar laws in France and Belgium were recently upheld by the European Court of Human Rights. That was perhaps the factor that tipped the Liberal Party in favor of the proposal despite opposition from some of its leading figures.

The bill is formulated as a ban on masks, not specifically religious attire. It would thus apply as well to the ski masks sometimes worn by anti-fascist demonstrators who sometimes commit vandalism. The Liberal Party explains that it must balance the considerations of freedom to dress as one wants with the principle that in an open society, people need to be able to see one another. The Liberal Alliance, Denmark’s most libertarian party, also changed its position to support the proposal, citing the oppression of women that the burka represents.

Along with the long-time support of the Conservative Party, that was enough to give the proposal a majority. Since the government’s decision was announced, the Social Democrats, who had said they were waiting to see the actual proposal, also decided to support the measure (DK). 

Combating sexism with a dress code

Both the flaunting of the cartoon and the burka ban are seen as hardline moves by the government against the spread of the “parallel” Muslim society. But isn’t anyone bothered by a contradiction between the ban and the celebration of freedom of expression? Yes. Of the three leading daily newspapers, only the conservative Berlingske Tidende (DK) favors the ban. Both the further-right Jyllands-Posten (DK) (where the Mohammed cartoons appeared) and the left-leaning Politiken (DK) oppose it.

There are only an estimated 100 to 200 women in the country who wear a burka or niqab. No one suggests they are a security threat, and the police are pretty busy with gang wars at the moment. These are consenting adults after all. Some may be victims of coercion, others have been indoctrinated to accept their “oppression,” and others yet are educated ethnic Danish converts.

A ban on masks at demonstrations could be enforced without its being extended to religious clothing. The ban is thus largely a symbolic gesture of disapproval of fundamentalist Islam. Whether you favor it depends on whether you consider the threat of Islam to be so urgent that it justifies compromising the freedom of expression that is “fundamental” to a liberal democracy or whether you want to score political points with a certain constituency. In a recent poll (conducted just after a Danish modeling agency had announced its first hijab-wearing model), some 62% of Danes favored the ban.

The agonies of European multiculturalism

Douglas Murray is a British journalist and associate editor at the Spectator. His latest book, The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity and Islam, which came out earlier this year, is of great importance for understanding developments in the past 50 years in Europe. It concerns the growing Muslim population in the region that poses an intractable social problem because it is not being integrated in European culture. A combination of mass migration, a falling birth rate among Europeans, and the acquiescence of Western European politicians has led to a situation in which traditional liberal Western values are being undermined.

The acts of jihadist terrorism that the book recounts are well known. The less sensational but disturbingly frequent incidences of rape and anti-Semitic attacks are also becoming familiar. The most shocking revelations of the book, however, concern the denial and guilt displayed by Western European politicians and the mainstream media, partly because they run counter to the skepticism about immigration that Western European populations have shown since the 1960s.

From guest workers to sharia law

At that time, when there was a labor shortage, Western European countries invited “guest workers” from Turkey and elsewhere to fill the shortfall. They were expected to return home when they were no longer needed, but they stayed. They were expected to become integrated, and when they did not, politicians denied that there was a problem because they were afraid of being called racist and would not admit that their policies had been mistaken. The police and the media supported this position by suppressing news of gang rapes and white slavery, for example.

Even though the large majority of the Muslim population does not commit acts of terrorism and violence, there is surprisingly widespread support among it for sharia law, the Islamic State, honor killings, female genital mutilation, and so on. The earlier predictions of problems that were treated as alarmist proved to be underestimated.

A religion of peace

And when news of atrocities did get out, politicians insisted that the acts had nothing to do with Islam, a religion of peace. They blamed their own culture for its colonial history and maintained that Europe had a unique responsibility to shelter even those opposed to its basic values. This is political correctness taken to masochistic lengths. At various times, for example, Swedish cabinet members and prominent figures have said that everyone is a migrant, that Swedes were jealous of the authenticity of Middle Eastern culture, and that a failure to accept migrants was equivalent to the Holocaust.

The book describes this syndrome in the UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, and it also describes a resistance to it in eastern Europe, notably Hungary. It makes little reference to Denmark besides the Mohammed cartoon crisis, but the implication of its message for Denmark is striking: with its infamous 50+ measures to restrict immigration, the current Danish government is actually taking the course that Murray recommends to mitigate the worst integration problems afflicting its neighboring countries.

Fake Syrians and children

Consider the issue of repatriating people whose applications for asylum have been rejected. In Germany, Sweden and elsewhere, there have been thousands of cases of people whose applications have been rejected for making false claims of being Syrians, of being minors or of being persecuted on political grounds. In very few cases, are they returned to their homeland or to the country where they should have sought asylum according to the Dublin III accord. The authorities lose track of them. Perhaps they survive economically on the black market or join criminal gangs. In any case, the official policies are considered impossible to enforce.

In Denmark, the number of such cases is relatively small, but they have been identified: In the first half of 2017, some 1,835 rejected applicants were repatriated. As of August 3, there were 941 waiting to be repatriated (DK), including 434 who could not be repatriated because of difficulties reaching agreements with their home countries. There is a debate between humanitarian organizations, which argue that those who cannot be sent home be given residence or work permits, and the administration, which argues that such measures would encourage others to enter the country on false pretenses.

Racist or realist?

Rejected asylum applicants have also escaped from Danish refugee centers and disappeared from view, but the concrete figures on the issue, the open debate on the policy and the negotiations conducted with the applicants’ home countries set Denmark apart from the usual practices and attitudes that Murray describes. The center-left Social Liberal party now also favors (DK) a reduction in the number of refugees, and the Social Democrats now propose (DK) following the Australian model in which applicants are processed outside the country. Because of a reduction in the number of applicants, Denmark using the allocated funding to support refugee camps (DK) in North Africa, as Murray and others recommend.

Denmark has been vilified for exemplifying xenophobic tendencies that have appeared in France, Germany and elsewhere, but if Murray’s portrayal is credible, its recent policies exemplify rather a more candid and realistic attitude toward the European cultural crisis than is found in most of the continent.