Author: Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard
Publication: New York Post
Date: August 27, 2002
URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/article/450
A Muslim group in Denmark announced
a few days ago that a $30,000 bounty would be paid for the murder of several
prominent Danish Jews, a threat that garnered wide international notice.
Less well known is that this is just one problem associated with Denmark's
approximately 200,000 Muslim immigrants. The key issue is that many of
them show little desire to fit into their adopted country.
For years, Danes lauded multiculturalism
and insisted they had no problem with the Muslim customs - until one day
they found that they did. Some major issues:
* Living on the dole: Third-world
immigrants - most of them Muslims from countries such as Turkey, Somalia,
Pakistan, Lebanon and Iraq - constitute 5 percent of the population but
consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending.
* Engaging in crime: Muslims are
only 4 percent of Denmark's 5.4 million people but make up a majority of
the country's convicted rapists, an especially combustible issue given
that practically all the female victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser,
disproportions are found in other crimes.
* Self-imposed isolation: Over time,
as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish less to mix with the
indigenous population. A recent survey finds that only 5 percent of young
Muslim immigrants would readily marry a Dane.
* Importing unacceptable customs:
Forced marriages - promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a male cousin
in the home country, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain
of death - are one problem.
Another is threats to kill Muslims
who convert out of Islam. One Kurdish convert to Christianity, who went
public to explain why she had changed religion, felt the need to hide her
face and conceal her identity, fearing for her life.
* Fomenting anti-Semitism: Muslim
violence threatens Denmark's approximately 6,000 Jews, who increasingly
depend on police protection. Jewish parents were told by one school principal
that she could not guarantee their children's safety and were advised to
attend another institution. Anti-Israel marches have turned into anti-Jewish
riots. One organization, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, openly calls on Muslims to "kill
all Jews . . . wherever you find them."
* Seeking Islamic law: Muslim leaders
openly declare their goal of introducing Islamic law once Denmark's Muslim
population grows large enough - a not-that-remote prospect. If present
trends persist, one sociologist estimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark
in 40 years will be Muslim.
Other Europeans (such as the late
Pim Fortuyn in Holland) have also grown alarmed about these issues, but
Danes were the first to make them the basis for a change in government.
In a momentous election last November,
a center-right coalition came to power that - for the first time since
1929 - excluded the socialists. The right broke its 72-year losing streak
and won a solid parliamentary majority by promising to handle immigration
issues, the electorate's first concern, differently from the socialists.
The next nine months did witness
some fine-tuning of procedures: Immigrants now must live seven years in
Denmark (rather than three) to become permanent residents. Most non- refugees
no longer can collect welfare checks immediately on entering the country.
No one can bring into the country an intended spouse under the age of 24.
And the state prosecutor is considering a ban on Hizb-ut-Tahrir for its
death threats against Jews.
These minor adjustments prompted
howls internationally - with European and U.N. reports condemning Denmark
for racism and "Islamophobia," the Washington Post reporting that Muslim
immigrants "face habitual discrimination," and a London Guardian headline
announcing that "Copenhagen Flirts with Fascism."
In reality, however, the new government
barely addressed the existing problems. Nor did it prevent new ones, such
as the death threats against Jews or a recent Islamic edict calling on
Muslims to drive Danes out of the Norrebro quarter of Copenhagen.
The authorities remain indulgent.
The military mulls permitting Muslim soldiers in Denmark's volunteer International
Brigade to opt out of actions they don't agree with - a privilege granted
to members of no other faith. Mohammed Omar Bakri, the self-proclaimed
London- based "eyes, ears and mouth" of Osama bin Laden, won permission
to set up a branch of his organization, Al-Muhajiroun.
Contrary to media reports, the real
news from Denmark is not flirting with fascism but getting mired in inertia.
A government elected specifically to deal with a set of problems has made
minimal headway. Its reluctance has potentially profound implications for
the West as a whole.
