Danish Cartoons and Christian-Muslim Relations in Denmark

Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 brill.nl/exch Danish Cartoons and Christian-Muslim Relations in Denmark Jørgen S. Nielsen Professor and Director of the Centre for European Islamic Thought, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen [email protected] Abstract Prior to the arrival of Muslim immigrants and refugees into Denmark in the 1970s and after, Denmark’s experience with Islam was partly through university-based research and partly through missionary activities. During the 1980s and 1990s both sectors gradually adapted to the settlement of Muslims in the country. In the 1990s the public political debate became increasingly heated, leading to a steady tightening of immigration and refugee policies. In this debate an Islamic dimension was starkly exacerbated by the events of 11 September 2001 and the arrival of a new centre-right government two months later. This was the environment in which the ‘Muhammad cartoons’ were published in September 2005, and in which the domestic and international crisis played out over the subsequent 6-8 months. But the events also encouraged the emergence of new Islamic organizations and new responses, both negative and positive, on the part of the churches. While the sharp public debate continues, new apparently sustainable structures of Christian-Muslim relations have appeared. Keywords Muslim-Christian relations, Danish church, Muhammad cartoons The publication1 by the national daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 Sep- tember 2005 of a set of 12 cartoons presented as ‘perceptions’ of the Prophet Muhammad sparked a crisis which swept round the world over the following many months and which still leaves echoes. While most analysts would con- clude that the international dimensions had very little to do with the cartoons 1 Some sections of this article are also published in an earlier publication of the present author entitled ‘The development of the cartoons crisis — a Danish perspective’, in Arnim Heinemann, Olfa Lamloum and Anne Francoise Weber (eds.), The Middle East in the Media: Conflicts, Censor- ship and Public Opinion, London: Saqi Press, 2010, pp. 17-34. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2010 DOI: 10.1163/157254310X517441 Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 02:27:39PM via free access 218 J. S. Nielsen / Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 and Denmark,2 the events inevitably have left their mark in Denmark. This article first looks at the general context of a country with a mixed but limited experience of Islam and even less with Muslims. The voluntary church agen- cies were comfortable with supporting social work among immigrants but less so with entering into an inter-religious relationship. I then proceed to look in some detail at the domestic aspects of the crisis, outlining its course and the debates which it occasioned. Finally I return to the effect the crisis had on the religious scene in the country both specifically in terms of Christian-Muslim relations and in terms of the place of religion in the public space. 1. The Church, Immigration and Muslims Islam and the Muslim world are not unknown entities in modern Danish history, which has had a strong tradition of working with Islam in the university and in the church. Of course, Denmark has shared in the broader Euro- pean history with Islam through the middle ages, and there were Danish participants in the Crusades to the Middle East, although a more significant crusading activity took place among the ‘heathens’ of the Baltic littoral — it was in modern Estonia that the Danish flag is supposed to have descended from heaven and turned a critical battle. With its strong Lutheran identity Denmark absorbed some of the antagonism toward ‘the Turk’ which is expressed in the writings of Martin Luther. During the 18th century, Den- mark for a short time became a significant actor with a supportive monarchy in the mould of enlightened absolutism. One of the great literary figures of the 18th century, Ludvig Holberg (d.1754), is best known as a playwright in the style of Molière, but he was also a professor at the University of Copen- hagen and wrote about Islam and Muhammad in a factual manner — while of course holding to the correctness of Christianity.3 The most remarkable initia- tive at this time was, however, the expedition to the Yemen sent out by King Frederick V at the end of 1761. Of the six scientific members of the expedition, only the cartographer Carsten Niebuhr survived to return to Copenha- gen in 1767 from an expedition which ended up covering Egypt and the Levant, parts of the Arabian Peninsula including the Yemen and as far as Bom- 2 The most comprehensive account to date is that of Jytte Klausen,The Cartoons That Shook the World, New Haven: Yale University Press 2009. 3 Much of this and the following is based on Jørgen Bæk Simonsen, Islam med danske øjne: Danskeres syn på islam gennem 1000 år (Islam with Danish eyes: Danes’ views of Islam over 1000 years), Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag 2004. Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 02:27:39PM via free access J. S. Nielsen / Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 219 bay. His travel account published in German in three volumes starting in 1772 was to have a major impact on European understanding of the Middle East.4 From the late 19th century there was a sequence of internationally prominent academics in Islamic studies at the University of Copenhagen. They were all theologians by training and were specialists in Semitic philology. Frants Buhl’s biography of Muhammad was published in 1903.5 It gained international renown when it appeared in a German translation some years later,6 and Buhl became one of the significant contributors to the first edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam. Johannes V. Pedersen became known particularly for his work on the history of the Arabic book.7 This is just to name two of the most prominent. In the 1980s the Danish research councils funded two major projects on Islam in the Middle East and Islam in Denmark. This coincided with a switch in emphasis from classical ‘orientalist’ approaches to a greater cross-disciplinary focus on the modern period. In 1982 the relevant depart- ments in the University of Copenhagen were merged into the new Carsten Niebuhr Institute (since 2003 the Carsten Niebuhr Section). At about the same time the University of Odense started a new programme in modern Arabic and the Arab world, and subsequently the Faculty of Theology at Aarhus University has expanded to include a section on Arabic and Islamic studies. In a somewhat parallel process to the scientific one just outlined, church- based activities developed, primarily out of the interest in missions which grew significantly during the 19th centuries. The earliest activities in the Muslim world were located in the Pashtun areas of today’s Afghanistan and Pakistan, leading in the 1920s to the establishment of the Pathan Mission.8 Several smaller societies had activities in Syria and in Aden, while one of the larger societies, the Sudan Mission, was active in West Africa as part of the 4 For a brief account see Robert Irwin, For the Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and their Enemies, London: Allen Lane 2006, 130-132. A major part of the travel account has been published in English: Carsten Niebuhr, Travels through Arabia and Other Countries in the East, 2 volumes, Reading: Garnet 1994. 5 Frants Buhl, Muhammeds liv, Copenhagen: Gyldendal 1903, edited and republished by Finn O. Hvidberg-Hansen, Herning: Poul Kristensens Forlag 1998. 6 Das Leben Muhammeds, Leipzig: Quelle und Meyer 1930. 7 Johannes V. Pedersen, Den arabiske bog, Copenhagen: Fischers 1946, English translation, The Arabic Book, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984. 8 A detailed account of Danish church activity in the Muslim world is to be found in Harald Nielsen, Tålmodighed forpligter: 9 kapitler af Danmissions islamhistorie (Patience obliges: 9 chap- ters in the Islam history of Danmission), Frederiksberg: Unitas 2005. Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 02:27:39PM via free access 220 J. S. Nielsen / Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 international Sudan United Mission. After 1945, the largest society, the Dan- ish Missionary Society (dms), started an engagement in Aden following an absorption of the pre-war activities there. During the 1960s and 1970s, most of the smaller societies merged into the dms, now called Danmission after a merger in 2000 with the smaller Santal Mission.9 Much of the information material on Islam and the Muslim world published in the middle decades of the 20th century and aimed at the general public originated out of such church circles, prominent among them being Alfred Nielsen, who had worked in Syria during the 1930s, and Verner Tra- nholm-Mikkelsen, who had worked in Aden in the 1960s. With the arrival of immigrants into Denmark from outside Europe starting significantly during the 1970s the situation changed, as secular and Christian institutions now had to respond to a Muslim presence within Den- mark’s borders, not just overseas. The Christian responses were very much contingent on the particular nature of the Danish church. The 1849 consti- tutional assembly could not reach agreement on how to structure the estab- lished national church, which is Lutheran, and there has been no substantial change since. By default, therefore, the church is administratively a part of the state, managed by the diocesan bishops under the Ministry for Ecclesias- tical Affairs. The church has no coordinating doctrinal authority such as a synod. Only in recent decades have formal church bodies been set up to take care of particular areas of competence, such as relations with other churches and the international ecumenical bodies of which the Church of Denmark is a member, notably the World Council of Churches and the Lutheran World Federation.

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