Danish Cartoons and Christian-Muslim Relations in Denmark

Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 brill.nl/exch

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.

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 agencies 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 initiative 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 established 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. In practice it was therefore left to Christian agencies in the voluntary, non- state sector to lead the response. This meant essentially two categories, namely the missionary tradition and the social service tradition. Whereas the former agencies had an awareness of matters of faith, theology and religious identity as a priority, the latter, although strongly motivated by Christian beliefs, had priorities around issues of social justice and service in which the religious belief of the client was a secondary issue. But the small size of the country and the concentration of immigrants of Muslim origin into comparatively few and compact districts of the three largest cities meant that the two sectors very quickly connected.

9 Website of Danmission, http://www.danmission.dk/Default.aspx?ID=190, accessed 17 January 2010.

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One of the results of the conversations between the dms and the Pathan Mission, later to lead to a partial merger, was the formation in 1965 of a joint Islam study commission.10 During the 1970s the concept of ‘mission at home’, echoing the World Council of Churches’ focus on ‘mission on six continents’, led to some critical debates and contests about the relationship between the main traditional Danish actors. The pietistic Inner Mission movement and its allies claimed Denmark as their mission field, stating that the missionary societies should keep to their work overseas, especially since the largest of those societies, the dms, was indicating an interest in the focus on inter-religious dialogue as part of its proposed domestic engagement. In 1978, the dms formalised its domestic agenda in the shape of three parallel working groups focussing respectively on Islam, new religious movements, and the secularised. Although some of the major societies initially responded posi- tively to the dms’s invitation to participate on an ecumenical basis, it soon emerged that the dms would have to rely primarily on its own commitment and resources. The society had already appointed a full-time social worker to explore possibilities, and in 1984 Mødestedet (the meeting place) was opened in premises vacated by the ymca’s Social Work in Vesterbro, one of the inner city areas which had experienced a strong influx of immigrant population. The basic idea was to provide a ‘drop-in’ centre for local people, both native and immigrant. It quickly developed both as a social centre and as an advice centre while the staff also provided information and support for the priests and parishes of the diocese of Copenhagen. The following year the foundations were laid for a similar centre specifically for women which later set up separately in Nørrebro, another heavily immigrant district of the city. Ulti- mately, these projects became independent and linked to the local churches, with the dms withdrawing to a support role. The experience from Copenha- gen was transferred to Denmark’s third city, Odense, where a similar activity was established, this time directly attached to the diocese from the start. The diocese of Copenhagen developed its activities a major step further when it appointed Lissi Rasmussen as part-time pastor for relations to Mus- lims. This led in 1996 to the establishment of the Islamic-Christian Study Centre (iks), partly inspired by the Centre for the Study of Islam and Chris- tian-Muslim Relations which had existed since 1976 in the Selly Oak Col- leges, Birmingham (in 1999 it was merged into the Department of Theology at the University of Birmingham). The iks was structured and managed as a

10 The details of this and the following are recounted in Harald Nielsen, 383-392.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 02:27:39PM via free access 222 J. S. Nielsen / Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 joint Christian-Muslim operation and was designed as a resource and information centre, a place where Muslims and Christians could meet, and a place which encouraged joint study of issues, theological and practical, of common concern. It organised a number of seminars and local social activities, cooper- ated with the Faculty of Theology at Copenhagen on several projects including a number of intensive summer schools. It was also able to function as a resource and advice centre for parts of the public sector, especially the hospital and prison services, as a result of which one of its most active Muslim participants, the imam Naveed Baig, was appointed as the first full-time Muslim chaplain to a Copenhagen hospital. Lissi Rasmussen herself for some years functioned as part-time prison chaplain to the Copenhagen prison where failed asylum seekers were held awaiting deportation.11 By the late 1990s some parts of the national church had come to the con- clusion that the church as such needed to start a serious process of consideration regarding relations with and responses to the new presence of non-Christian religions in Denmark, above all Islam. In January 1998 the bishops agreed to establish an Islam committee, which proceeded to hold a series of consultations culminating in a public hearing in Copenhagen in March 2000, the proceedings of which were published later that year.12 In the aftermath of the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 Sep- tember 2001, Denmark was the first European country to hold a general election, on 20 November. The election took place in an atmosphere charged by a long-running political conflict over immigration policy, which had been driven especially by the nationalist Danish People’s Party. Already in Decem- ber 2001 the bishops responded by returning to the findings of the Islam committee which had been published a year earlier, but which had in effect fallen into abeyance. Seven of the ten dioceses agreed to establish a cooperation under the title ‘The National Church and the Encounter of Religions’ (Folkekirken og religionsmødet). Subsequently two more dioceses joined and in 2003 a full-time general-secretary was appointed.13 On several occasions infor- mal networks of parish pastors coordinated related initiatives, in one case agreeing to hold sermons criticizing the government’s increasingly tight refu-

11 Website of the Islamisk-Kristent Studiecenter, http://www.ikstudiecenter.dk/, accessed 19 January 2010. 12 Website Folkekirken og religionsmødet, http://www.religionsmoede.dk/index.php/om/bag- grund/historie, accessed 23 October 2009. Harald Nielsen (ed.), Samtalen fremmer forståelsen, Copenhagen: Unitas, 2000. 13 Website Folkekirken og religionsmødet, http://www.religionsmoede.dk/index.php/om/bag- grund/historie, accessed 26 November 2006.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 02:27:39PM via free access J. S. Nielsen / Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 223 gee and immigration policy. Such events invariably drew sharp rebukes from the right, insisting that the church should stay out of politics. At this point the cartoons aﬀair intervened and radically reset the stage.

2. Cartoons Aﬀair The publication of 12 cartoons inJyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005 vari- ously depicting the Prophet Muhammad in a Danish national newspaper was hardly noticed at the time — and no-one could have predicted how the ripples would ultimately turn into shock waves.14 The initial publication had been decided explicitly to test the bounds of press freedom, after a Danish author writing a children’s book about Muham- mad announced that he had been having trouble ﬁnding someone willing to illustrate it.15 To accompany the cartoons the culture editor of the paper, Flem- ming Rose, referring to recent instances of artistic self-censorship in relation to Islam, wrote:

Modern secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They are demanding a special position when they insist that special consideration should be given to their religious sensitivities. This is incompatible with secular democracy and freedom of expression, in which one must be prepared to tolerate derision, mockery and ridicule.16

The 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad were drawn by 12 diﬀer- ent artists, including the most famous one in which the prophet is depicted with a bomb in his turban. The cartoons aroused anger among many Danish Muslims, some of whose organisations appealed to Arab and Muslim embassies when the Danish authorities failed to respond to their complaints. The lead in the protests was quickly taken by a Copenhagen-based Muslim, mostly Arab, organisation called Islamisk Trossamfund, the ‘Islamic Faith Community’. On 12 October 11 ambassadors of Muslim countries sent a joint letter to Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen:

14 A detailed account is to be found in Klausen, The Cartoons That Shook the World. 15 The book was published in spring 2006 as Koranen og profeten Muhammeds liv, Copenha- gen: Høst. 16 Flemming Rose, ‘Muhammeds ansigt’, Jyllands-Posten, 30 September 2005; translations from Danish are the author’s unless otherwise stated.

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This pertains to on-going smearing campaign in Danish public circles and media against Islam and Muslims. Radio Holger’s remarks for which it was indicted, df mp and mayorial candidate Louise Frevert’s derogatory remarks, Culture Minister Brian Mikkelsen’s statement on war against Muslims and Daily Jyllands-Posten’s culture page inviting people to draw sketches of Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) are some recent examples. We strongly feel that casting aspersions on Islam as a religion and publishing demeaning caricatures of Holy Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) goes against the spirit of Danish values of tolerance and civil society. In your speech at the opening of Danish Parliament, Your Excellency rightly underlined that terrorists should not be allowed to abuse Islam for their crimes. In the same token, Danish press and public representatives should not be allowed to abuse Islam in the name of democracy, freedom of expression and human rights, the values that we all share. We deplore these statements and publications and urge Your Excellency’s government to take all those responsible to task under law of the land in the interest of inter-faith harmony, better integration and Denmark’s overall relations with the Mus- lim world. We rest assured that you will take all steps necessary. Given the sensitive nature of this matter, we request an urgent meeting at your convenience. An early response would be greatly appreciated.17

On 19 October the prime minister refused to receive the 11 Muslim ambassadors. In his statement he chose to focus solely on the reference to the cartoons stating that, as this was a question of freedom of the press, there was nothing to discuss.18 The following month the Islamisk Trossamfund sent a delegation to various Arab countries to raise protest, carrying with them a file containing not only the original cartoons but also other unrelated offensive material, as well as general information, about the position of Islam in Den- mark.19 At this stage the protests were looking forward to the Islamic summit due in early December. The summit conference of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (oic), meeting in Mecca on 5 and 6 December 2005, discussed the issue of islamophobic material being published in the western media including Den- mark and included reference to the cartoons case in the final communiqué, although without mentioning Denmark:

17 Reproduced in Politiken, 21 February 2006. 18 Politiken, reviewing the case on 12 and 19 February 2006, suggested that the foreign ministry’s translation of the ambassadors’ letter had inadvertently made it demand that the prime minister take Jyllands-Posten to court, see Klaus and Mikael Rothenstein, Bomben i turbanen, Copenhagen: Tiderne Skifter 2006, 33. 19 The copy I am working from is a revised version which includes material from visits to Egypt which took place in November and early December 2005.

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The Conference expressed its concern at rising hatred of Islam and Muslims and condemned the recent incident of desecration of the image of the Holy Prophet Moham- mad (pbuh) in the media of certain countries and stressed the responsibility of all governments to ensure full respect of all religions and religious symbols and the inap- plicability of using the freedom of expression as a pretext to defame religion.20

By late December, the oic and other international Islamic organisations began to break relations with Danish organisations they had previously been cooperating with. The Danish prime minister’s new-year speech and a telephone conversation between the foreign minister and Amr Mousa, secretary-general of the Arab League, seemed to calm the situation. In his new-year speech, Anders Fogh Rasmussen condemned ‘any expression, action or indication that attempts to demonise groups of people on the basis of their religion or ethnic background. This sort of thing does not belong in a society that is based on respect for the individual human being.’21 At the same time he repeated his now standard defence of the freedom of expression. The latter part of the speech was widely circulated in both English and Arabic translations by the Danish foreign ministry and by Danish embassies in the Muslim world. The prime minister’s phrase quoted above was repeated when the foreign minister, Per Stig Møller, wrote to Amr Moussa on 6 January 2006 following an extended telephone conversation earlier that day. He also repeated the defence of free speech with the phrase: ‘Freedom of expression is absolute.’22 On 10 January a small conservative Christian magazine in Norway, Maga- zinet, republished the cartoons, sparking renewed crisis as newspapers and magazines in other countries also published the cartoons. On 21 January the International Union of Muslim Scholars, whose president was Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi and general secretary Dr Muhammad Selim Al-Awa, called for a boycott of Danish goods,23 a call ﬁrst taken up a few days later in Saudi Arabia and then spread quickly across the Arab and many other parts of the Muslim world.24

20 Website of The Third Extraordinary Session of the Islamic Summit, http://www.oic-oci.org/ ex-summit/english/fc-exsumm-en.htm, accessed 1 May 2006. 21 Full text on the Website of Statsministeriet, http://www.stm.dk, accessed 5 January 2006. 22 Personal copy from conﬁdential source. 23 Website of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, http://qaradawi.net, accessed 27 January 2006. 24 See report on Arab News 27 January 2006, http://www.arabnews.com, accessed 27 January 2006.

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The situation was now critical for both Danish trade and for the country’s political standing. On the evening of 30 January 2006, Claus Juste, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, published a statement in Danish, English and Arabic seeking to explain what the intention of the cartoons had been and apologis- ing for the unintended hurt caused. He rejected the accusation that the cartoons were part of a campaign against Islam and Muslims, as had been alleged, and asserted his paper’s continuing support for freedom of expression, communal harmony and mutual respect.25 The Danish prime minister imme- diately issued his own statement referring to the apology, stressing that he ‘deeply respected the religious feelings of other people’, and expressing his distress ‘that these drawings by many Muslims have been seen as a defamation of the Prophet Mohammed and Islam as a religion.’26 He followed this up with an interview broadcast on the Arabic satellite-tv station Al-Arabiyya on Thurs- day 2 February.27 Optimistically the tv station publicised the interview in advance as containing the hoped-for apology which, in the event, it did not. By this time the situation was well out of control. Demonstrations took place in many Muslim countries, some violent and leading to a number of deaths and attacks on various embassies, including attacks on the Danish embassies in Damascus, Beirut, Tehran, Jakarta and Islamabad. For a few weeks the crisis was in deadlock, with one side demanding an apology and the other side oﬀering explanations and regrets but no apology. The crisis was also becoming internationalised with talk of a complaint to the un Commis- sion on Human Rights, especially when the Commission’s Special Rappor- teur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, Mr Doudou Diène, accused the Danish government of failing ‘to show the commitment and vigilance that it normally displays in combating religious intolerance and incitement to religious hatred and promoting religious harmony’.28 On the other hand there was a growing realisation that some form of dialogue had to be started. On 22 February, the Danish foreign minister announced a ‘series of forward-looking initiatives aimed at promoting respect- ful dialogue.’29 With support from the ministry a hectic dialogue programme

25 Website of Jyllands-Posten, http://www.jp.dk accessed 31 January 2006. 26 English copy supplied by the Danish embassy in Damascus. 27 Danish text on the website of Statsministeriet, http://www.stm.dk, accessed 3 February 2006. 28 un Economic and Social Council, Commission on Human Rights, 62nd session, doc. E/ CN.4/2006/17, 13 February 2006, 10. 29 English text supplied by the Danish embassy in Damascus.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 02:27:39PM via free access J. S. Nielsen / Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 227 started. Delegations from Denmark, usually consisting of government offi- cials, ministers and clergy, met with delegations from various Arab countries, in turn consisting of civil servants, ministers and muftis. Initially these meet- ings took place in neutral locations like Geneva or Vienna — at the time Austria held the rotating presidency of the eu Council of Ministers — but soon also in Copenhagen and, in one or two instances, in Arab capitals. The peak of the troubles passed during late February, and by the end of March other things were happening in the Arab world to distract attention. The 15 March decision by the Danish public prosecutor not to takeJyllands- Posten to court for blasphemy30 did not spark the expected further protests. The boycott gradually weakened until it was officially called off in Saudi Ara- bia in May. Although the demanded apologies had not been forthcoming, energies appeared to have been dissipated in the streets, and by the end of April the issue was merely simmering. However, Danish exports suffered significant losses as a result, falling by as much as 88% in Libya between March and June 2006, 47% in Iran and 40% in Saudi Arabia. By the anniversary of the publication of the cartoons, estimates of total export losses were in the region of one billion Danish kroner.31

3. Contexts and Responses The crisis was not one that took place outside a context, both of an historical character and with broader European references. It has, for example, been suggested that the affair bore many similarities with the ‘Rushdie affair’ of 1990, when Muslims campaigned against the publication of Salman Rush- die’s The Satanic Verses. To a certain extent comparisons can be made. The demographics of the Danish Muslim community at this time were similar to that of the uk Muslim community then, in that the first major tranche of Muslims born in Denmark has come into the labour market in recent years and experienced discrimination — the family reunion process among immigrants in Denmark starting 12-15 years later than in the uk, in both cases after their restriction of admission of immigrant labour in respectively 1973-1974 and 1962.

30 Published by the oﬃce of Rigsadvokaten on 15 March 2006 as act no. RA-2006-41-0151, accompanied by a press release in English, website Rigsadvokaten Hjemmeside, http://www. rigsadvokaten.dk, accessed 15 March 2006. 31 Politiken, 30 September 2006.

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The Danish political elites had previously taken little notice of the growing Muslim community in Denmark, and public awareness was based on hearsay and media stereotyping rather than direct experience. This allowed some pol- iticians, and especially those of the right-wing Danish People’s Party, to set an anti-Muslim tone which Muslims found it difficult to respond to. Certain Muslim groups sought to make political capital domestically and internationally out of the crisis. The crises ran out of control when they became internationalised and exploited for various political purposes. In response to the strengthening of the political extremes both in wider society and among Muslims, there was a counter-process of mobilisation of people in the mainstream in both sectors, as witnessed by a number of demonstrations and citizens’ initiatives involving Muslim and broader Danish groups, secular as well as Christian. The debate was again about the tensions between values claimed by a democratic and liberal Europe and those claimed by communities with strong religious identities, focused on the contest between freedom of expression and respect for religious symbols. There are, of course, limits to the comparison, first and foremost due to the developments which took place in the decade and a half between the two affairs, domestically and internationally. Domestically, within Europe, the process of settlement and integration had moved on with both positive and negative aspects. On the one hand had been integrative moves in various countries, including growing political participation on the part of Muslims in most countries, France being a significant exception. Germany had eased access to citizenship for its Turkish residents, and in many countries Muslims had become involved in the provision of social, educational and other services. Some countries tightened up legislation against incitement to racial hatred, against hate speech, and in some cases attempted to expand coverage to incitement to religious hatred. There had been a number of initiatives in the media to spread more and better information about Islam and Muslims, and religious education (re) syllabuses had become more inclusive in many countries.32

32 The English experience with multi-religious re syllabi, instituted during the 1970s, was being adopted in various ways in other parts of Europe, including in countries where re retained a confessional connection. Thus both Protestant and Catholic re in Germany had made space for information about other world religions, as had the Danish syllabus which, although not under the control of the church, had a statutory bias towards the Christianity of the Lutheran national church.

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On the other hand, there had been a spread of so-called islamophobia, a contested term denoting expressions and actions which often are basically racist but find cover behind a focus on Islam, at a time when there is a public perception that Muslims are ‘fair game’. In the current case, it has been suggested that often the argument for freedom of the press was a cover for xenophobia, an accusation which was levelled at the Danish newspaper which published the original cartoons, particularly graphically in a cartoon published in the British Sunday newspaper the Observer on 5 February depicting a big sinister figure marked ‘xenophobia’ hiding behind a frightened torch- bearing woman marked ‘freedom of speech’. Playing very strongly into the domestic scene was the so-called war on terror, mainly targeted at terrorism originating in Muslim networks. This theme had developed during the 1990s and was sharply focussed by the attacks of 11 September 2001 and reinforced since by the bombings in Madrid and London. Muslims had come to feel that government policies and public attitudes to them were now security-led. Internationally, many Muslims — and not just the religiously active ones — had become convinced that the ‘war on terror’ was actually a war against Islam. It is no coincidence that the cartoon which caused the most offence was the one showing Muhammad wearing a bomb in his turban. These elements played out differently in different European countries, depending on local circumstances. The violence seen in demonstrations in the Muslim world was not repeated in demonstrations in Europe. A small demonstration in London carrying violent slogans provoked a much larger peaceful Muslim demonstration expressing its disgust at those slogans.33 In France, the violence of the autumn riots was not repeated, and Muslim organisations attempted to use the courts.34 Policies of integration are still contested, but they appear to be a process which continues to show slow progress. The cartoons events again raised questions of what constitutes citizenship, first raised at the time of the Rushdie and head scarf affairs in 1990 in Britain and France respectively. The actions of the majority of the Muslim inhabitants in most countries seem to indicate that they regard themselves as citizens but want to negotiate some of the details, above all the place of religion in public

33 Websites of The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/03/religion.uk and http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/feb/12/muhammadcartoons.religion, accessed 24 April 2009. 34 Website of The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2006/feb/13/pressandpub- lishing.race, accessed 24 April 2009.

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4. Religion in the Public Space In an interview with Denmark Radio on 15 February Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen argued for religion to stay out of the public space.

We have to be careful that religion does not take up too much of the public space if Danish society is to continue to cohere. Lately, I think, religion has come to take up too much space in the public debate, and I would emphasise that I respect every individual’s religious conviction. But I really think that it is a quality which holds Danish society together that we have a tradition of not mixing, or at least diﬀerentiating between, politics and religion. And that religion is assumed to be a personal matter.35

The problem with his argument was that one of the main themes throughout the crisis had been considerations of the pressure from the right-wing Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party — dpp). The party had been founded during the 1990s around a programme of defending the national character and culture of Denmark against foreign, and especially non-European, inﬂuences. Central to this character was Denmark’s Lutheran Christian tradition:

Christianity has been upheld for centuries in Denmark and is inseparable from the life of the people. The signiﬁcance which Christianity has had and continues to have is enormous and leaves its stamp on the Danish way of life. Over the ages it has been the guide and set the norms for the people.36

The Danish government at the time of the crisis (as still today at the time of writing) was a minority coalition government led by the prime minister’s party Venstre (or ‘Liberal’) with the Conservatives as the junior partner. The coalition primarily depends on the dpp to support its legislative programme through parliament. It came to power in a general election held in November 2001 after an election campaign in which immigration and integration were the most contested issue, a campaign in which the attacks of 11 September on

35 Quoted in Klaus and Michael Rothstein, Bomben i turbanen, 155f. 36 From the DPP’s Statement of Principles (Principprogram) on the website of the Dansk Folkeparti, http://www.danskfolkeparti.dk accessed 9 July 2006.

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New York and Washington served to focus this issue on Muslims.37 Subse- quently, the new government introduced a sharp tightening of immigration law, to the extent that there were accusations from Strasbourg that Denmark might be in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. The anti- immigrant and anti-Muslim character of much public debate had contributed to a sense that various forms of anti-Islamic expression had become legitimate, although such comments on the private Holger radio station led to a success- ful prosecution, and particularly harsh comments by a dpp member of parliament on her personal website had to be withdrawn. The debate had also been such that many Muslims have felt it wise to keep a low profile. This has had the effect of leaving the field open for more robust salafi-oriented organisations, particularly Islamisk Trossamfund (Islamic Society), to monopolise the public representation of Islam in ways which have often served to confirm the image of Islam as incompatible with Danish values which has been promul- gated by the dpp. It was this background to which the ambassadors referred in their letter to the prime minister of 12 October 2005. It seems reasonable to judge that this was a discussion which the prime minister did not wish to enter, for which reason it was decided to draw attention away from the substance of the letter to the sole issue of freedom of speech.38 Behind all the trouble lies an uncertainty over Danish self-identity of a magnitude that deserves the epithet Kulturkampf. Is Denmark going to participate in the wider world other than through trade or is it going to restrict itself to sitting on the sidelines defending its past? This is possibly a bit harsh. After all, Denmark has had a commendable internationalist history since 1945 as an active member of the United Nations and one of a very few countries to have long met the un’s agreed level of contribution to development aid. But that was the world out there. Since the 1970s, that world has increasingly entered into Denmark, and much of the country has defended itself by turning to the imagined resources of ‘Danishness’. Denmark’s euroscepticism rests on very different foundations than does that of Britain. An increasingly important part of those foundations is the country’s Lutheran Christian identity. But this is also a contested area. Many remain secular and desire to keep

37 See C. Allen and J.S. Nielsen, Summary Report on Islamophobia in the EU after 11 September 2001, Vienna: European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia 2002. 38 This point was made by one of the researchers taking part in the seminar on ‘Moving beyond Stereotypes’ organized in Copenhagen 16-18 May 2006 by the Danish Centre for Cul- ture and Development, ref. the report of the meeting published May 2006, 8-9.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 02:27:39PM via free access 232 J. S. Nielsen / Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 religion out of the public space altogether. Others want to make space for religion in public, but they are split between those — Christians and Mus- lims — whose claims are absolute, and they are the ones who dominated the discourse during the crisis, and those whose approach is inclusive. Again, the dpp’s Statement of Principles highlights the point of contest: ‘Denmark is not a country of immigration and never has been. We will therefore not accept that the country become multi-ethnic’.39 In early February 2006, Uﬀe Elleman-Jensen, a former leader of the party now leading the coalition as well as former EU commissioner, took the oppo- site stand very ﬁrmly:

If we Danes wish to preserve dialogue with other cultures and religions — and even wish that they buy our milk products — then we cannot demand that they all accept our norms, least of all when they are exposed to disdain, mockery and sarcasm. If we insist that they have to tolerate that, we are all ﬁrmly anchored in ‘the Danish village pond’ where everybody is convinced of her/his own infallibility and therefore not able to get on in a globalised world.40

5. The Impact on Christian-Muslim Relations The need to respond to the crisis was a strong incentive to think more seriously about the state of intercultural, and especially inter-religious relations in a country which for over a century had been among the most monocul- tural and monoreligious in Europe. Developments began to move fast both among Muslims and Christians as well as in the field of mutual relations. The crisis had a significant impact on the internal affairs of the Muslim community. The so-called radical imams, who had publicized the cartoons in the lobbying campaign in the Middle East, steadily lost support among the majority of active Muslims during the spring of 2006. The strident nature of the campaign and their apparent welcoming of the small group of Hizb al- Tahrir as partners in public demonstrations contributed to their loss of support, and it also gradually became clear that the campaign was generating strong anti-Muslim feelings and harassment locally. The first organizational initiative came from Nasir Khader, a member of parliament of Syrian origin.

39 From the dpp’s Statement of Principles (Principprogram) on the website of the Dansk Folkeparti, http://www.danskfolkeparti.dk, accessed 9 July 2006. 40 Berlingske Tidende, 8 February 2006, translated in Ulla Holm, ‘The Danish Ugly Duckling and the Mohammed Cartoons’, DIIS Brief, February 2006.

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His ‘Democratic Muslims’ initially met with enormous support both among Muslims and others but it apparently soon was caught in internal disputes and suffered from incoherent management. It quickly lost public profile — its webpage appears to have been updated most recently in the summer of 2008.41 Other organizations which were already in existence were given a boost by the events. This included ‘Muslimer i Dialog’ (Muslims in Dialogue), a grouping attached to the movement of Fethullah Gülen,42 whose activities have increased in a number of fields. ‘Forum for Kritiske Muslimer’ (Forum for Critical Muslims), established already in 2001, was another organization which was able to mark itself more publicly, representing the view that religion and politics should be separated also for Muslims in Europe.43 More significant was possibly the establishment after the crisis of the first umbrella organization for Muslims in Denmark, ‘Muslimernes Fællesråd’ (Federal Council of Muslims). It brought together over a dozen organizations, across the ethnicities, including significantly the Danish branch of the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate, the Diyanet, and was said to represent about 35,000 Danish Muslims.44 In 2008, a number of local associations of varying ethnic backgrounds, including several ethnic youth groups, formed ‘Danmarks Muslimske Union’ (The Muslim Union of Denmark). Within the church, further development in inter-religious relations took place. Most notable was the first meeting of ‘Christian and Muslim leaders’ in 2006. Given both the nature of the church and of the Muslim organizations, this could not be a formal meeting — many people on either side did not, in any case, like the term ‘leaders’, suggesting that the groups had arro- gated to itself an authority which, in fact, it never claimed. Regardless, the meeting was sufficiently positive for it to have become a yearly event, at which discussions and disagreements on all sides are aired and common posi- tions are explored. After years of hesitation, it has also become the norm in the last few years that each diocese now has a full-time person with responsibility

41 Website of the Demokratiske Muslimer, http://www.demokratiskemuslimer.dk/, accessed 6 July 2010. 42 Website of the Muslimer i Dialog (mid), http://www.m-i-d.dk/#, accessed 30 November 2009; the Gülen connection is not mentioned on the site. 43 Website of the Forum for Kritiske Muslimer, http://www.kritiskemuslimer.dk, accessed 30 November 2009. 44 TheYearbook of Muslims in Europe, vol.1 (eds. Jørgen S. Nielsen et al), 97-98, estimates a total Muslim population in Denmark of about 200,000. But research indicates that less than half of that number have any kind of active relationship to Islam, cf. Lene Kühle, Moskeer I Danmark — islam og muslimske bedesteder, Højbjerg: Univers 2006, 170-171.

Downloaded from Brill.com10/02/2021 02:27:39PM via free access 234 J. S. Nielsen / Exchange 39 (2010) 217-235 for advising the bishop and the parishes on matters to do with inter- religious relations, rather like the Islamreferenten which have been common for a couple of decades now in the German churches. The association ‘Folkekirken og Religionsmødet’ has been arranging extended courses for these people. On the other hand, soon after the crisis broke in the winter of 2005-2006, a group of theologians and clergy in the church established an Islamkritisk Netværk i Folkekirken (Islam-critical Network in the People’s Church). Its purpose is ‘to study and criticize’ Islam in the belief that ‘Christians and Mus- lims do not believe in the same God.’45 A number of its more than one hun- dred members have close associations with the Danish People’s Party, and the network has organized several activities in cooperation with Trykkefrihedssel- skabet46 (Society for the Freedom to Print). This latter had been established in 2004 and during the cartoon crisis was a focus of opposition to Danish pen, whose main figures had been critical of the publication of the cartoons. The continuing debate around Islam has contributed to the continuing debate about the place of the church in the public space. In European terms, the relationship between the Lutheran national church and the state in Den- mark is an anomaly. Historically, it was thought of as a partnership, which has been expressed in a number of ways, especially in the close connection between the local school and the local church. But in recent years, as society has rapidly become secular and the country has become multireligious, primarily through immigration, the relationship has become unbalanced. Pas- tors and church organizations are increasingly often told that they stay out of politics, while politics do not stay out of the church — it is common for political parties to be represented in the popularly elected parish councils and have their named candidates both for parish pastor and for bishop. In a growing number of issues, from the major to the petty, church people and politi- cians find themselves at odds, to the extent that in the last couple of years we are seeing for the first time the question seriously being raised about the future of the traditional church-state relationship. There is little doubt that debates about attitudes to Islam and relations with Muslims will be one of the pronounced elements in this development.

45 Website of the Islamkritisk Netwærk i Folkekirke, http://www.inif.dk/, accessed 30 November 2009 46 Website of the Trykkefrihedsselskabet, http://www.trykkefrihed.dk/trykkefrihedsselskabet.htm, accessed 30 November 2009.

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Jørgen S. Nielsen (b. 1946) is currently Danish National Research Foundation Professor and Director of the Centre for European Islamic Thought, Faculty of Theology, University of Copenhagen. For two years from October 2005 he was director of the Danish Institute in Damascus and before that Professor of Islamic Studies, University of Birmingham. His email address is: email: [email protected].

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