Danish Muslims, the Cartoon Controversy, and the Concept of Integration

Kate Østergaard is external senior lecturer in the Department of Cross-cultural and Regional Studies at the University of Copenhagen. Kirstine Sinclair is a scholar in the Centre for Contemporary Middle East Studies at the University of Southern Denmark.

 

 

Twelve cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad, including one depicting him as a terrorist with a bomb in his turban, were published by the Danish daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten on 30 September 2005. Four months later, Denmark found itself in one of the most severe foreign political crises in its history. Danish goods were boycotted, the Danish flag was burned and some Danish embassies were attacked. This article will discuss the cartoon controversy’s impact on Danish Muslims and on Denmark’s traditional policy concerning minorities, namely integration. 

Course of a Crisis 

The seriousness and the extent of the crisis were the results of globalisation processes whereby different parts of the world are connected by the movements of people, new forms of transnational loyalties and new forms of communications technology such as satellite television, mobile phones and the Internet. Information can thus, in an instant, be transmitted all over the world. Cartoons published in Denmark are no longer just a local matter but can cause reactions in Damascus and Jakarta and provoke comment from the president of the United States and other world leaders. Conversely, globalisation also has local consequences, and the international controversy and the escalation of the conflict had an impact on Denmark, affecting relations both between Muslims and non-Muslims and between Denmark’s various Muslim communities.

 

From the very beginning, the reasons for publishing the cartoons were ambiguous. On the one hand, Jyllands-Posten asserted that it had done so in response to illustrators’ fear of depicting the Prophet for a book on the life of Mohammad by the Danish author Kåre Bluitgen (a writer of children’s books who holds views critical of Islam). The illustrators allegedly feared the reaction of Muslims, as Islam deems it forbidden to picture humans in general, and the Prophet in particular. On the other hand, Jyllands-Posten accompanied the cartoons with a text which stated that Muslims as well as other citizens had to accept “insults, mockery and ridicule” because of freedom of expression. In other words, it was not clear whether the aim of the cartoons was to protect the freedom of speech or to mock a minority.

 

Danish Muslims became involved in the subsequent debate on the cartoons and protested over them by holding public discussions and demonstrations. Ambassadors from ten Muslim countries requested a meeting with Denmark’s prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to ask him to distance himself from the cartoons as well as various other allegedly derogatory comments about Islam in the Danish media. Rasmussen refused on the grounds that he could not infringe the freedom of expression.

 

On 27 October 2005, eleven Muslim organisations filed a complaint with the Danish police, claiming that Jyllands-Posten had committed an offence according to the Danish criminal code. The spokesperson for the organisations was a young Muslim woman, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid. She claimed that the cartoons violated parts of the criminal code known as the Blasphemy and Racism Paragraphs. Her arguments did not involve Islam’s ban on the drawing of humans, but only the newspaper’s declared intention to insult Muslims. However, the public prosecutor discontinued the legal investigation on 6 January 2025 as he found no basis for concluding that the cartoons constituted a criminal offence.

 

Meanwhile, the Danish Muslim organisations, now operating as a coalition under the name of “The Defence of the Honour of the Prophet”, dissatisfied with the response to their protest from Jyllands-Posten and the Danish government, produced a dossier to bolster their case and garner support among religious leaders and politicians in the Middle East, primarily Egypt and Lebanon. The dossier included, besides the twelve cartoons, reports of discrimination against Muslims in Denmark, some inaccurate claims such as that Jyllands-Posten was run by the government, and three additional drawings which never appeared in the newspaper. One turned out to be a wire-service photo of a contestant at a French pig-squealing contest. The Danish imams claimed, however, that these images had been received anonymously by Muslims and illustrated the atmosphere of Islamophobia under which Muslims lived in Denmark. Imams from the coalition toured the Middle East in December 2005. In addition, the Egyptian foreign minister presented the dossier at the summit of the OIC (Organisation of the Islamic Conference) on 6 December 2005, with many Muslim heads of state in attendance.

 

The controversy escalated during January 2006 and became worldwide news with violent protests in the streets of several Muslim countries and a massive Muslim boycott of Danish goods. Jyllands-Posten sent out an apology in both Danish and Arabic, saying sorry not for printing the cartoons, but for having hurt the feelings of Muslims. Moreover, Prime Minister Rasmussen dissociated himself from the cartoons in various interviews—including one on the al-Arabiya television station—only to rebuke those critical of his role in the conflict afterwards.

 

At the end of the day, the reaction of Danish Muslims was peaceful. The coalition of Danish Muslim organisations expressed satisfaction with Jyllands-Posten’s apology and agreed to help improve the situation. It claimed to be deeply sorry and surprised that the situation had got out of hand. Furthermore, the Danish domestic intelligence service lauded the imams for their role in calming down the Muslim community during the crisis.

 

During the controversy it became clear that Denmark’s Muslims are a highly complex community and that a battle about the right to represent Islam in Denmark was going on. This complexity and competition were not previously unknown, but new and different voices were being heard and recognised in the media and there was a tendency among Danish Muslims to become more organised. Co-operation and new alliances appeared among some Danish Muslim groups, but among others oppositions were marked. 

In Defence of the Prophet 

The coalition in Defence of the Honour of the Prophet consisted of organisations with Arab, Somali, Turkish and Pakistani ties. This diversity is in itself highly unusual since Muslim organisations in Denmark have seldom managed to co-operate, especially across ethnic lines. The organisations are, nevertheless, in no sense representative of Denmark’s Muslims as a whole, but reflect an increasing tendency towards cross-ethnic co-operation.

 

Immediately after the cartoons were published, Imam Raed Hlayhel sought to take the lead. Hlayhel, a Wahhabi Lebanese graduate of the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia who has lived in Denmark since 1999 on a humanitarian visa, is known for sermons on the importance of Muslim women’s covering themselves from head to toe. Hlayhel co-operated with Imam Ahmed Akkari, a Lebanese raised in Denmark, who was appointed spokesperson of the coalition because of his fluency in Danish. The coalition’s main leaders were, however, Hlayhel and the notorious imam, Ahmad Abu Laban, from the Danish Islamic Society (Det Islamiske Trossamfund), one of the biggest Muslim congregations and mosques in Copenhagen. Abu Laban, a Palestinian who settled in Copenhagen in 1983 after being expelled from Egypt and Kuwait for his involvement in the Muslim Brotherhood, was, before his death from cancer in February 2007, a frequent commentator in the Danish media and his sermons in Arabic and English were open to the public. Despite mutual suspicions, Abu Laban and Hlayhel teamed up to create and lead the coalition in Defence of the Honour of the Prophet. They demanded an apology from Jyllands-Posten, both of them, probably, in an attempt to become de facto leaders of Danish Muslims.

 

The main actors behind the December 2005 tour of the Middle East were thus Arab refugees educated as theologians and having an Islamist affiliation. Seen in this perspective, they are of course not at all representative, either of Denmark’s approximately 116 mosques or of Denmark’s Muslims. Moreover, the coalition seems to have been marginalised because of its role in the cartoon controversy and because of the death of its leading imam, Abu Laban. 

Denmark’s Muslims 

In 2006, approximately two hundred thousand Muslims lived in Denmark, which is about 3 per cent of the population. Prior to the late 1960s, there were virtually no Muslims in Denmark apart from the embassy staff of Muslim countries. Workers from the Muslim world arrived in the 1960s because of European labour demands and poverty in former European colonies. Most of this immigration took place as so-called chain migration, in which one immigrant sponsors several others for admission, who in turn sponsor several others, often from the same villages, thus creating a network of early and later immigrants.

 

The first immigrants were almost exclusively Pakistani, Turkish, Yugoslavian and Moroccan men who intended to stay in Denmark for a limited number of years and then return home with their savings. Generally, these men were poorly educated, from rural areas, and worked in low-paid, unskilled jobs in Denmark. Because of the cost of living in Denmark, it turned out to be difficult to accumulate significant savings and return home. In 1973, immigration to Denmark was restricted to family reunification. The guest-workers’ families were welcomed as a means of keeping the workers in the country.

 

Since the early 1980s, refugees have arrived because of political persecution and wars. This has been the case with Palestinians, Iranians, Iraqis, Somalis and Bosnians. Apart from Muslim immigrants and refugees, there are an estimated three thousand Danish converts to Islam.

 

Most Muslims in Denmark are Sunnis, while a small minority are Shi’ites. The Shi’ites in Denmark originate mainly from Iraq and Iran and belong to the majority “Twelver” branch of Shi’ism or to its Ishmaelite order. Some Kurdish immigrants from Turkey are Alawi Muslims and a group of immigrants from Pakistan are adherents of the Ahmadiyya movement. Both of the two last-mentioned groups are, however, looked upon with disdain by most other Muslims.

 

The Danish-Muslim voices raised in protest during the cartoon controversy were primarily those of Sunnis of Arabic background (either refugees or second-generation immigrants). The large groups comprising the first labour immigrants were silent during the controversy, as they are in most public matters. Among them are the Turks, the largest Muslim ethnic group in Denmark. Generally, Denmark’s Turks adhere to the Turkish government’s official Islam, which is secular in tone, and they seldom engage in politics. The Turks, as well as other groups of the first immigrants in Denmark, tend to keep to themselves and most do not feel represented by imams affiliated to any form of Arab Islamism. 

Moderates 

A Danish study on religiosity among Denmark’s Muslims—the first of its kind—showed that most of them seem to lack strong religious sentiments and that only about a quarter consider themselves to be very religious.¹

 

Thus, the organisation Democratic Muslims (Demokratiske Muslimer) filled a gap when it was founded at the height of the cartoon controversy in February 2006 and set out to unite moderate Muslims and counter “absurd statements” issued by “foolish imams”. Democratic Muslims at first was very successful, probably because of the amount of political and financial support it received from non-Muslims and the timing of its founding. With its approximately one thousand members, the organisation is larger than any other Muslim body in Denmark today and its views are often covered in the media. Despite its initial popularity, especially among the non-Muslim population, Democratic Muslims has seldom taken part in discussions since the controversy ended, and Muslims have criticised it for implying that it is impossible to be a devout Muslim and democratic at the same time.

 

Another reason for the organisation’s decline in popularity is the departure of its founder, Naser Khader, who left Democratic Muslims after its first year, just as he had planned from the beginning. Khader, a Syrian who, aged eleven, arrived in Denmark in 1974 through family reunification, holds a degree in political science and was for some years a member of parliament for the Danish Social–Liberal Party (De Radikale). However, he gained a great deal of popularity from his response to the cartoon controversy—he opposed the Muslim demand for an apology and claimed that Saudi Arabia ought to apologise for its treatment of women—and has now founded a new social–liberal party called the New Alliance (Ny Alliance). 

Revivalists 

Although much of Denmark’s Muslim population is not very religious, a religious revival seems to be taking place among the younger generation. This revival often involves an attempt to distinguish between what is understood as culture and what is “pure” and authentic Islam as found in the original Islamic scriptures. In many cases, the interpretation of the scriptures is developed in discussions with friends or with new authorities found on the Internet rather than with traditional authorities such as parents or local imams. Furthermore, there is a new tendency among young revivalist Muslims and Danish converts to organise across ethnic boundaries. This tendency can be explained as resulting from the co-existence of young Muslim immigrants who are of different ethnic backgrounds but share the experience of belonging to a minority as Muslims in Denmark. However, the revival takes different forms.

 

One of the truly cross-ethnic organisations in Denmark is Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is an international Islamist organisation founded in Palestine in the 1950s. In Denmark, Hizb ut-Tahrir attracts young Muslims with its radical views and rejection of democracy. The organisation can be viewed as a kind of protest movement since its members often join it in defiance of their parents. Hizb ut-Tahrir did not play a leading role in the cartoon controversy. Since 2006, it has made efforts to end its isolation within the Muslim community and has successfully initiated co-operation with the Danish Islamic Society in matters of common interest.

 

Another and stronger tendency among revivalist Muslims may be referred to as “assertive Islam”. “Assertive Muslims” relate to Denmark as their home country. They wish to create a place for Islam in the public sphere and to engage with the new questions for Muslims that arise in a European context. Thus, assertive Islam contrasts with a more defensive form of Islam characterised by the longing of migrants to return home. Assertive Muslims challenge the common division of Muslims into moderates versus Islamists, non-religious versus religious. A range of voices representative of assertive Islam, which distanced themselves from both the imams in the coalition in Defence of the Honour of the Prophet and from Naser Khader’s Democratic Muslims, attempted to contribute to the resolution of the cartoon conflict.

 

A new body founded in this connection was “The Network” (it has no Danish name), which arranged a public rally urging dialogue on the cartoon controversy and offered companies and other organisations the opportunity to “book a Muslim” in order to get more information about Islam. Another organisation is the Forum for Critical Muslims (Forum for Kritiske Muslimer), which argued for peace and mutual forgiveness during the controversy. The forum’s chairperson, Sherin Khankan, born in Denmark to Finnish–Syrian parents, holds a degree in the sociology of religion and is a religiously dedicated Muslim. Nevertheless, some of her views are regarded as controversial by other committed Muslims. For example, the Forum for Critical Muslims was founded on the principle that religion and politics should be kept separate. Moreover, the forum includes both Muslims and non-Muslims and also has quite a few Ahmadiyya members. Last but not least, Sherin Khankan has a strongly reformist and feminist vision of Islam; she has argued in favour of the appointment of female imams and claimed that the veil is not compulsory according to Islamic scriptures.

 

Perhaps the most important of the new organisations is Muslims in Dialogue (Muslimer i Dialog), which was established in 2004 in an attempt to form a broad and inclusive organisation for Sunni Muslims. So far it consists mainly of young “revivalist” Muslims and converts; both types are equally represented in the organisation, giving it a cross-ethnic character. Muslims in Dialogue is headed by former leaders of the youth organisation belonging to the Minhaj al-Quran group (founded in Pakistan in 1980) as well as by two of Denmark’s best-known imams, Fatih Alev, who is of Turkish background, and the convert Abdul Wahid Petersen. The spokesperson, Zubair Butt, a Pakistani with a master’s degree in political science, offered to travel to the Middle East and settle the dispute over the Mohammad cartoons.

 

Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, who took legal action against Jyllands-Posten, is a member of Muslims in Dialogue. She became a public figure in Denmark in the aftermath of the cartoon controversy when she co-hosted a discussion programme on religion on national television. Recently, she has become more involved in politics and has been put forward as a parliamentary candidate for the Danish Red–Green Alliance (Enhedslisten). Her public profile has aroused a heated debate in Denmark about whether she, a dedicated, veiled Muslim, can be a member of Parliament, and she has been accused of talking with two tongues: some non-Muslim Danes regard her professions of support for democracy and women’s rights as inconsistent with being a devout Muslim.

 

Muslims in Dialogue has attempted to take the lead among Muslim organisations and has initiated new forms of co-operation among them. It has founded the Muslim Council of Denmark (Muslimernes Fællesråd), which is backed by various mosques and individual Muslims, to represent the Muslim community in Denmark. It has not, however, succeeded in involving important mosques such as the Danish Islamic Society, although many active members of the latter are involved on an individual basis.

 

Today, two years after the cartoons were printed in Jyllands-Posten, it is evident that the various organisations of younger, assertive Muslims have succeeded in using the controversy to make themselves more visible and influential, whereas organisations led by older generations have become more marginalised.

 

We now turn to the Danish state’s strategy for dealing with foreigners and minorities in Denmark. 

Denmark’s Middle Way 

In Denmark, nobody talks about assimilation and very few about multiculturalism. Rather, the Danish strategy towards minorities focuses on “integration”. The ministry dealing with minority issues is called “The Ministry of Immigration, Refugees and Integration”—in short, “The Ministry of Integration” (Integrationsministeriet).

 

The Danish researcher Peter Nannestad has defined integration as “a process that results in the financial and social equality of ethnic minorities with the majority population”.² This definition is inspired by a remark in a 1966 speech by Britain’s then–home secretary, Roy Jenkins:

 

I do not think that we need in this country ‘a melting pot’ … I define integration, therefore, not as the flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance.

 

Jenkins was clearly disavowing the concept of society as a melting pot in which differences between minorities and the majority are erased and integration is identical to assimilation. According to Nannestad and Jenkins, then, the central elements in the concept of integration are social mobility and equality between minorities and the majority population. Thus, the term “integration” describes both the process whereby social mobility allows foreigners to be part of Danish society and the desired result: a society in which all members contribute and participate on equal terms.

 

Jenkins refers to assimilation as a “flattening process” that erases differences between peoples and cultures. To most of the Danish public, demanding assimilation from new potential citizens is going too far. Minority groups are welcome to look, dress, and eat differently, etc.

 

The concept of multiculturalism is often used as a complete opposite to assimilation. Professor Lise Togeby from the University of Aarhus defines the concept thus:

 

Multiculturalism springs from a notion implying that the autonomy of the individual is … tied to its culturally defined social identity. Thus, a mutual recognition between individuals involves the mutual recognition of the involved cultures. Representatives of a given culture have a collective right to demand that the political community pursues an active policy that secures their cultural prosperity.³

 

Multiculturalism can be understood as the exercise of the right of minorities to engage in specific kinds of social or cultural behaviour. The result is that multiculturalism implies a general focus on (cultural) differences—as opposed to equal rights—which is not necessarily in the interest of a society or a state.

 

By focusing on cultural differences and the tolerance of differences in general, the state risks having to tolerate behaviour at variance with the law of the land. For instance, nobody should be allowed to repress women or abuse children in the name of culture, tradition or religion. Furthermore, emphasis on group rights and differences can undermine solidarity in a society if people of minority background identify with their group rather than with society. Finally, a multicultural approach risks overlooking conflicts of interest internal to a group that seems to be ethnically coherent or homogeneous. For example, specific rights given to a Turkish minority group may lead to further repression of a Kurdish minority within that minority.

 

As opposed to assimilation and multiculturalism, integration has equality as both its point of departure and its goal. When talking about integration on a normative level, the focus is on the rights of the individual and the importance of securing equal opportunities for all citizens. On a practical level, integration means that the state demands active participation in the labour market and in the educational system from all citizens, and that in return it recognises the specific characteristics, traditions, etc., of different minority groups. In this way, it is not the state that sustains minority groups’ differences by implementing special laws, ethnic quotas or the like. Rather, the state supplies the necessary framework for all individuals to live the life they wish to live as long as their doing so does not violate the law. 

Emphasising ‘Danishness’ 

Reports and other publications by the Ministry of Integration reveal how the concept of integration is applied by the Danish government. Up to 2006, the ministry’s work has been marked by the following policy orientation: integration has been seen as a question of connecting foreigners and new citizens with the labour market. In other words, integration has been thought of as something that happens to people while they work.

 

A think-tank under the Ministry of Integration has been publishing reports on the state of integration in Denmark since 2001. In a 2006 report, the think-tank explains that its focus on integration shifted between 2001 and 2006 from the educational and language skills of foreigners and their finding of jobs to their fundamental values and norms. The reason for this shift is what is perceived as the increase in the number of foreigners who are distancing themselves from Danish society by engaging in criminal behaviour.

 

In 2006, the Danish government introduced a “Declaration of Integration and Active Citizenship in Danish Society”, intended to articulate the values that form the core of Danishness. Refugees and immigrants who are granted citizenship are asked to sign the declaration. The declaration is not legally binding but serves the purpose of making newcomers understand what Denmark expects of its citizens. It states that new citizens are expected to abide by the law, learn the Danish language and acquire knowledge about Denmark. Citizens are expected to work and provide for themselves and their families, respect equal rights for women, recognise that violence against women and children is not tolerated in Denmark, and recognise that both female circumcision and forced marriages are violations of Danish law. Furthermore, the declaration says explicitly that terrorism is not tolerated and that all citizens are expected to respect people of different religions, sexuality, etc.

 

Reading the declaration, it is difficult not to see it as drawing the profile of a problematic foreigner: an intolerant male of Middle Eastern and Muslim background who has come to Denmark to live off the welfare state; a male who prefers to stay in his council flat; who regards it as his right to beat his wife and children; to force the children to marry someone from his homeland; who watches al-Arabiya television rather than familiarising himself with Denmark’s liberal society; and who is likely to engage in terrorist activities or at least support violence and discrimination against homosexuals and Jews.

 

In May 2007, the government launched a so-called “Danishness test”. The test consists of forty questions about Danish history, Denmark’s political system, rights, rules and current affairs. The purpose is to make new citizens learn about Denmark, its past and culture. The test has met with scepticism and criticism from much of the Danish public—including teachers teaching compulsory Danish to new citizens. Some teachers have announced that they are teaching their students how to pass the test rather than study for it. It takes twenty-eight correct answers to pass the test, but the main problem is not its content or level of difficulty, but the underlying concept: the test tells foreigners that in order to become a Danish citizen, it is necessary to have the background knowledge of Denmark that only people born and educated in the country can acquire.

 

As we have seen, the definition of integration used in a Danish context implies that the state and the public have no problems with minorities’ demonstrating visible differences and preferences. On the other hand, naturally, the Danish state does have a problem with citizens who break the law and who are not loyal to the fundamentals of the Danish welfare state: participation and rights. However, the focus on foreigners’ norms and values as well as the “Declaration of Integration” and the “Danishness test” may indicate that the Danish state finds it increasingly difficult to deal with people who think differently. 

After 11 September 

The concept of integration as used by the Ministry of Integration has seen a shift in meaning from “integration means supporting oneself” to the more complex “integration is a question of norms and values”. This development is connected to the overall political climate in Denmark following the 11 September 2024 terrorist attacks in the United States and the cartoon controversy.

 

After 11 September, Westerners started fearing Islamist radicalism and terrorism. The threat felt close and concrete and caused people to look at themselves, fellow citizens and foreigners in a new light. Accordingly, Denmark has witnessed a radicalisation process initiated simultaneously by the Danish public—led by right-wing politicians (not least the nationalistic Danish People’s Party)—the media and the Danish wing of the international Islamist organisation, Hizb ut-Tahrir. Danish politicians and journalists were searching for a local terrorist threat, and in October 2001 they found what they were looking for. Hizb ut-Tahrir hosted a public meeting in Copenhagen with the slogan, “An attack on one Muslim is an attack on all Muslims”, an allusion to the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to unseat the Taliban. Hizb ut-Tahrir wanted to personify the Unwanted Other and give a voice to all Muslims critical of the West and of their lives in Denmark.

 

Although Denmark, like other Western countries in the aftermath of 11 September, witnessed a radicalisation of opinion concerning potential terror threats and integration, the cartoon controversy added more nuances to the debate. New Muslim groups have entered the scene and expressed a willingness to discuss, proactively and optimistically, the future for Muslims in Denmark. Nevertheless, the cartoon controversy has had serious consequences for Denmark’s foreign policy, for Danish companies and industries dealing with Muslim countries, and for Denmark’s overall international reputation. In terms of Danish self-understanding and the underlying fear of Muslim otherness and Islamist terrorism, the controversy has constituted a real crisis. During and after the controversy the probability of a terrorist attack on Denmark has been discussed as a matter of “when” rather than “if”.

 

When it comes to the integration of foreigners in Denmark, the political focus on cultural differences and values is marked not only by 11 September but also by the cartoon controversy. In the Danish administration, a logic built on the conviction that Danishness is the solution has taken hold—as noted above. In this connection, it should be remembered that the Danish People’s Party, which provides the present Liberal–Conservative government with the necessary parliamentary basis, is highly suspicious of (Muslim) foreigners and works for the implementation of stricter integration policies. Thus, the recent government initiatives on integration—the Declaration on Integration and the Danishness test—can be interpreted as symbolic tools to teach foreigners to think like Danes and to prevent problematic or unwanted foreigners from becoming Danish citizens. 

Popular Attitudes 

The question is whether the political, symbolic tools and the underlying demand for cultural assimilation reflect the opinions of the Danish people. The book Are Danes Xenophobic? has compared Danes’ views on foreigners with those of other Westerners and finds that Danes are no more xenophobic than others. Based on three opinion surveys, the book states that, generally speaking, Danes are less open-minded than Swedes but more open-minded than Germans and Britons. However, Danes seem to be more critical of minorities when it comes to cultural assimilation: Danes expect citizens of minority background to adjust to the host country’s culture. This expectation does not entail objecting to the involvement of minorities in politics. The book finds that Danes have no wish to limit foreigners’ political influence, but they do expect them to become Danish in a cultural sense.⁴

 

A 2006 opinion survey has shown that attitudes in Denmark towards Islam were slightly more negative after the cartoon controversy than before. To sum up, it is extremely difficult to conclude anything about the general attitude in Denmark towards citizens of minority background and towards Muslims in particular. The official integration strategy seems to be popular among all political parties, but it must be emphasised that the concept and the term mean different things to different parties and people. At the moment, the Danish government and a great many Danes seem to wish for cultural assimilation, even though they term it “integration”. 

Strife or Harmony? 

The implicit wish for cultural assimilation can be said to be a consequence of 11 September and the cartoon controversy. The government’s conviction is that Danishness is the solution. In other words, if all Danish citizens think as most Danes used to think in days gone by, if Danes all like the same things and share values and norms—and keep out those who think differently—then terror attacks and cartoon controversies can be avoided in the future. Consequently, it becomes increasingly difficult to be a practising Muslim in Denmark and hence a radicalisation seems to be taking place among parts of its Muslim community.

 

Nevertheless, many of the groups of so-called assertive Muslims that we have described in this article are more than willing to take part in discussions of what Danishness implies today. With luck, further cartoon controversies can be avoided if as many different Danish citizens as possible are engaged in the debate on what it means to be Danish today and what we would like it to mean in the future.

 

 

Endnotes

 

 

1. Flemming Mikkelsen, Status of Integration, 1999–2003 [in Danish] (Copenhagen: Catinét Research, 2003). All translations from the Danish in this article are by Kate Østergaard and Kirstine Sinclair.

 

2. Peter Nannestad, “Integration Is Hard: Danes and the New Ethnic Minorities”, in Uncomfortable Challenges: Current Tendencies in the Danish and European Immigration Debate (in Danish), ed. Peter Seeberg (Odense: Odense University Press, 2001), p. 13.

 

3. Lise Togeby, From Guest Workers to Ethnic Minorities [in Danish] (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2003), p. 16.

 

4. Hans Jørgen Nielsen, Are Danes Xenophobic? Foreign Countries’ Views on the Danish Immigration Debate, 2000–2002 [in Danish] (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2004).