Something Rotten in Denmark?[1]

Daniel Pipes & Lars Hedegaard

A Muslim group in Denmark announced a few days ago that a 30,000 dollar bounty would be paid for the murder of several prominent Danish Jews,[2] a threat that garnered wide international notice.[3] Less well known is that this is just one problem associated with Denmark's approximately 200,000 Muslim immigrants. The key issue is that many of them show little desire to fit into their adopted country.

For years, Danes lauded multiculturalism and insisted they had no problem with the Muslim customs - until one day they found that they did. Some major issues:

  • Living on the dole: Third-world immigrants - most of them Muslims from countries such as Turkey, Somalia, Pakistan, Lebanon and Iraq - constitute 5 percent of the population but consume upwards of 40 percent of the welfare spending.[4]
  • Engaging in crime: Muslims are only 4 percent of Denmark's 5,4 million people but make up a majority of the country's convicted rapists,[5] an especially combustible issue given that practically all the female victims are non-Muslim. Similar, if lesser, disproportions are found in other crimes.[6]
  • Self-imposed isolation: Over time, as Muslim immigrants increase in numbers, they wish less mix with the indigenous population. A recent survey finds that only 5 percent of young Muslim immigrants would readily marry a Dane.[7]
  • Importing unacceptable customs: Forced marriages - promising a newborn daughter in Denmark to a male cousin in the home country, then compelling her to marry him, sometimes on pain of death - are one problem.
  • Another threat is to kill Muslims who convert out of Islam: One Kurdish convert to Christianity, who went public to explain why she had changed religion, felt the need to hide her face and conceal her identity, fearing for her life.[8]
  • Fomenting anti-Semitism: Muslim violence threatens Denmark's approximately 6,000 Jews, who increasingly depend on police protection. Jewish parents were told by one school principal that she could not guarantee their children's safety and were advised to attend another institution.[9] Anti-Israel marches have turned into anti-Jewish riots. One organization, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, openly calls on Muslims to "kill all Jews É wherever you find them."[10]
  • Seeking Islamic law: Muslim leaders openly declare their goal of introducing Islamic law once Denmark's Muslim population grows large enough[11] - a not-that remote prospect. If present trends persist, one sociologist estimates, every third inhabitant of Denmark in 40 years will be Muslim.[12]

Other Europeans (such as the late Pim Fortuyn in Holland) have also grown alarmed about these issues, but Danes were the first to make them the basis for a change in government.

In a momentous election last November, a center-right coalition came to power that - for the first time since 1929 - excluded the socialists. The right broke its 72-year losing streak and won a solid parliamentary majority by promising top handle immigration issues, the electorate's first concern, differently from the socialists.[13]

The next nine months did witness some fine-tuning of procedures: Immigrants now must live seven years in Denmark (rather than three) to become permanent residents. Most non-refugees no longer can collect welfare checks immediately on entering the country. No one can bring into the country an intended spouse under the age of 24. And the state prosecutor is considering a ban on Hizb-ut-Tahrir for its death threats against Jews.

These minor adjustments prompted howls internationally - with European and U.N. reports condemning Denmark for racism and "Islamophobia,"[14] the Washington Post reporting that Muslim immigrants "face habitual discrimination,"[15] and a London Guardian headline announcing that "Copenhagen flirts with Fascism."[16]

In reality, however, the new government barely addressed the existing problems. Nor did it prevent new ones, such as the death threats against Jews or a recent Islamic edict calling on Muslims to drive Danes out of Noerrebro quarter of Copenhagen.[17]

The authorities remain indulgent. The military mulls permitting Muslim soldiers in Denmark's volunteer International Brigade to opt out of actions they don't agree with[18] - a privilege granted to members of no other faith. Mohammed Omar Bakri, the self-proclaimed London-based "eyes, ears and mouth" of Osama bin Laden,[19] won permission to set up a branch of his organization, Al-Muhajiroun.[20]

Contrary to media reports, the real news from Denmark is not flirting with fascism but getting mired in inertia. A government elected specifically to deal with a set of problems has made minimal headway. Its reluctance has potentially profound implications for the West as a whole.

Daniel Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is author of "Militant Islam Reaches America" (W.W. Norton). Lars Hedegaard is a regular contributor to two Copenhagen newspapers, Berlingske Tidende and Weekendavisen.


[1] This commentary was originally published in The New York Post 27 August 2002 (www.NYPost.com). It was also published by The National Post (Canada) under the title "Muslim extremism: Denmark has had enough", 27 August 2002 (www.nationalpost.com); The Jerusalem Post 28 August 2002 (www.Jpost.com); The Jewish World Review 27 under the title "What Denmark can teach America about dealing with Muslims - and what we ignore at our own risk," 27 August 2002 (www.jewishworldreview.com). A German translation - "Ist etwas faul im Staate Dänemark?" - is found on http://homepages.compuserve.de/HeppyE/texte/7multikulti.html.

Lars Hedegaard has annotated the present version.

[2] Jyllands-Posten 11 August 2002.

[3] Ha'aretz 19 August 2002; Jerusalem Post 20 August 2002.b

[4] Gunnar Viby Mogensen and Poul Chr. Matthiessen (eds.), Mislykket integration? [Failed integration?]. Spektrum/Rockwool Foundation 2000, pp. 108-22.

[5] This is a prediction for the years 2001 and 2002 based on the following data: According to the official police report "Kriminalitet og national oprindelse 2000" [Crime and national origin 2000] (www.politi.dk), in 1998 23.3 percent of convicted rapists were of non-Danish origin, i.e. either immigrants, descendants of immigrants or citizens of foreign countries; for the year 2000, the percentage had risen to 35.7 percent.

No nation-wide statistics are available for the subsequent years, but an answer by Minister of Justice Lene Espersen to MP Peter Skaarup (Danish People's Party) of 8 March 2002 revealed that 76.5 percent of those convicted of rape in Copenhagen were on non-Danish ethnic background (Spm. nr. S 539, www.folketinget.dk/Samling/20012).

Statistics do not take religion into account, but a survey of press stories reveals that the great majority of serious ethnic offenders are from Muslim countries.

In June 2001, the Copenhagen daily newspaper B.T. reported that every single gang rape that had taken place over the preceding year and a half had been committed by second-generation immigrants or refugees - and in one instance by Eastern European gangsters. Typically, the victims had been Danish girls - in some cases as young as 13 and 14 - and women. The respected Copenhagen University criminologist, Professor Flemming Balvig had this comment: "The instances [of gang rape] in this millennium are unusual. The fact that the perpetrators are ethnic, ties in with an investigation by the national police that pointed to an enormous overrepresentation of ethnic rapists." Professor Balvig added that a large part of the rapes committed are never brought to the attention of the police. "There is every indication that one must multiply the known cases by at least three - some would say that one has to multiply by ten - to get to the real figure." (Erik Holstein and Erik Scherzndersen, "Etniske unge bag massevoldtægter" [Ethnic Youths behind Gang Rapes], B.T. 29 June 2001).

In September 2001 the Copenhagen Police reported that in 68.3 percent of the reported instances of rape, the suspects had a foreign ethnic background. (Christian Hüttemeier, "Etnisk slagside i voldtægter" [Ethnic lopsidedness concerning rapes], Politiken 7 September 2001).

The same general pattern is found in the other Scandinavian countries. Concerning Sweden, see Thomas Heine, "Sveriges store tabu" [Sweden's great taboo] (Jyllands-Posten 13 February 2000) and "Forstadskultur og bande-voldtægt" [Suburban culture and gang rape] (Jyllands-Posten 26 February 2000). A Norwegian survey of Oslo in 2000 showed that 65 percent of reported rapists were of non-Norwegian background. (Thomas Heine, "Norge: Voldtægter og korte kjoler afføder hed debat" [Norway: Rapes and short dresses provoke heated debate], Jyllands-Posten 7 September 2001).

[6] See Professor Flemming Balvig's assessment in Nynne Bjerre Christensen, "Ekspert: Indvandrere begår flere voldtægter" [Expert: Immigrants commit more rapes], Berlingske Tidende 30 June 2001.

[7] The exact figure is 4.5 percent. See the report "Når unge indvandrere vælger ægtefælle" [When young immigrants choose their spouses] by Catinét Research, due to be published 14 September 2002 (www.catinet.dk).

[8] Søndagsavisen 18 February 2001.

[9] The elementary school is Rådmandsgades Skole in the district of Nørrebro, a heavily Muslim-dominated part of Copenhagen. Politiken 26 August 2001.

[10] The text is quoted in all Copenhagen dailies around 17 April 2002.

[11] See, e.g., the statements by imam Fatih Alev and Tanveer Sharif quoted in Helle Merete Brix, "På Koranens vej - om Minhaj ul-Quran-bevægelsen" in Helle Merete Brix and Torben Hansen (eds.), Islam i Vesten: På Koranens vej? (Copenhagen, Tiderne skifter, 2002), p. 52.

[12] See the predictions by sociologist Eyvind Vesselbo in Frodi Holm Knudsen, "Danmarks fremtid: Hver anden er muslim" [Denmark's future: Every second inhabitant will be Muslim], B.T. 11 October 2001. Mr. Vesselbo, who is an MP for the ruling Liberal Party and Chairman of the Parliament's standing Committee on the Environment, speaks with particular weight due to his predictions from 1992, when he anticipated that the number of "bilingual" pupils in Denmark would double by the year 2000. For this he was widely reviled but it came to pass nonetheless.  According to Eyvind Vesselbo's calculations, in 40 years (i.e. around 2040) every third in inhabitant of Denmark will Muslim, and if the present development continues, Denmark will have 2.6 million Muslims by 2060, making up 50 percent of the population. This colossal increase will not primarily be due to high birth rates among the current Muslim population but will come about as a result of the continued and accelerating immigration.

[13] The last election that returned a right-wing parliamentary majority took place in 1926 and the resulting right government lasted until 1929. Since then Denmark has had a number of center-right - or "bourgeois" - governments but none that could count on its own majority in parliament. Consequently, they have had to seek some accommodation with the center-left opposition. That changed on November 20 2001.

[14] There have been no less than nine such reports covering the period December 1997-December 2001. See Hans Jørgen Nielsen, "De udenlandske rapporter om danskernes uvilje mod fremmede" [The foreign reports on the Danes' dislike of foreigners], pp. 9-16 in Nyt fra Rockwoolfondens forskningsenhed, June 2002.

[15] Peter Finn, "A turn from tolerance: Anti-immigrant movement in Europe reflects post-Sept. 11 views," The Washington Post 29 March 2002, p. A01.

[16] Stephen Smith, "Copenhagen flirts with fascism: Denmark is about to head the EU. It's a worrying prospect," The Guardian, Internet edition, 5 June 2002.

[17] The edict, describing itself as a fatwa, was analyzed by Lars Hedegaard and found to be genuine. See "Nu Nørrebro jeg tager" [Pop goes Nørrebro], Berlingske Tidende 12 August 2002, Magasin, p. 6.

[18] Mikkel Thastum, "Muslimske soldater kan fritstilles fra en kontrakt" [Muslim soldiers may be exempted from contractual obligations], Jyllands-Posten 23 July 2002.

[19] Yossef Bodansky, Bin Laden: The Man who Declared War on America. Forum (Random House) 1999, p. 331.

[20] "Al Qaida-støtter laver dansk afdeling" [Al-Qaeda supporters set up a Danish chapter], Jyllands-Posten 3 August 2002. Mr Bakri has openly announced his intention to force Denmark to give up its support for Israel and America and to bring down democracy (interview in Danish channel TV2, 2 August 2002). In 1998 he participated in a strategy meeting with Bin Laden in Afghanistan under the auspices of The World Islamic Front for Jihad against Jews and Crusaders (Bodansky, op.cit., p. 248).

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