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Deja vu — Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Judith Apter Klinghoffer

A DANE ON LIMITS OF TOLERANCE

Here are parts of a most enlightening email I received this morning on the ever evolving cartoon intifada from Lars Dyhr Hansen:

Some of today's (2-9 2006) articles and debate in Jyllands Posten are about food served in all public schools in Copenhagen, by far the largest city in Denmark.
And why would that be interesting ? Its interesting because its a fact, that all food served is "halal" (that is "food allowed" in Islam).
Why is that so ? Well, approximately 30% of all the children in the public schools of Copenhagen have a "foreign background", most of them Muslim. So in a country that is one of the worlds leading producers and exporters of high quality pork-meat - we don't serve pork chops to any of the children, just out of good will towards the Muslim parents. . . .
The reason why so many of the children have a Muslim background, is that Denmark received many immigrants from the mid-80s till now. The Muslim immigrants concentrate in the large cities and they have a birth rate much higher than Danes. Before that, there weren't many Muslims in Denmark compared with today. So the presence of this new group in our society has raised some questions.
Some examples of the previous debate in Denmark:
- In my town Muslims suggested to close the cafeteria of the local swimming-bath for men, at times when Muslim women were bathing - because the cafeteria has windows to the swimming-bath...
- A Muslim woman took a company to court because she was fired for insisting on wearing a Muslim head scarf at work, which was not company policy.
- Some teachers say they have problems with parents, that wont allow their children to draw, go to camp, participating in birthday-celebrations and so on.
- Danish Imams have said things like: Women that are not "covered" - can blame themselves for being raped. Quite disturbing in the context, that there has been some cases of young Muslim men group raping young Danish women. - Some public schools have made special bathing-facilities at the gym for Muslim children, since they "cant" take a bath together with the other children.
So the issue here in Denmark, from my point of view, is about setting limits for, how far a religious minority can set the agenda on everything it comes into contact with
- in a country that is highly secular and where freedom of religion, speech, sex and other subjects is practically total.
The drawings were just part of the whole background and debate. Most Danes are not very religious (if at all) and I am sure that half the Danish population are wondering why anyone could get offended - at all.