A look into the future?
As in all those parts of Europe with large and growing Muslim minorities, Denmark had experienced great difficulty in the early years of the 21st century in trying to maintain its historic freedoms and cultural traditions in the face of the increasingly strident demands of its Islamic population. However, due to a variety of factors including the unhealed scars of the Muhammad Cartoon Controversy (hereafter referred to as the MCC) and the manifest incompatibility of native Danish culture with Shari’a law, the situation worsened considerably in the years immediately after said controversy. The Danish government had some success in slowing the rate of growth of the Muslim population through its new restrictions on granting citizenship on the basis of marriage. However, by the outbreak of the civil war in 2013, that fraction of the population accounted for by Muslims was estimated to be 11%, pushed upward as it was through continued immigration and higher fertility rates among Muslims. Emigration from Denmark, particularly on the part of university-educated native Danes in their 20s and 30s, exacerbated the demographic situation.
In June 2008, a simultaneous suicide bombing destroyed five buses in Copenhagen, killing 68 people and wounding 174. Though condemned by all prominent Muslim groups in Denmark, opinion polls made it clear that a significant fraction of Muslims in the country sympathized with the bombers, who had issued videos saying that the Danish presence in Iraq and Afghanistan and the MCC had left Muslims ‘no option’ but to strike back. In a pattern seen in the UK after the 7/7 bombings there, Muslim groups became more confident than ever in pressing their demands for concessions of various sorts. Insisting that, however terrible the bombings might have been, they would not stop until Muslims felt their grievances against the Danish state had been addressed, Muslim advocacy groups pushed forward with a series of initiatives designed to drive foreign and domestic policies in directions considered more amenable to Islamic mores.In response to these challenges, the Danish government adopted a policy of granting key concessions in what can only be considered an attempt at appeasement. During this initiative, which lasted from early 2009 until July 2012, the Danish government introduced a raft of measures to try to placate Muslim opinion in Denmark. The most important of these were as follows:
– Autonomous Cultural Zones
Certain geographically limited urban areas with majority Muslim populations were recognized as Autonomous Cultural Zones. Here, local councils were allowed to pass certain supplementary laws in accordance with the cultural demands of the inhabitants. As these areas all had Muslim-majority councils, this was essentially a rubber stamp for certain Shari’a legal provisions to be introduced without having to make the nature of the concession explicit. Provisions introduced included the prohibition of the sale or consumption of alcohol or pork products and a strict dress code which prohibited the wearing of T-shirts or other ‘revealing’ items to men and women alike. Though ostensibly enforceable by the police via on-the-spot fines, in practice the police presence in these areas dwindled from little to nothing in a matter of weeks. This allowed local Muslim enforcers to step well outside the newly established boundaries, demanding far greater adherence to the Shari’a than had been legally mandated. In combination, these developments drove virtually all non-Muslims and significant numbers of Muslims out of these areas.
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