Almost 40 percent of Danish Muslims would like to see the country’s laws based partly on the Koran, according to a poll for Jyllands-Posten. Anti-immigration supporters say the results show “the number of Muslims in Denmark is a problem.”
The survey, conducted by Wilke for Jyllands-Posten, found that over 10 percent of Muslims asked said that Danish law should be solely based on the Koran, while over one-quarter believe the country’s legislation should be a mixture of the Islamic holy book and the Danish constitution.
An Aarhus-based imam, Radwan Mansour, is also in favor of having a mixture of laws from the Koran and the Danish constitution, saying that there would be no conflict between the two.
“If this was an Islamic country, it should be the Koran. But Denmark is not an Islamic country – we don’t decide – so I think it should be both the Koran and the constitution. When it comes to justice, the sharing of resources and so on, there is a fine accordance [between the two],” The Local quoted him as telling Jyllands-Posten.
The anti-immigration Danish People’s Party seized on the results of the poll, saying it showed “the number of Muslims in Denmark is a problem.”
“When one believes that the Koran should play an essential role in legislation and for life in society, and when one believes – as previous polls have shown – that women of a certain age should be covered up, then one does not wish to be a part of Danish society and it is delusional to act like they were here first and it is the rest of us who came later. It is incredibly rude,” said Martin Henriksen, a spokesman for the Danish People’s Party.
Henriksen was referring to a recent survey, which found that 77 percent of Danish Muslims believe that the Koran should be “followed completely.” This was a 15 percent rise from when the same poll was conducted in 2006 and something of a surprise to Jens Peter Frolund Thomsen, a social studies professor at the University of Aarhus who specializes in the relationship between Danes and immigrants.
“Here is an indicator that religious beliefs interfere in some political opinions and attitudes. Our secular society, in which political power and the rule of law are hailed above all else, is something that many have reservations about. It shows that democratic norms haven’t taken root amongst all immigrant groups,” Thomsen told Jyllands-Posten.
However, Fatih Alev, who is the head of the Danish Islamic Center, says it will take time for Muslims to integrate into Danish society, calling it “an ongoing process.”
“Muslims have always been able to reconcile Islam’s precepts with various traditions and customs in different countries. It is an ongoing process in which we have also found our way of practicing Islam in a Danish context,” Alev told the newspaper.
In April, the Danish Conservative Party launched a controversial campaign, calling for radical Islam to be “fought and eliminated” and claiming that the religion shared many ideas with Nazism.
In a statement to RT, the Danish Conservative Party said: “What we are saying in our campaign is that we want to stop this form of Islamism, a form that has many ideas in common with Nazism, and this is what we call Nazi-Islamism. It is the form of Islamism that Boko Haram and Islamic State are executing.”
Muslims now account for almost 5 percent of the Danish population, making it the largest minority religion in the country.