DENMARK 2007

 

Ten antisemitic incidents were recorded in Denmark in 2007, mostly harassment or threats. A number of trials ended in 2007 and individuals and members of several groups were sentenced under Denmark’s new anti-terrorism law.

 

The Jewish community

Denmark was the first Scandinavian country to permit Jews to settle when they arrived there in the 17th century. Jews have enjoyed civic equality since 1814 and citizenship since 1849. Today there are 7,000 Jews in Denmark, out of a total population of 5.25 million. Most of the community is concentrated in Copenhagen, but smaller communities exist in Odense and Aarhus. The central communal organization is the Mosaiske Troessamfund. The community operates only one synagogue, the Great Synagogue completed in 1833, as well as the Caroline Jewish Day School (established in 1805). Joedisk Orientering is the leading Jewish publication together with Goldberg, a cultural magazine. There is a small progressive Jewish community, Shir Hatzafon, as well as a Chabad Lubavitch center.

 

Political organizations and racist activity

Following the election called for November 13, the liberal bloc (including the Konservative and Venstre parties) returned to govern, thanks to the support of the right-wing, anti-immigrant Dansk Folkeparti, which won 25 seats in the Folketinget (parliament), one more than in the previous term. The Socialists (including the Socialdemokratiet, Det Radikale Venstre and Socialistisk Folkeparti) remained in the opposition.

 

Right-Wing Groups

Neo-Nazi and other extreme right groups, such as Dansk Front (the Danish Front), the Danish National Socialist Party (DNSP) and Blood & Honour, tend to maintain a low profile in Denmark. Membership ranges from a handful to about 500 per group (according to the Danish police). Their main concern is immigration. In 2007, their activity was confined to organizing a few minor demonstrations and neo-Nazi music concerts and handing out fliers on the streets.

 

Left-Wing Groups

 Extreme left and “autonomous” groups in Denmark continued to focus on the closure of the illegally occupied Ungdomshuset youth center (see ASW 2006). Some 300 rioters were arrested in 2007 during demonstrations of 1,500−5.000 participants. The riots were the worst in Denmark since 1993. The center was finally cleared and demolished in March.

Two groups were acquitted on charges of donating funds to the PLFP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), both on the EU’s list of terror organizations. The first is an extreme left group centered on Patrick MacManus, and the second a group of seven people from the Fighters and Lovers clothing company, who raised funds via sales of T-shirts with various slogans and logos.

 

Muslim Population

While Danish Muslim sources estimate their number at 300,000, the authorities’ assessment is 225,000, with approximately 115 functioning mosques. Researchers reckon that only about 10 percent of Muslims actively observe their religion (e.g., visit a mosque for Friday prayers). Most Muslims live in the main cities of Copenhagen, Aarhus and Odense. During the 1970s, many Muslims immigrated to Denmark from Turkey, Pakistan, Morocco and Yugoslavia. Since 1980 most Muslim immigrants have come from Iran, Iraq, Somalia and the Palestinian territories.

Many of the new immigrants are concentrated in ghettos, such as Vollsmose (Odense), parts of Nørrebro (central Copenhagen) and Rosenhøj, close to the city of Aarhus. Radicals in the latter claim that it is an autonomous neighborhood: “This place belongs to us and her we have our own rules,” they say. Ambulances, police, firemen and postmen are harassed when they try to enter the area and are often stoned. Some 75 percent of all criminal acts (including knife attacks, robberies, shooting and drug dealing) in 2005 involved youths from these ghettos. This tendency continued into 2007

            An increasing number of young people in their teens have been converting to Islam. In 2005, the number of converts was estimated at 2,500; in 2007, it was about 4,000. One-third are aged 14−19, and 80 percent converted before the age of 30. Men and women convert in equal numbers, although previously women were more common.

 

Islamist Groups and Individuals

Islamist organizations attempt to recruit new members in mosques, on campuses, in prisons and online.

The transnational fundamentalist Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) is well-established and very active in Denmark. The movement has a strong influence on young Muslims, and can gather 400−1,500 people at their various events.

Other fundamentalist organizations, such as Minhaj-ul-Quran, which operates among people of Pakistani origin, and al-Muhajiroun, focus especially on educational institutions (such as universities and colleges). Both disseminate propaganda urging implementation of the khilafa (political system in Islam; Caliphate) and Shariah laws. According to the Danish media, both Hamas and the Kurdish Sunni Islamist Ansar al-Islam/Ansar al-Sunna have members and/or supporters in Denmark. On March 28, 2007, the chairman, Rashid Issa, and treasurer, Ahmad Muhammad Suleiman, of al-Aqsa Spannmål (al-Aqsa Foundation), were acquitted by a Danish court on charges of donating some 750,000 Danish kroner (about 100,000 euros) to the Islamic Charitable Society in Hebron, allegedly a front organization for Hamas. The al-Aqsa Foundation is an international organization with branches in several European countries (though some have been shut down). Both the US and Israel claim the foundation channels money to Hamas terror activities.

A radical new group, Asir, or Nordic Jihad, has reportedly been formed. Its members are mostly young Muslims, ex-prison inmates, who have devoted themselves to Islam.

The far left party Enhedslisten (Unified List) withdrew the candidacy of controversial Danish politician Asmaa Abdol-Hamid (of Palestinian origin), for a seat in the November parliamentary election. This followed an interview she gave to various organs of the Danish press in 2007, comparing Denmark’s military presence in Iraq with the Nazi occupation of Denmark in World War II. In 2005, as a spokeswoman on behalf of 11 Muslim organizations (including the fundamentalist Minhaj-ul-Quran, which calls for introduction of the Shariah in Denmark), she sued the mainstream Jyllands-Posten for blasphemy after it printed the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. During this period, she was close to imams Abu Laban and Ahmad Akkari (see below and ASW 2006). The Unified Left gained only 1.6 percent of the vote and no seats.

Four radical imams disappeared from the public eye in 2007. Abu Bashar − who during a visit to Arab countries at the head of a delegation of Muslims during the Prophet Muhammad cartoons crisis showed a picture which he claimed falsely was one of the cartoons − was dismissed from his job as a imam at Nyborg Prison. Rayid Hlayhel, imam at Grimhøjvej Mosque in Aarhus and leader of the Equality and Brotherhood association, left Denmark in November for Lebanon. Ahmad Akkari, spokesman for 27 Muslim organizations during the Muhammad cartoon crisis and imam at Grimhøjvej Mosque, became a student at Danish Pedagogical University, and is keeping a low profile. Ahmad Abu Laban, imam of the Islamic Community at Copenhagen who was actively involved in the Muslim response to the Muhammad cartoons, died of cancer, on February 1.

 

AntiSemitic activity

The Jewish Community of Copenhagen receives an average of 30 complaints of antisemitism per year. Only ten incidents were recorded in 2007. There were two cases of vandalism, one of incitement/anti-Jewish propaganda, and the rest involved harassment or threats (verbal or via phone/letter/e-mail).

On October 22, two stones were thrown at the windows of the Copenhagen Synagogue and on March 15, the Deborah Center, a new home for the Jewish elderly, was vandalized. A number of incidents involved verbal abuse or discrimination by persons of Middle East or North African origin. For example, a Holocaust survivor from the US, invited to give a talk by the Jewish Community, was harassed and threatened in front of his hotel in January; a taxi driver refused to pick up a Jewish customer in March; and the doorman at a discotheque refused entry to a group of Jews, including Israeli visitors, in September.

In late October, the Jewish Community received a letter from a Danish citizen, mistakenly perceived as Jewish by a magazine distribution company. He complained he was receiving magazines with antisemitic texts and drawings. The company was investigating.

 

Responses to antiSemitism and racism

In 2007 the Copenhagen City Municipality initiated a survey of hate crimes against minorities such as Jews and homosexuals. The category on Jews will be based partly on the Jewish Community’s records for 2007. The Community cooperates with the local police and PET, the Danish Security Intelligence Service; however, not all antisemitic incidents reported to the Jewish community end up in the PET reports of hate crimes in Denmark, due to disagreement over what constitutes a serious offense. On January 16, Morten Westergaard (Social Democracy Party, Copenhagen City Hall) stated: “It is true that the Jewish Community can present documentation on harassment. But it is also true, that several episodes look trifling… we will conduct a serious investigation, and if this investigation shows that there is no antisemitism in Copenhagen – then the Jewish Community will have to accept this.”

 

Legal Activity

Several trials ended in 2007 and individuals and members of various groups were sentenced under Denmark’s anti-terrorism law (enacted in 2002 and amended in 2007). Four members of the so-called Glostrup group (“the Bosnian connection” − see ASW 2006), arrested in 2005, were given various sentences: Palestinian-born `Abd al-Basit, Moroccan-born Abu-Lifa, Danish-born Elias ibn Husayn (Syrian-Palestinian parents) and Bosnian-born Imad Ali Jaloud were all released because they had served sufficient time while awaiting their trial and sentence; however, the prosecution has decided to re-open the ibn Husayn case. The four were charged with plotting terror attacks in Denmark and cooperating with the Bosnian group (two of whose members were sentenced in early 2007).

Said Mansour, a naturalized Danish citizen, was sentenced on April 11, 2007 to three and a half years in prison, for inciting to terror. He had been under police surveillance for two years. At the trial it was revealed that through his publishing firm, Al Nur Islamic Information, Mansour produced and distributed films, DVDs, cassettes and books urging Muslims to participate in jihad the world over, but especially in conflict areas such as Afghanistan, Palestine, Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq. He was in contact with infamous radical Muslims such as `Umar `Abd al-Rahman, Abu Mus`ab al-Zarqawi, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Qutayda and Abu Hamza al-Misri. Active in the Taiba Mosque in Copenhagen, he organized “study groups,” which trained participants to become mujahidin (soldiers of Allah). His network of activities extended to the US, the UK, Italy, Spain, Morocco, Sweden and Bosnia, among others. Said Mansour was mentor to `Abd al-Basit and Abu-Lifa from the Glostrup group. He had a previous sentence for receiving and selling stolen goods, and illegal weapon possession.

In September 2006, four residents of Vollsmose, a suburb of Odense largely populated by immigrants (85 percent) were arrested. All were connected to the Ørbæksvej Mosque. The four, three Danish citizens from Iraq and the Palestinian territories and one a convert to Islam, were accused of conspiring to carry out terrorist acts. Moreover, for the first time in Denmark, a home-grown terrorist group was trying to make and use TATP, a deadly and elusive explosive favored by suicide bombers in the Middle East. Judged under the harshest paragraph of the anti-terrorism law, they were given sentences on November 23, 2007, ranging from 4 to 11 years, and eventual deportation in the case of one, Ahmad Khaldhahi; the youngest (18) was released. While two of the defendants have appealed, the state prosecutor has asked for tougher sentences for the group.

Another terrorist group was uncovered in early September, when police made eight arrests in Glasvej, an immigrant neighborhood in northwest Copenhagen. Six of the suspects, aged 19−29, have Danish citizenship. According to the chief inspector of PET: “We are talking about militant Islamists with international connections… to leading members of al-Qa`ida.” Led by a 19-year-old electrician from Turkey, a 21-year-old man from Afghanistan working for the DSB (state railway company) and a 20-year-old Pakistani taxi driver, the group was connected to a mosque located in Heimdalsgade, Nørrebro, and influenced by Salafi teachings. They had planned terrorist attacks in Denmark using TATP-based bombs. The case was expected to be settled during 2008.