A few days ago Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of the Danish People's Party (DPP), criticized Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen in an opinion piece in Berlingske Tidende. Pia Kjærsgaard said that the government's new plan against the ghetto problem is avoiding the basic element of Islam.
Translation below:
When today we have neighborhoods in Denmark where Hizb ut-Tahrir, in an unsightly association with local immigrant gangs, sets the agenda, there are basically two reasons for it.
First, 25 years of failed immigration policy led by the Social Democrats and the Social-Liberal Party (SR coalition), but unfortunately at first for many years accompanied by both the Liberals and the Conservatives. Second, because for years we've neglected to inoculate the immigrants who came here with Danish and Western values.
In other words, the concrete problems we now meet in the ghettos, are closely linked to neglecting the war of values.
If the prime minster now intends to back down from the debate about the very basic values which are the foundations of our society, I must unfortunately say very clearly that the PM is making a big mistake. And what's worse: The PM risks inadvertently repeating ten years of failed SR politics if you just try to solve concrete problems without looking at the main reasons for why the problems arose.
It must be tackled completely differently, if parallel-societies are to be broken down and integration is to have a chance. And it's here that calling off the culture war will be fatal. It's namely the culture war which will lead the ghettos off the path.
"For me this is certainly not a war of religions at all," says the prime minister. I understand what Lars Løkke Rasmussen means. And no, it's not a war of religions - but rather a clash between a dark culture based on a religion which preaches subservience - man's subservience to God, women's subservience to man, and non-Muslim's subservience to Muslims - and a modern, enlightened and equality-oriented culture based on the principle that every person has and takes responsibility for himself and his own.
It's certainly not Vietnamese, Chinese, Thai or Chilean youth who drive around the ghettos and make the streets unsafe. It's not Hindus or Sikhs who demand a ban on alcohol and dogs in Danish neighborhoods.
On the contrary, it's youth born of stateless Palestinians, Turks, Lebanese, Somalis, Pakistanis, Iraqis and Syrians who dominate the street scene in the troubled neighborhoods, call Danes name, break into the homes of the elderly and handicapped and use their apartments to hold consultations on future criminal activity and on the whole exhibit completely aggressive and misogynist behavior against girls who don't live up to the criteria which they - often based in Islam - dictate.
If we are to solve the problems with the ghettos going forward, it's partially about keeping potential troublemakers out of the country, partially about telling the foreigners and their descendants who are in Denmark who's in charge. Either you completely back the values which are fundamental to Denmark and the West in general - freedoms, women's equality, democracy and solidarity - or you should find another place to be.
There must be no place for the fire-breathing Islamists from Hiab ut-Tahrir, and there's no place either for the shady men of the Islamic Faith Society in Dortheavej or other Islamist fanatics who unfortunately - successfully - try to influence young immigrants to dismiss Danish society for values, the consequence of which has been to bury the Islamic countries in material and spiritual poverty.
The battle of values must be fought in public schools. When textbooks don't dare show the Muhammad cartoons, or be critical about Islam, when religion teachers say they're concerned about exposing Islam's sources to the same criticism as Christianity's or Judaism's, it shows that we have a problem. Do the students in public school learn, for example, that the background of the christian Crusades in the Muslim world was the Muslim conquests in Europe? Does the Battle Of Vienna in 1683 mean anything at all to Danish youth? Do you dare teach Turkish youth in Denmark about the Armenian Genocide? And are there still question marks on whether it was Osama bin Laden and his cronies who brought down the World Trade Center towers?
And what with the day-to-day going-ons in public school? Is it respectful to one another when we hear that Danish and foreign girls who don't dress according to Islam's regulations are marked as whores? Or when gangs of little brothers also here are set on the pursuit of power and ignore the teacher and students? Or when students of foreign origin speak in their own language and therefore keep out the Danish students?
With Lars Løkke Rasmussen and the government it seems that unfortunately we're going back to the old familiar groove which says that if you will just adapt, have a job and learn Danish, everything will be good. Regardless of which values you go and collect to yourself.
Sure, our insistence that Western values are far superior to Islamic values will annoy some. So will our insistence on gender equality and on the individual's right to decide their own religion. Who he or she will marry and the right to think, talk, write and draw whatever you want.
But calling off the battle of values and the devotion to the solution of concrete problems won't bring the industrial peace which the prime minister is apparently looking for. The solution to the problems go hand in hand. It's not an easy solution.
There are no easy solutions to the integration of foreigners in Danish society - but the solution stands or falls on whether we are firmly planted in the fundamental values of this society. And they don't come by themselves - we must fight for them.
