Denmark 2020 international religious freedom report

Government Practices

In September, 11 members of parliament (MPs) representing 11 minority political parties generally regarded as both left and right of center, and including a member from the ruling Social Democratic Party, reintroduced, for the third year in a row, a citizen proposal to ban ritual circumcision of boys under the age of 18.

Parliamentarian Simon Emil Ammitzboll-Bille introduced a second proposal to ban circumcision of minors, with a substantively identical text. If adopted, the resolutions, which call for a criminal penalty of up to six years in prison for violators, would require the government to introduce legislation banning circumcision of minors. The Danish Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine presented its case to parliament in support of the ban. According to an opinion poll conducted by Danish research consultancy Megafon, approximately 86 percent of the public supported the ban.

Prime Minister Frederiksen of the Social Democratic Party opposed the circumcision ban in a press conference on September 11. She stated that, while

she personally disagreed with ritual male circumcision, the country should not limit the religious rites of the Jewish community and that the circumcision debate could not be separated from Europe's history of Jewish persecution. Following the Prime Minister’s statement, Jakob Ellemann-Jensen, the leader of the Liberal Party, the largest opposition party, publicly supported the Prime Minister’s statement, agreeing that Denmark should not be the first European country to ban the practice. Following Frederiksen’s and Ellemann-Jensen’s statements, national daily Kristeligt Dagblad reported that a parliamentary majority opposed the ban and that the legislation would likely fail.

Henri Goldstein, the chairman of the Jewish Community in Denmark and a physician, said in an interview with the Jerusalem Post that the Jewish Community continued to see the proposed ban as “the worst threat since World War II.” Naveed Baig, an imam and theologian, expressed shock at the wide public support for the ban in an interview with Kristeligt Dagblad. Other national dailies, including Politiken and Jyllands-Posten, reported on the absence of the Muslim community in the public responses to the legislation. Muslim leaders said that many Muslims remained intentionally quiet, as they felt their voices would hurt the case for ritual circumcision due to strong anti-Muslim sentiments in society. Jarun Demirtas, a nurse who supported the proposed ban and an opinion writer for newspaper Jyllands-Posten, told the paper, “If it was only the Muslims [who were affected], we would have a majority for a ban on circumcision in one day.” Representatives from the Muslim and Jewish communities said that even if the proposed ban failed again due to the Prime Minister’s intervention, they remained concerned about the proposal and its annual reemergence in parliamentary debates. The proposed legislation was scheduled for a parliamentary debate and vote in early 2021.

Representatives of the Muslim and Jewish communities continued to express frustration at the country’s limitation on religious slaughter of livestock but stated that halal and kosher meat could be imported from within the EU.

In April, the independent, state-funded Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) published a report by senior researcher Eva Maria Lassen, Limitations to Freedom of Religion or Belief in Denmark, that cited an upward trend of legislative constraints on religious expression. According to Lassen’s research, recent legislation, such as the handshake requirement for new citizens, had limited non- Christian religious practices, particularly those of Muslim and Jewish minorities. In addition to the bans on ritual slaughter and face coverings, Lassen cited five acts passed in 2016 and 2017 targeting “religious preachers who seek to undermine

Danish Law and Values” as examples of increasing governmental limitations on religious freedom. One such act introduced a mandatory course in Danish family law, freedom, and democracy for non-EU religious preachers. Lassen stated that these legislative amendments disproportionately targeted religious preachers, and not “other leaders with comparable authority.”

In November, the Pew Research Center categorized the country as having “high government restrictions on religion,” the middle level in the report’s three-tiered system (low, high, and very high government restrictions). According to Pew, the country owed its ranking in part to the government’s ban on facial coverings.

The government fined two women for violating the ban on face coverings. In one case, in January, a local court fined a woman 1,000 kroner ($160) for wearing a niqab in a shopping center in Odense in October 2019. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Ministry of Justice issued guidance stating the law did not apply to face coverings that served specific health purposes, such as masks worn to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Leaders of the opposition Danish People’s Party (DPP), generally described as right of center, called repeatedly for a ban on the Islamic call to prayer throughout the country. A 2019 parliamentary bill to ban the call to prayer lapsed without a vote. Martin Henriksen, a DPP board member, wrote in an opinion article for the newspaper Dit Overblik that Islamic calls to prayer should lead to deportation.

ELC priest Niels Hviid defended Muslims’ right to religious expression; journalist Paula Larrain stated that if the Islamic prayer call was “noise,” then so was the sound of church bells.

The Ministry of Transport, Building, and Housing continued to implement the government’s parallel society program, which included the elimination by 2030 of “ghettos” (a term referring to neighborhoods of majority non-Western immigrants, which media widely interpreted to mean Muslim-majority communities).

Authorities withheld quarterly benefits of up to 4,557 kroner ($750) from parents in “ghetto” communities who refused to send toddlers over the age of one to government-funded day care to be taught “Danish values,” including Christmas and Easter traditions.

Asif Mehmood, a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan, and 11 of his neighbors filed a lawsuit challenging the parallel societies program with support from the Open Society Justice initiative. The government declared Mehmood’s four-block Copenhagen housing complex, Mjolnerparken, a “ghetto.” According to reports by

U.S. broadcaster National Public Radio (NPR) and UK newspaper The Guardian, the government wanted to sell Mjolnerparken to developers and told residents they would be offered equivalent housing nearby. NPR reported Mehmood and some political opposition parties, however, were skeptical of the offer, given the relatively low cost of their rent-controlled housing compared with market prices in surrounding areas. According to The Guardian, residents who refused to leave could be evicted.

Samiah Qasim, a social worker and Muslim resident of Mjolnerparken, told al- Jazeera television in January that she had received “a letter saying that since I’m from a ‘ghetto’ area, I have to sign up to send my child to this institution for 25 hours a week to learn ‘Danish values’.… If we refuse, we don’t get any benefits or child support.” Samiah added, “This has nothing to do with me as a mother. It is based simply on my address. If I moved over to the other side of the road, I would not be having any of these problems.” Al-Jazeera cited another Mjolnerparken resident as stating, “I felt Danish until recently. Now I feel I’m not a part of this society. The politicians created their ‘parallel society’ with the bad reputation they’ve given Mjolnerparken so that ethnic Danes don’t want to live here.”

Residents of a public housing complex in Helsingor accused housing authorities of illegal discrimination after they told 96 families they had to relocate from the majority-Muslim neighborhood due to building renovations. The residents challenged their removal in court, but in November, the Helsingor City Court ruled that no discrimination had taken place and those evicted must vacate the property by April 2021. In October, the UN Office of the Human Rights Commissioner issued a statement urging the country to stop the sale of residences classified as “ghettos” until the government determined whether the subsequent evictions violated citizens’ human rights. A similar case occurred in Vollsmose, a suburban town on the island of Fyn, where 118 residents of a majority-Muslim residential community were also contesting eviction notices.

In October, the ruling Social Democratic Party announced plans to introduce a bill, with strong parliamentary support, in 2021 that would require the translation of all religious sermons into Danish. The government stated that this legislation would stop the development of parallel societies. Minority religious leaders from the Muslim, Jewish, and Catholic faiths said the legislation would create challenges for their large immigrant communities, who often preferred to worship in their native languages. ELC bishops for the dioceses of Copenhagen, Ribe, and Haderslev publicly opposed the proposal. The legislation would also affect ELC services given in the Greenlandic or Faroese languages.

In February, authorities denied a man citizenship after he refused to shake hands with the government representative during his naturalization ceremony. Badar Shah, the government representative and a politician in the Alternative Party, said that, while the refusal to shake hands was not connected to gender, it was “a silent protest” against the handshake requirement, which religious leaders said unfairly targeted Islamic religious practices. Some municipalities, including Syddjurs and Hedensted in Jutland, subsequently staged the ceremony with both a male and female government representative present so that new citizens could choose to shake hands with an official of the same gender. In April, the government suspended the handshake requirement due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In July, the Islamic Faith Community sent an official complaint to parliament’s Standing Orders Committee in connection with remarks made by MPs Morten Messerschmidt and Pernille Vermund during legislative debate on public Islamic calls to prayer. Vermund described Islam as a “weed,” and Messerschmidt stated that increased Muslim populations in the country had “worsened problems.”

The immigration service listed 14 persons, including four U.S. citizens, on the national sanctions list of religious preachers barred from entering the country. The Ministry of Immigration and Integration stated the individuals threatened the nation’s public order but did not provide additional details. Entry bans remain in force for two years from the date of issuance and may be extended. Foreign nationals holding a residence permit, along with European Union (EU) nationals and residents, could not be placed on the sanctions list.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, some politicians and media commented on outbreaks among Muslim communities. In an August opinion article for online news site Altinget, Johanne Thorup Dalgaard wrote that the country was scapegoating Muslims for virus transmission when most Danes, including the author herself, were guilty of attending graduation parties and flouting social distancing guidelines throughout the summer months. Members of the Muslim community said politicians had “weaponized” cases of COVID-19 among Muslims early in the year to suggest that Muslims did not follow or respect public health guidelines. After reports of high infection rates among majority Muslim communities in the spring, New Right MP Pernille Vermund wrote on Facebook, “They should not destroy our freedom,” referring to an outbreak in the Aarhus Muslim community following a funeral attended by 300 to 400 persons and the potential for additional COVID-19 restrictions. MP and former Immigration Minister Inger Stojberg criticized the Muslim community’s participation in the

funeral, and her supporters agreed, writing on Facebook, “Use water cannons against [Muslims],” and “shoot them [with water cannons].”

The government continued to provide armed security, consisting of police and military personnel, for Jewish sites it considered to be at high risk of terrorist attack, including Copenhagen’s synagogue, community center, and schools, along with the Israeli embassy and ambassador’s residence.