NOT A PRAYER OF SERENITY:

A Mutual Suspicion Grows in Denmark (Jeffrey Fleishman, November 12, 2005, LA Times)

Right-wing politicians consider Omar Marzouk a menace. Muslims accuse him of blasphemy for pasting Osama bin Laden's image onto women's underwear. The "only ethnic comedian" in Denmark, as he likes to call himself, Marzouk provokes all sides but senses that audiences are increasingly touchy these days.

"Society is more radical," he says, sitting in a cafe in an autumn dusk. "You have the Al Qaeda movement preaching that Muslims can't exist in Western culture. And in this country you have the Danish People's Party telling Muslims, 'You're different and we can only accept you if you're a Dane.' These voices are actually pulling the same way: toward radicalism."

Hate screeds are rattling against this Scandinavian nation's aura of serenity. A Muslim publisher with suspected ties to the Al Qaeda terrorist network was recently jailed for allegedly inciting jihad and distributing videotapes of beheadings. A right-wing radio host reacted by saying that Muslims should be expelled from Western Europe, "or you exterminate the fanatical Muslims, which would mean killing a substantial population of Muslim immigrants."

Such incendiary cases, although exceptional in Denmark, raise fears that if Muslim integration can't succeed in the most liberal of Western nations, it might not be able to flourish in more conservative ones. [...]

"I believe integrating a large number of Muslims can't be done. It's an illusion," said Martin Henriksen, a 25-year-old legislator for the People's Party. "They don't have the desire to blend in with other people. We've been a Christian country for 1,000 years and we are the oldest monarchy in the world. I want to get married and have a lot of kids who can walk around in a society not influenced by Muslims."

Except that there are no conservative ones -- ones that still believe in Christianity, marriage, and children -- only radical ones, which seek to have no society, just a state, and therefore nothing to be integrated into.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 12, 2005 10:36 AM