As we say in Scandinavia, Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. On September 30, 2005, in the wake of news reports about writers and artists who were engaging in self-censorship because Muslims considered their work to be offensive to Islamic sensibilities and in violation of sharia strictures, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten demonstrated its support for freedom of expression by publishing a dozen cartoons of Muhammed.
In reaction, Muslims around the world rioted, resulting in more than 250 deaths, and the ambassadors of several Islamic countries registered irate protests, calling on the Danish government to punish the cartoonists and demanding an emergency meeting with Denmark’s prime minister. In its reply to those ambassadors, the Danish government explained, quite admirably, that it had no authority to restrict Danish citizens’ freedom of expression and totally ignored the demand for a meeting.
The Norwegian government, alas, took the opposite stance. Two major Norwegian newspapers, Aftenposten and Dagbladet, had reprinted the Danish cartoons, but leading Norwegian politicians, loath to offend their comrades in the mainstream media, chose instead to focus attention on a small, obscure Christian periodical, Magazinet, that had also reprinted the cartoons. When those politicians publicly demonized Magazinet’s editor, Vebjørn Selbekk, the editors of Aftenposten and Dagbladet, in an act of world-class hypocrisy, joined in the pile-on.
Under pressure by almost the entire political and media class, plus Norway’s livid Muslim leaders, Velbekk finally succumbed, and, in a humiliating event at the press office of the government Ministry of Labor and Social Inclusion, issued a groveling apology to no fewer than fourteen Norwegian imams representing 46 Muslim organizations. Shortly thereafter, a delegation led by a bishop of the Church of Norway traveled to Qatar to apologize to the world’s foremost Islamic scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, author of such works as the essay “Our War with the Jews Is in the Name of Islam.”
That was nearly eighteen years ago. The intervening years have seen a continued increase in the Muslim population of Scandinavia, in the size and isolation of Muslim urban enclaves, and in the levels of serious Muslim crime. Car burnings and bomb explosions, once rare, have become commonplace; more and more schools and neighborhoods have become danger zones for non-Muslim children; and the quality and quantity of housing, health care, elder care, and other benefits supplied to native Scandinavians have declined as growing amounts of tax money have been spent on outlays to Muslim immigrants and their descendants.
In both Denmark and Sweden, a few critics of Islam have responded to these developments with actions that, when compared to the impact of Islam on these countries, can only be considered extremely modest and symbolic: they’ve publicly burned copies of the Koran. Interestingly, the man responsible for many of the burnings, Salwan Momika, isn’t even a native Scandinavian; he’s a political refugee from Iraq whose reason for burning Korans is that Scandinavia increasingly resembles the country he fled from. But negligible though his actions may be, they have, like the Jyllands-Posten cartoons, triggered outrage throughout the Muslim world, complaints by Muslim governments, and calls for censorship.
Alas, this time around, the Danish government has not chosen to be brave. In a July 30 statement, the Danish Foreign Ministry maintained that “[f]reedom of expression is one of the most important values in the Danish society” (I’m quoting, by the way, from the official English-language text, so don’t blame me for the translation) but was quick to add that this freedom isn’t Denmark’s only important value. “With a tense security situation in Europe,” the statement declares, “it is time to build partnerships; not sow discord among nations.” The statement continues (and note the reference to “the holy Quran”):
We are currently facing a situation where the burnings of the holy Quran in Denmark have reached a level where Denmark, in many parts of the world across continents, is being viewed as a country that facilitates insult and denigration of the cultures, religions, and traditions of other countries. 15 governments have issued condemnations of Denmark. Our ambassadors have been summoned for discussions. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is meeting on Monday in response to the burnings of the holy Quran in Denmark and Sweden.
The statement went on to declare that these Koran-burnings “could have significant consequences” for Denmark’s international relations and national security, and that the Danish government will therefore
explore the possibility of intervening in special situations where, for instance, other countries, cultures, and religions are being insulted, and where this could have significant negative consequences for Denmark, not least with regard to security. This must of course be done within the framework of the constitutionally protected freedom of expression and in a manner that does not change the fact that freedom of expression in Denmark has very broad scope.
It’s fascinating how when governments announce that they may well be on the verge of curbing freedom of expression, they always insist in the same breath that they’re not about to do anything of the kind.
Not to be outdone by their Danish counterparts, Sweden’s prime minister Ulf Kristersson and minister of justice Gunnar Strömmer held a press conference on August 1 to discuss the Koran burnings within their own borders. In addition to announcing new security measures and border controls, they mentioned the possibility of outright prohibitions on Koran burnings. The degree of doublethink about freedom that they displayed was impressive. While Strömmer insisted that freedom of expression in Sweden would not be restricted, Kristersson said that his government might in fact allow police to prevent Koran burnings if they were perceived as posing a security threat.
Kristersson also implored Swedish citizens to exercise their freedom of speech in a “responsible” and “respectful” manner. Calling for “responsible” and “respectful” behavior, of course, is also de rigueur when you’re a political leader who thinks he has the right to tell free people how to exercise their freedoms.
In addition, Kristersson took time to lament that “dangerous” people had been allowed into Sweden. He wasn’t referring to any of the million or so Muslims who now live in Sweden, a great many of whom have terrorized, raped, beaten, and killed native Swedes. He meant Salwan Momika, who came to Sweden from Iraq to live in freedom and who understands that a great many of those million-odd Muslims represent an existential threat to Swedish freedom.
There are always cowards. Sometimes, with any luck, there’s a hero or two. But there are always cowards.
Still, how much can you blame the leaders of these countries for failing to defend freedom of expression when so many of their own people don’t support it? During the cartoon crisis, most Scandinavians favored appeasing Muslims over defending freedom of expression. Judging by most of the comments I’ve read on various Scandinavians’ social-network pages, nothing has improved on that front. Rejecting the idea that burning a Koran can be considered a speech act, one Dane called it “pure provocation,” an “unnecessary stunt” that accomplishes nothing other than “causing division.” Another Dane lamented that he’d decided not to travel abroad this summer because the Koran-burning has made it dangerous to be a Dane in certain countries. Freedom? Who cares about freedom, I want a vacation on the Turkish Riviera!
Meanwhile, The Guardian’s Miranda Bryant, reporting from Stockholm, quoted several non-Muslim Swedes who support limits on freedom of expression and several Swedish Muslims – including an imam, Mahmoud Khalfi, whose mosque, as Bryant neglected to mention, is the Muslim Brotherhood’s Swedish headquarters – who raged against Swedish “Islamophobia.”
And what of Norway? As it happens, the current prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, was foreign minister at the time of the cartoon crisis. It was he who led the effort to force editor Selbekk to capitulate to the Muslims and who himself apologized to them on Norway’s behalf for Selbekk’s reprinting of the Jyllands-Posten cartoons. What does this execrable figure have to say about the Koran burnings in Sweden and Denmark? He describes them as “hate crimes.” This is, note well, a man who seems to try his best not to comment on the increasingly frequent gang activity in Oslo, where on July 30 police at the main railroad station confiscated knives and axes from a gang of “youths,” 20 or so of whom engaged later that evening in brick-throwing and other violence, and where on August 1, at the site of the annual Norway Cup soccer tournament, fifty or so local “youths” set upon one another with guns, hammers, brass knuckles, and other weapons. Let it be clear that these sorts of incidents, which have become familiar news fare (with the ethnicity of the participants almost always carefully omitted), did not occur in pre-Muslim Oslo.
A brief postscript. Some Muslims in Sweden are so outraged by the Koran burnings – and by the Swedish government’s failure to punish the burners quickly and brutally enough, in accordance with sharia law – that they’ve threatened to leave the country. “Maybe it’s time to pack,” an affronted Abdillahi Osman told Swedish television. “We are not accepted here.” In other words: we are not yet fully accepted here as the ultimate arbiters of right and wrong.
Don’t worry, Mr. Osman. It’s coming. And it’s coming sooner than you think.