Is something rotten in the state of Denmark?

The Muhammad cartoons and Danish political culture

Anders Linde-Laursen
Published online: 26 September 2007
#
Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2007
Abstract During and after what became known as the cartoon crisis in the early
months of 2006, many observers noted how the crisis should be understood as an
expression of a growing Islamophobic tendency in Danish society. While such an
interpretation undoubtedly is correct it fails to explain how both this Islamophobic
tendency and the crisis must be seen as contemporary expressions of a long-lasting
estrangement in Danish society between forces respectively sympathetic and adverse
to modernity. In this article it is argued that Muslims in the Danish context today
have become signifiers of current modernity, in the shape of globalization. This
perspective provides a clearer understanding of the dynamics of the crisis in the
Danish context as it explains why publishing the cartoons made sense to many
groups in Denmark who came out both for and against this act.
Keywords Muhammad
.
Cartoons
.
Danish
.
History
.
Modernity
On March 21, 2006, Swedish Secretary of State Laila Freivalds resigned. Earlier
criticized for her departments slow response to the Asian tsunami, but praised for
her handling of the Muhammad cartoons, the reason for her decision to step down
was the release of information that she had intimidated a web site provider to shut
down a far-right fringe-partys web site, which was about to publicize the cartoons.
1
Freivalds, thus, followed in the footsteps of the Italian Secretary of Institutional
Reforms, Roberto Calderoli, who on February 18, 2006, stepped down.
2
Both events
illustrate the international reach of this crisis. However, while Freivalds had to resign
Cont Islam (2007) 1:265274
DOI 10.1007/s11562-007-0022-y
1
Sweden FM quits over cartoon row BBC online, March 21, 2006. Freivalds avvrjade svensk
Muhammedkris Sydsvenskan.se, February 23, 2006.
2
Profile: Roberto Calderoli BBC online, February 18, 2006.
A. Linde-Laursen (*)
Anthropology and International Studies, School of World Studies, Virginia Commonwealth
University, P.O. Box 842021, Richmond, VA 23284-2021, USA
e-mail: alindela@vcu.edu
from an effort to try to contain the crisis by suppressing further publication of the
cartoons, Calderoli had offered T-shirts with the cartoons printed on them to all
interested; his offer had led to riots in Libya that resulted in the death of at least ten
individuals.
What I will argue here is first that any understanding of what happened in the
cartoon case from a Danish horizon ought not to regard what happened as simply an
expression of current Islamophobic tendencies, regardless of how obvious such
tendencies might appear in a limited Danish as well as more extensive European
context.
3
What happened must additionally be seen as an illuminating continuation
of a century old schism in Danish society. This schism can continuously be found on
new arenas, but can in general be regarded as an expression of tensions between
forces advocating processes of modernity and opponents trying to curb the same
(Linde-Laursen 1999). Second, I will argue that what happened has reinvigorated an
equally long tradition of mutual, identity-providing finger-pointing between Danes
and Swedes within each countrys domestic political realm.
From afar, Sweden and Denmark might appear to be quite identical versions of
the Scandinavia Welfare State. Two Indian researchers attempts to capture these
societies, from 1976 and 1993 respectively, resulted in very similar depictions:
people keep to themselves in their nuclear families and do not socialize with their
surroundings; parents and their children do not talk to each other; the private and the
public are completely separated; and people in general are conflict-shy and thus have
problems communicating feelings (Dhillon 1976; Reddy 1993). Their presentations
however are so general that the accounts reasonably can be taken to describe any
modern or Western society. Seen from a distance, similarities between Denmark and
Sweden dominate the picture. Nevertheless, if scrutinized in more details (Linde-
Laursen 1995, 1997, 2000), it is obvious that the two countries paths to the Welfare
State have been quite different.
As Finnish historian Henrik Stenius has argued, differences between Danish and
Swedish societies were founded in the 1800s (Stenius 1993). In Sweden, an
evolutionary integration happened during the 1800s between the state and popular
movements (for instance religious, temperance and labor movements). Later, in the
1900s, this enabled the Swedish Social Democrats to substitute for conservative
forces and establish themselves through the state and the popular movements as
carriers of society, prescribers of a modern utopian goal, and builders of the nation
(Ehn et al. 1993; Lfgren 1993; Nilsson 1994). As Sweden went from being one of
the poorest countries in Europe in 1900 to becoming one of the wealthiest after the
Second World War, the country came to embrace the modernization of everyday life
as a primary goal; something that is in Sweden often signified by the later widely
celebrated Stockholm Exhibition of 1930 (Pred 1995). Thus, the Social Democrats
3
In the European scope, this is often explained from current encounters of European states and
populations with new groups of Muslim immigrants. However, each such European context is of course
particular and should be considered as such. One fundamental difference between the Danish case and
some other cases where there have been confrontations of different kinds between some groups of
Muslims and other parts of society is the colonial backgrounds to these states. While Dutch, French and
British societies have for centuries had colonial encounters with large groups of Muslims (in for instance
Indonesia, North Africa and the Indian subcontinent respectively), Danish colonial expansions in West
Africa, the West-Indies, and India did not encompass large groups of Muslims.
266 Cont Islam (2007) 1:265274
became both the singularly strongest political force in Sweden from the 1930s and,
with backing from the popular movements and affiliated individuals from the
academic world (for instance Alva and Gunnar Myrdal), the driving force in the
organization of a new and willfully modern Sweden. In Swedish, this collective,
national project is most often talked about as Folkhemmet (The Peoples Home).
Contrary to the situation in Sweden, in Denmark popular movements established
themselves from the 1800s as an alternative public sphere, a civil society, inde-
pendent from and parallel to the state. Since then, supporters of the state and this
civil society have in many cases acted as opposing, about equally powerful and
influential poles within Danish society. Thus, what has often been perceived and
described as Danish liberal broad-mindedness was not founded on a generous
(Grundtvigian
4
) philosophy. Rather this Danish political culture was a result of the
failure of the nation to establish itself with an encompassing hegemonic narrative for
the future of society and with generally accepted aspirations for all or at least the
large majority of its citizens. In Denmark, a vision for a Peoples Home was never
established; regardless whether this failure was due to a lack of ambition, will, or
ability. The equilibrium between popular movements, the state, and the different
political forces associated with these two poles remained crucial throughout the
1900s; contrary to the situation in Sweden, in Denmark an integrative evolution
between state and civil society never occurred. While the urbanized civil servants of
the Danish state formed one body in society, another was established around the
popular movements, which established themselves with institutions that more or less
were deliberate alternatives to the ones carried by the state. The popular movements,
thus, came to include for instance an army in the popular Skytteforeninger
(Shooting Associations), gymnastics associations and a university-like institution at
Askov Folkehjskole (Askov Folk Highschool). As a result, a group of leaders in
society emerged from the Danish folk high schools and the farmers cooperatives,
which had its power base separate from the state and which were in general allied
with the political party Venstre (literally meaning: the Left). During the 1900s, the
perpetual and necessary consideration for these opposing forces in Danish society
took as its expression a continuous uncertainty with regards to modernity. A
fascination with the past and Gemeinschaft became a built-in condition for the
maintenance of the equilibrium between different parts of the whole. That the Danish
Social Democrats (including the Labor movement) supplemented and later
substituted for the Right (the political party Hjre, today: the Conservative Peoples
Party) as the carriers of the state is in this context less significant (Christiansen 1984;
Fonsmark 1990) as the dual-pole character of Danish society remained unchal-
lenged. In this way, the doubt that is an inherent condition of any discursive
materialization of modernity (Berman 1982) can be argued to have been
incorporated as a bipolar societal order into the Danish imagined community
(Anderson 1983).
While in reality many of the reforms that modernized society and created and
later cemented the Welfare State are shared by Denmark and Sweden, the
4
The popular movements are often talked about as Grundtvigians after NFS Grundtvig, Danish priests,
politicians, educators, who came to signify much of the transition of peasants into Danes (to paraphrase
Eugen Weber 1976; see also stergrd 1984, 1992).
Cont Islam (2007) 1:265274 267
foundations for such achievements are very different. The foundational schism in
Danish society between groups sympathetic and adverse to modernity historically
has been expressed discursively on many arenas (defense, temperance, schools,
economy, the family); however, since the 1930s it has materialized itself also as
hegemonic disapproving narratives about the modern, over-developed Sweden.
These Danish narratives hold that Swedes desire for modernity and development
make them willingly accept modern executions of power that erode the freedom and
individuality of the citizens (see for instance Berendt 1983). Because of the
foundational schism, Danes remained so repulsed by executions of power by their
state onto their everyday life that they in the same narratives renounced to commit
modern development onto themselves. Ontologically, this is mirrored in the
languages. In Swedish, modern has positive connotations, while in Danish the same
word to many signifies something potentially threatening (Linde-Laursen 1995,
1997).
5
Similarly, the word popular, folklig in Danish, has an altogether peculiar
positive connotation that directly reflects back on the bipolar order of Danish society.
Through a series of economic and political crisis and developments, in Denmark
from the 1970s and in Sweden after 1989, European integration
6
has increasingly
been recognized as a manifestation of current modernity (Henningsen 2005) and as a
regional materialization of globalization. In Sweden this has to some extent in public
debate by all significant political players been presented as a continuation of and
insurance for the Modern Swedish Welfare State; albeit a Welfare State and a
Peoples Home on a continental instead of a national level. In Denmark the same
development dramatically changed the political landscape. As most established
Danish political parties out of other, mostly economic, concerns in reality gathered
behind this project, European integration opened for new political movements as
radical spin-offs on the anti-modernity side of the Danish schism. Today, the most
well-known of these is the populist right-wing Danish People Party (Dansk
Folkeparti). However there is also a whole range of others from across the political
spectrum: the Progress Party (Fremskridtspartiet; forerunner for Danish People
Party), the Association of Consciously Work-Repulsed Elements (Sammenslutningen
af Bevidst Arbejdssky Elementer), the Green (De Grnne), or Joined Course (Flles
Kurs). Some of these only existed as political forces for a short while; however, they
all made their impression on the general political dialogue as they took up consistent
positions on the modernity-skeptical side of Danish public debate. The bipolar order
of Danish society and the activities of among others these forces, thus, can also
explain why the Danish electorate in a referendum in 1992 refused the Maastricht
treaty which was regarded as too much EU Gesellschaft. However, the continuous
need for balance across the schism also explains that a so-called national
compromise could soon be established and was approved by the electorate in a
5
Or at least that was the case until quite recently. It can be argued (see Linde-Laursen 1995) that Danes
from the late 1980s/early 1990s in some ways started to recognize modernity not as a goal for societal
development, but as an already passed phase.
6
A lengthy discussion of what Europe means is not necessary here. It should be recognized that today
many European processes are driven by the EU. However, large parts of Europe are not active participants
in the EU and, consequently, are not parts in the development of EU policies. Furthermore, this does not
mean that these non-EU parts of the continent do not experience effects of adopted EU policies. The
relation between conceptions of the EU and Europe, thus, is complex.
268 Cont Islam (2007) 1:265274
new referendum in 1993. With the blessing of its EU-partners, Denmark since has
maintained four exceptions from EU rules for: citizenship, the common currency,
participation in common military policy and certain aspects of legal policy in this
context notably immigration policy. These exceptions provide Danish society with
tools that can be utilized to exclude groups that are judged undesirable as
participants in the Danish imagined community.
Not surprisingly, these Danish anti-modernity congregations today are most often
associated with a critical or directly adverse conception of both Europeanization and
globalization, and, as a logical continuation, present themselves as the true defenders
of the national Gemeinschaft. And it is exactly here an Islamophobic sentiment
currently can be located in the Danish context. It manifests a century old bipolar
order in society and by mantling the anti-modernity position vis--vis the national
equilibrium it effectively legitimizes itself and its points of view. To limit the
domestic political outfall during the cartoon crisis this position soon engulfed several
of the older, established political parties that, even if they do not in general any
longer subscribe effectively to anti-modernism, are not ready to give up such an
excellent political platform for mobilizing the electorate. To regard the cartoon case
only as a Danish expression of a growing xenophobic trend in European societies
misses why such an expression can not only be validated, but gain support from
across the political specter; not least from the leading political party Venstre the old
anti-modernity force in Danish politics that was the leading party in the right-wing
coalition that governed Denmark throughout the crisis.
There are of course plenty of inherent contradictions in such stances, but the
argument above can help resolve them. One fundamental paradox is of course that
the equilibrium between opposing forces in society continue to be important in
Danish politics, even though the popular movements, especially after the 1960s,
have lost a large part of their membership and popular support. However, in this
context, a more significant paradox concerns Danish ethnicity. Danes have
throughout the 1900s largely talked about themselves and been internationally
recognized as a very homogeneous cultural group (Connor 1973). This has probably
aided in disguising the foundational bipolarity of the national society to observers
inside and outside the country. One prominent expression of this is that during half a
century Danes could step onto the world scene and talk against xenophobia,
referencing how during the dark days of Nazi-German occupation 19401945,
Danes rescued their Jewish neighbors and saw to their safe passage to neutral
Sweden. However, these celebrated acts made sense exactly because the neighbors
were indeed regarded as Danish. Today, Danish Muslims have to carry the burden
not only of being an ethnic group seen as not Danish, but also by extension to be a
group that has on the domestic political scene become the signifier for a modernity
and globalization that is seen as repugnant by very significant segments of the
Danish public. It is in this context significant to note that Muslims form a relatively
minor element among immigrants in Denmark. However, in public discourse
Muslims have over the last decades become the immigrants. Other groups, being
regarded as better educated and more easily integrated (mostly from European
countries and North America), are disregarded in public discourses on immigrants.
This leaves Muslims, regardless of the heterogeneity of Muslims in Denmark as a
group, as the stereotypical outsider on the inside the immigrant.
Cont Islam (2007) 1:265274 269
As signifiers of modernity and globalization, Danish Muslims have been a
frequent target in public debate during the period in which the notoriously
modernity-skeptical Danish People Party has formed a necessary foundation for
the right wing majority in the Danish parliament as the party has continuously
supported the sitting government led by Venstres Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Danish
Muslims have become such a target not only from being Muslims, but as much or
even more from being expressions in Danish everyday life of globalization. The
measures taken to integrate Muslims into Danish society, therefore, target their
globalness, not their religion. The most overt manifestation of this is the adoption
since 2002 of new immigration laws. These laws have significantly limited the
possibilities Danish residents and citizens alike have for getting a foreign spouse
granted residency in Denmark. While the laws have limited the rights of spouses
from across the world (except the EU and Nordic countries), the political debate
obviously singles out the immigrants, the Muslims, as the people that are the
intended targets. Public debate strongly informs them that they should not marry non-
Danish Muslims or non-EU citizens. The Secretary of Integration, Rikke Hvilshj
(of Venstre), in a public statement on June 16, 2007, said that for me it is important
that people find a spouse in the country, in which they dwell and live.
7
While
Hvilshj maintains that she does not care, whether people choose a Dane or an
immigrant, this is of course a strong statement that divides people into two groups,
of which one is continuously told that it does not qualify as Danes. Furthermore,
Danish Muslims are informed in public debate, that their spirituality
8
must be
homogenized with Western understandings of religion as a non-political,
individual, and private matter that when discussed in public should be available to
the same freedom of speech measures as all other private matters discussed on such
an arena: sexuality, obesity, health, the family, gender, and so forth. From these
perspectives, the publication of the cartoons by Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten
in September 2005 makes sense in the Danish context as it caters to specific national
sentiments and as the publication directly reflects the particular bipolar character of
Danish political culture.
9
What of course is missing in this picture is that while refuting globalization, this
particular Danish articulation of current developments and this Danish perspective
does not recognize that, indeed, globalization as flows of people and information
does take place. If nothing else, the cartoon crisis itself and its many non-Danish
8
I do not like this word; however, the alternative will reference religion, and I would like to make the
point here that religion in itself is of course a Western and modern categorization.
9
This point can be stressed by pointing out, that when the cartoons were first published in Jyllands-Posten
on September 30, 2005, they were accompanied by an editorial declaring that Islam should not any longer
be spared from insult, mockery and ridicule as parts of normal Danish public debate. An overview of
Danish press coverage of the crisis by Berg and Hervik provides plenty of examples supporting the
interpretation made here (2007); however, it lacks the historic context and background that I argue is
essential if we are to understand the cartoons in the Danish context. The editor who published the cartoons
later strongly maintained that this conception of religion and insult, indeed, was the foremost reason for
publishing the cartoons (Satirteckningars uppgift r att vara krnkande by Karen Sderberg.
Sydsvenskan B6B7, July 21, 2007).
7
Flere indvandrere gifter sig dansk, Politiken.dk, June 16, 2007.
270 Cont Islam (2007) 1:265274
aspects and effects, including the resignation of government ministers in Sweden and
Italy, can solidly testify to that. Such a limited perspective also misses that Danish
Muslims want to and do adopt political agency vis--vis this Danish context and its
old bipolarity. However, by doing so they appeal to the very global nature of their
communities and, consequently, they also adopt a perspective that significant
portions of Danes question and declare invalid. That a delegation of Danish Muslims
traveled to the Middle East to make governments and organizations there aware of
the cartoons to many in Denmark confirmed the very global and none-Danish nature
of this group of residents and citizens. This trip and the actions of this delegation
was consequently in the Danish debates depicted as a form of un-Danish activity.
10
Another level of contradiction is that while Danish Muslims are seen by some
other groups in society as signifiers of an undesirable modernity and globalization,
they are often simultaneously being accused, and most often by the very same
groups, of being backwards; that is of course un-modern. In this discursive
framework it is usually the right of some Muslim women to veil in public spaces that
is referenced and is being scrutinized. This process has happened in many other
places in Europe: France, the Netherlands, Britain. A particularly illustrative
example was when former British Secretary of State, Jack Straw, explained that
when meeting Muslim women he usually asked them to unveil to be able to
recognize them, because I felt uncomfortable about talking to someone face-to-
face who I could not see.
11
This in itself is an interesting statement saturated with
Western, modern understandings of what constitutes an individual and locates the
signifier of the recognizable public persona on an individuals face. Thus, it
disregards both that blind people are perfectly able to recognize persons around
them, and that in non-Western contexts signifiers of the public persona might be
situated on other parts of the body or on particular accessories. For instance, in the
Arab Gulf states, where a portion of women are veiled in public arenas, other
signifiers are often noted; handbags are for instance often talked about both as status
symbols, as signs of individuality and as accessories identifying a person to her
surroundings.
The presence of growing numbers of Muslims in European countries, including
Denmark, of which some subscribe to Islam as a spiritual framework that goes
beyond religion in a modern sense, indicates that the contradictions and paradoxes
not only exist within Danish political culture. As forced or voluntary migrants from
far-away countries, such groups are themselves manifestations of modernity, even if
some insist on not embracing modern conceptions of religion. This can be regarded
as a contradiction and a paradox; however in general it suggests that discursive
inconsistencies constitute normality in the modern world as different and often
contradictory processes of modernity shape the lives and beliefs of groups as well as
individuals. The bipolar order of Danish politics, then, is just one materialization of a
10
The implicit reference here to US McCarthyism is of course intentional. During the Cold War,
Communists were often depicted in the West as none-national internationalists. Additionally, such
individuals were often depicted as believers rather than as political beings. On both accounts there are
consequently parallels with how Muslims are today often depicted in Danish and other Western media.
11
In quotes: Jack Straw on the veil, BBC online, 6 October 2006.
Cont Islam (2007) 1:265274 271
general condition of modernity, specifically that modern life is ripe with
inconsistencies. The editor, who published the cartoons in Jyllands-Posten illustrates
that such inconsistencies also will be produced on an individual level. By making an
unquestionable modern manifest for religion as a separate and insultable sphere in
life, the editor simultaneously appealed to the anti-modern pole in Danish political
culture, and by default he also invoked the anti-immigration discourses. Ironically,
he is himself long married to a Russian woman who has lived for decades in
Denmark, but who under the current immigration laws would not have been
permitted to live with him.
12
What I am arguing is that it might appear as if the world in a flash, as a
consequence of the publication of the cartoons, behaved in ways that confirm
Huntingtons idea articulated in an article in Foreign Affairs in 1993 that we are
faced with a clash of civilizations (Huntington et al. 1996). However, Huntingtons
perspective grossly neglects the complexities of what is happening, as the clash of
civilizations perspective disregards national, regional and global contexts. Thus,
interestingly, the cartoon case and Laila Freivalds resignation reinvigorated the
century old tradition of Danes and Swedes mutually gaining identity from narrating
each Other (Linde-Laursen 1995, 1997). On this arena, many modern topics have
been negotiated: housing, cleanliness, traffic, temperance. However, as both
countries changed and adapted to European integrations and standards, narratives
about identity-providing differences were increasingly eroded. The different under-
standings of the cartoon crisis reconfirmed how two Scandinavian Welfare States
understand processes of modernity quite differently. In Danish debate, it is depicted
as if a discussion of immigration and Islam is suppressed in Sweden, while in
Sweden debaters are shocked that Danes carelessly and openly express xenophobia
(Hedetoft et al. 2006). Thus, through the cartoon crisis an arena for national identity
formation is regenerated between Danes and Swedes (Sanders 2006). However, as
the crisis illustrated, this gain of Danish identity was achieved very much at the
discursive expense of some Danish Muslim communities and individuals.
13
The perspective presented here, that explains how Islamophobic sentiments have
become meaningful within Danish political culture, does not negate the existence of
strong Islamophobic tendencies in the Danish context. Thus, in the first half of October
2006, a new, but smaller, cartoon crisis erupted when it was publicized that during a
summer youth camp for Danish People Party members, denigrating cartoons of the
Prophet had been drawn as a spoof.
14
Similarly, Islamophobic sentiments have
appeared elsewhere; often in places where they make little or no sense what so ever.
Negative comments about Muslims have for instance started to appear in historical
12
Satirteckningars uppgift r att vara krnkande by Karen Sderberg. Sydsvenskan B6B7, July 21,
2007.
14
For instance: Fogh tar avstnd inte Kjaersgaard Sydsvenskan.se, October 9, 2006; Denmark rocked
by new cartoon row BBC online, October 10, 2006; Pia K: Muhammed-ydmygelse var fjollerier
Politiken.dk, October 9, 2006.
13
As well as of course at the personal expense of all Danes, Muslim or not, who have married a non-EU
or non-Nordic citizen and now have to realize the very limiting immigration legislation that the Danish
parliament has passed. Interestingly, many couples consisting of one Danish and one non-EU spouse, who
are not allowed to settle in Denmark, end up making their home in southern Sweden; this process is
facilitated by Nordic and EU rules protecting the free circulation of labor.
272 Cont Islam (2007) 1:265274
novels written on the background of stories from wars between Denmark and Sweden
in the 17th century in which no Muslims took part and in a period in which no
Muslims lived in the then sternly Lutheran countries (Linde-Laursen 1995)!
While I agree that Islamophobic tendencies exist among some segments of
Danish society, I find that understanding such tendencies call for a much more
elaborate contextual analysis. Only by following such an analytical path, which only
has been roughly sketched above, will we be able to understand how and why a
clash of civilizations happens and why it makes sense in different parts of the
world for different groups.
From all of this, it is not surprising that intervening in the cartoon crisis to
maintain the image of a modern societal totality that encompasses also Muslims and
far-right wing supporters as parts of the Peoples Home could cost a Swedish
member of the government her position. It is similarly inherent, that no Danish
government member ever came close to stepping down in what was termed the
largest Danish foreign policy crisis since the Second World War.
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