Reply #25: Context is EVERYTHING

[Karenina]

COPENHAGEN, August 4, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – A Danish radio commentator has been charged with violating anti-racism laws for his anti-Muslim remarks in which he called for "exterminating Muslims" in Europe.
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A recent report by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights (IHF) also said that Muslim minorities across Europe have been experiencing growing distrust, hostility and discrimination since the 9/11 attacks.
Danish Muslims - estimated at 170,000 or around 3 per cent of Denmark's 5.4 million - sounded the alarms that much more restrictive steps would be taken by the government in future.
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2005-08/04/article04.shtml

COPENHAGEN, April 15, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II claimed that Islam poses a global threat and urged government to show no tolerance toward the Muslim minority in the north European country, reported the Telegraph on Friday, April 15.
“We have to show our opposition to Islam and we have to, at times, run the risk of having unflattering labels placed on us because there are some things for which we should display no tolerance,” the queen said in an official biography published on Thursday, April 14.
http://islamonline.net/English/News/2005-04/15/article02.shtml


WASHINGTON, September 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – In an article published in the Canadian newspaper the National Post, two Danish politicians said that they were offended by the way integration problems in Denmark were portrayed in an article written by authors Daniel Pipes and Lars Hedegaard.
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According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Pipes has throughout his career exhibited troubling bigotry toward Muslims and Islam. As early as 1983, even an otherwise positive Washington Post book review noted that Pipes displays "a disturbing hostility to contemporary Muslims...he professes respect for Muslims but is frequently contemptuous of them," CAIR said on their website.
Recently, Pipes questioned the origins of the Quran, Islam's revealed text, and questioned whether the Prophet Muhammad ever existed. According to Pipes, the night journey of the Prophet Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem referred to in the Quran (17:1) never occurred.
Pipes also displays a racist's distaste for Muslim immigrants who "wish to import the customs of the Middle East and South Asia." (Los Angeles Times, 7/22/99) For Pipes, this sort of raw bigotry is nothing new.
In 1990, he said: "Western European societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene...All immigrants bring exotic customs and attitudes, but Muslim customs are more troublesome than most." (National Review, 11/19/90).
http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2002-09/08/article03.shtml

By BOUTHAINA SHAABAN
Oustside View Commentator
DAMASCUS, Syria, Feb. 6 (UPI)

Denmark has become the country heading the spear of hatred against Islam and Muslims. In the 1990s, the Danish Popular Party considered Muslims in Denmark -- 4 percent of the population -- a "troubling problem." After Sept. 11, other Danish parties started sharing the same concern, and talking against "Muslims in Denmark" became a tool in election campaigns. The media started focusing on emigrant problems and accused Muslims of "violence" and "extremism." Even the queen herself joined the choir and expressed worry over the problems that her "Muslim" subjects represented.

A Danish Popular Party candidate in Copenhagen, Luis Ferivrette described Danish Muslims as "cancerous disease in the Danish society." The Party's spokesperson, Martin Henriksen, said that "Islam, since its beginning, has been a terrorist movement," and he warned against allowing Danish Muslims candidacy to the parliament or city councils. Henriksen describes Danish Muslim converts as "moral criminals" and prides in the fact that "criticizing Islam is the official policy of (his) Party." Within this context, the cartoon contest organized by Yandposten came as a natural result.
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20060206-022623-3828r

Research courtesy of DulceDecorum