https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-denmark-is-othering-its-muslim-population-61595
A bizarre new list to categorise Muslims based on their countries of origin is at the heart of what critics call an attempt to further discriminate against the community.
Two years ago, Denmark’s former Minister for Immigration and Integration Mattias Tesfaye wanted to find out if there was a connection between where people came from and how they appeared in the ministry’s crime and employment statistics.
This led to Tesfaye overseeing the creation of a new and unusual statistical measure, MENAPT: Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Türkiye, which is different from the classification for non-Western countries already in use by Statistics Denmark — the central authority collecting, compiling and publishing statistics on the Danish society….
Critics of MENAPT see this as an attempt that could lead to further discrimination against Muslims living in Denmark, and especially those belonging to countries on the list.
Dr Amani Hassani, a sociologist who writes on anti-Muslim racism, racialisation and spatialisation, says the worry is that the MENAPT category will become part of the evaluation of citizenship applications.
“Some politicians who are part of the citizenship approval committee have in past years admitted that they vote against applicants who originate from Muslim majority countries,” she tells TRT World.
“If politicians get a clear statistical tool to differentiate between Muslim applicants from other non-Western applicants, they will be able to reject any citizenship applications from Muslims with little oversight.”…
European Islamophobia Report 2021, released late last month, where Hassani authored a chapter on Denmark, highlighted in reference to the MENAPT list how structural barriers for Muslims increased through new policies and legislation in Denmark….
Hassani, meanwhile, says this is a trend following across Europe. “It is turning into an ethnonationalist approach to understanding national culture and values.”
“Western nations have historically pivoted themselves against Islam and Muslims to define their own ‘liberal values’. It is not only a way of essentialising Danish values to exclude alternative expressions of Danishness, but it is often also a process that is highly racialised — our liberal values vs their illiberal values,” she says.
“It is unsurprising then that Danish values are presented in contrast to Muslims. Muslim values are represented as anti-democratic, backwards and unequal, while Danish values are democratic, progressive and equal. Muslim values are thus represented as inherently anti-Danish values.”
A bizarre new list to categorise Muslims based on their countries of origin is at the heart of what critics call an attempt to further discriminate against the community.
Two years ago, Denmark’s former Minister for Immigration and Integration Mattias Tesfaye wanted to find out if there was a connection between where people came from and how they appeared in the ministry’s crime and employment statistics.
This led to Tesfaye overseeing the creation of a new and unusual statistical measure, MENAPT: Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan and Türkiye, which is different from the classification for non-Western countries already in use by Statistics Denmark — the central authority collecting, compiling and publishing statistics on the Danish society….
Critics of MENAPT see this as an attempt that could lead to further discrimination against Muslims living in Denmark, and especially those belonging to countries on the list.
Dr Amani Hassani, a sociologist who writes on anti-Muslim racism, racialisation and spatialisation, says the worry is that the MENAPT category will become part of the evaluation of citizenship applications.
“Some politicians who are part of the citizenship approval committee have in past years admitted that they vote against applicants who originate from Muslim majority countries,” she tells TRT World.
“If politicians get a clear statistical tool to differentiate between Muslim applicants from other non-Western applicants, they will be able to reject any citizenship applications from Muslims with little oversight.”…
European Islamophobia Report 2021, released late last month, where Hassani authored a chapter on Denmark, highlighted in reference to the MENAPT list how structural barriers for Muslims increased through new policies and legislation in Denmark….
Hassani, meanwhile, says this is a trend following across Europe. “It is turning into an ethnonationalist approach to understanding national culture and values.”
“Western nations have historically pivoted themselves against Islam and Muslims to define their own ‘liberal values’. It is not only a way of essentialising Danish values to exclude alternative expressions of Danishness, but it is often also a process that is highly racialised — our liberal values vs their illiberal values,” she says.
“It is unsurprising then that Danish values are presented in contrast to Muslims. Muslim values are represented as anti-democratic, backwards and unequal, while Danish values are democratic, progressive and equal. Muslim values are thus represented as inherently anti-Danish values.”
