https://www.rights.no/2023/05/regjeringen-snudde-i-frykt-ny-seier-til-islam/
Debate in the Folketing went on for over three hours, but it ended with the proposal to make the Mohammed crisis a compulsory part of education in school being voted down. The government used the security police’s analysis to reject the proposal. – Yes, PET has made an assessment that there could be security consequences if you show the Muhammad drawings in class, said Minister for Children and Education Mattias Tesfaye in the debate. Thus fundamentalist Islam won again.
The proposal, which requires the government to prepare material for use in teaching about the Muhammad cartoons, has been promoted by virtually all parties in opposition, the Socialist People’s Party, the Danish Democrats, the Liberal Alliance, the Conservatives and the Danish People’s Party. Before the general election last year, the Social Democrats and Venstre also supported the proposal, the latter even helping to draft the proposal.
But in power, the SVM government backs down, fearing the security situation for both the teachers and for Denmark as a nation. And would someone still claim that threats and violence potential in the name of Islam have not gained significant power?
The idea of making teaching about the Muhammad crisis compulsory emerged in the wake of the grotesque Islamist attack on the French teacher Samuel Paty in 2020, who had his head cut off. A month later, a survey in Information among 379 primary school teachers showed that around a third would be worried about showing the Muhammad drawings in class.
But Danish teachers will not be better protected against potential attacks by Islamists if the state forces them to put the Mohammed crisis on the school curriculum – perhaps the opposite. With this reasoning, the government refused to make the Mohammed crisis a compulsory part of primary school education.
The purpose of the proposal was otherwise the exact opposite: to shield the teachers from fear and underlying self-censorship by saying that it should no longer be the teachers’ own choice to teach in the Muhammad crisis, but that it is the state that trumps through that students are taught in the period called “Denmark’s biggest foreign policy crisis since the Second World War.”
Everyone who remembers the madness and violence that spread because of these drawings published in 2005 also remembers that it was precisely freedom of expression and artistic freedom that was at stake. Should fundamentalists get the upper hand through their demands that no one can mess with Islam? Even then it became clear that many people were afraid of the potential for violence and the threats from Muslims, not just in Denmark, but all over the world.
At that time it was said that 1.5 billion Muslims had been insulted, because then it was important to appear as a majority for those who would otherwise have the advantages of being a minority. For what did we not have to fear from all these – which they themselves thought were justified – angry? The threats prevailed, to no avail, since there have subsequently been several terrorist attacks in Europe carried out by “offended Muslims.” We hear little about how many terrorist attacks have been averted.
Minister for Children and Education Mattias Tesfaye (S) believes (well) that the proposal does not solve the problem.
“Instead, it risks putting the teachers in an uncertain situation without a choice. Are we really into it? Can we allow ourselves to demand that they do something they are not comfortable with or want to do?
“I don’t think we can. You can be brave on your own behalf, but not on behalf of others,” said the minister.
There is scant information about the apparently confidential security assessment that the government uses to reject the proposal. However, Tesfaye confirmed that the Police Intelligence Service (PET) has pointed out a risk.
“Yes, PET has made an assessment that there could be security consequences if you show the Muhammad drawings in class,” said Tesfaye and went a step further:
“Furthermore, it is also a foreign policy assessment that it may have foreign policy consequences for Denmark if one wants to go in the direction of teaching about the Muhammad crisis and showing Muhammad drawings in primary school.”
In other words, it is not just the teachers’ safety that the government is concerned about, but also the country’s safety and interests. And it quickly becomes the government’s responsibility, so it has to be like that with defending freedom of expression?
Here we can remind you that in solidarity with Jyllands-Posten (which was the newspaper that first published the drawings, September 30, 2005) the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo printed the caricatures. It fell heavily on the chest of three Muslim organizations who filed suit against the magazine. A number of prominent intellectuals support the satire magazine. The then interior minister Nicolas Sarkozy did the same, which also caused sharp protests from the same Muslim organisations. Among the witnesses who were brought (February 2007) in the trial were Flemming Rose, then cultural editor of Jyllands-Posten who was responsible for the publication, and Mehdi Mozaffari, Islamologist at the University of Aarhus. During his testimony, Mozaffari, a refugee from the Khomeini regime in 1978, said this about his existential relationship with freedom of expression:
“Freedom of expression is vital and an absolute value for the West. You are so lucky to have the most amazing civilization, but you are beginning to doubt your values. If you give up, what comes next?”
Mozaffari then called on Muslims to revolt against those who kill in the name of Islam instead of attacking the right to free speech. We got the answer on 7 January 2015. Then came the grotesque attack on the satirical weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo, in which 12 were killed. A terrorist attack that many have praised afterwards, not least IS supporters.
Have we, in Mozaffari’s words, given up? And that at the same time as we continue to accept Muslim immigrants without knowing what values they stand for?
Instead of compulsory education in the crisis, the government will implement a survey of the extent of self-censorship and insecurity among teachers. However, it is not enough at all, believe the parties who support the proposal and who criticize the government for failing freedom of expression and bowing to threats of violence.
The mapping is undoubtedly a measure to both buy time and to find alternative solutions that the state (government) must be able to go free of. This is exactly the same tactic that has been used with hijab on little girls in school and kindergarten. Because even though virtually all parties, both in Norway and Denmark, do not support children’s hijab, they wash their hands and leave the choice up to the individual schools and kindergartens. Then it will be up to the school and nursery management to find out what to do with the “problem”. Then the simplest thing is to dismiss it as a problem.
But it is far more difficult with an event which is Denmark’s biggest foreign policy crisis since the Second World War. The SVM government appears to be cowards when they sacrifice freedom of expression for “the sake of peace.” Do they realize who controls them?
