Monday, May 29, 2006

There Is Something About the Danes

An interesting development in an outspoken and interesting country.

Commenter Kepiblanc has kindly translated a recent news report from Danish television. It concerns the announcement by a newly-formed network of priests and theologians from the Danish People’s Church:

“Imams are not welcome in the Danish People’s Church,” reads the headline.

One can only imagine what would happen if such a thing happened in America. The MSM would be all over this story like chocolate on New Orleans.

www.insula-moenia.dk/ elmelunde_church.htmlHowever, Denmark is not America, in a number of important ways. First of all, they have a state church, Folkekirken, which is Denmark’s official evangelical Lutheran denomination. No one has to join, and you can opt out of paying any tax for its upkeep, though if you’re a lazy or indifferent type and don’t phone the local municipality, you will be billed for church maintenance. What’s interesting is that while eighty-four per cent of Danes pay the tax and are official members, only about five per cent of these citizens are actually churchgoers.

In addition to its Evangelical Lutheran communion, Denmark has a few other Protestant denominations, a smattering of Roman Catholics (three percent), an infinitesimal number of Jews (less than one percent), and, in a definite minority, there are about five hundred hardy souls sticking to the old pagan traditions, the ones pre-dating Christianity. But coming up fast, there is now a a census count of about three to five percent Muslims. Anxious, easily offended Muslims.

The Muslim population in Denmark is not Arab, most of them being Kurds, Bosnians, and Turks. A wikipedia article has this to say:

As a country with a highly homogenous indigenous population and without a history of immigration until the last decades of the 20th century, Denmark, like several countries in Western Europe, is dealing for the first time with the presence of a substantial and visible minority. As first and second generation immigrants, many drawn from the ranks of refugees, muslims in Denmark have not yet achieved the economic and political power proportional to their population; for example, they remain over-represented among prison populations and the unemployed, and under-represented in higher education, and among permanent residents holding citizenship and the right to vote.

In other words, Denmark is having a problem with Muslim immigrant crime, joblessness, and failure to go on to higher education. Nor do the immigrants tend to register to vote or become citizens.

So it’s no wonder that this latest pronouncement, this time from the Danish church is not exactly putting out the welcome mat. From DR Yheder, a television news report —

— "imams are not welcome in Danish state churches," says a new network of Islam-critical priests and theological experts.

The purpose is to state that Christians and Muslims do not believe in the same God, and that the church and the mosque are not religious equals says the new network of 60 priests and theological experts.

Well-known priests and opinion-makers such as Niels Højlund, Sørine Godtfredsen, Edith Thingstrup, Morten Kvist and Katrine Winkel Holm are among the prominent members.

According to the Newfounded Network admitting imams into Danish churches is problematic.

The Danish People’s Church cannot agree with the imams without betraying the Lord Christ — who according to Islam is nothing but an inferior “prophet”, subordinated to Mohammad.

Making fun of the Gospel

When priests and imams are praying together, they are in essence ridiculing the Gospel, the network states. At the same time it distances itself from recent events such as religious councils with imams.

Bishops and imams are not religious colleagues separated only by different merchandise. It is of paramount importance that priests in the Danish Church make that fact very clear — as well as studying and criticizing Islam, says the network — which at the same time underscores that the intention is to criticize Islam, not the individual Muslim.

Is this what Christians would call a “Christian attitude”? In a smaller sense, no. But in the larger sense of putting a stop to the inroads some of the more notorious imams in Denmark have made into a hither-to civilized cultural life, and the economic damage they have caused Denmark by spreading taqiyya in the Middle East, causing boycotts of Danish goods and the destruction of Danish embassies, they are possibly serving a greater good.

The shameful spineless of American mainstream churches in the face of militant Islam, their divestment from tiny, besieged Israel, their unwitting and ignorant support of the spread of Islamicist propaganda in this country, makes Denmark’s line drawn in the sand a refreshing change.

When you consider that:

  • the editor of Jyllands Posten refused to meet with the muslim rabble rousers who wanted to negotiate an official apology for the infamous cartoons,

  • the Danish justice system refused to prosecute the cartoonists, saying they had acted within the laws regarding free speech,

  • the new laws on immigration designed to stop child marriages on Danish soil, the demand that muslims learn Danish and become financially responsible in order to attain citizenship,

  • and Queen Margarethe’s admission that her country had been “lazy” about acculturating these Bosnians and Kurds and Turks

then you know Denmark is waking up. And you can expect the usual suspects to condemn their action.

When you consider that the frenzy raised by the Danish imams took place in Syria and Lebanon — and not in Turkey, Bosnia, or the Kurdish areas which are the countries of origin for Denmark’s muslims — you know what they did was deeply criminal. And, as the world knows by now, this low-life added his own crude drawings to the originals, illustrations much more inflammatory than anything the Danish cartoonists did.

It would be more heartening if the man were in jail somewhere, serving time for undermining Denmark and causing much economic harm.

Nonetheless, Denmark is stirring. It is not sleepwalking into dhimmitude as some of its neighbors are.

So if the Danish clergy and some of its theologians are making a pre-emptive “NOT WELCOME” signs for the imams in their country, good for them. “Tolerance” in the face of hatred, slander, and deception is suicidal. And the Danes are not suicidal.

Ask the Germans. Ask the Israelis, who honor the Danes for managing to hide, send out of the country, and otherwise keep from the Gestapo all but some 450 Jewish citizens during the German occupation in World War II. Of those who were sent to a concentration camp in occupied Czechoslovakia, some ten percent (mostly the elderly and infirm) died. The rest were liberated after the war. Thanks to pressure by the Danish Red Cross, “their” Danish Jews were given food packages and their whereabouts were monitored. None went to the extermination camps.

There is something about those Danes.

8 comments:

Dymphna said...

Fluffy--

Glad to know where Belien was. While Turkey may not be as bad as the Arabs, it is Turkish muslim immigrants who are hounding native Germans and it is Turkish immigrants (also Kurds and Bosnians) who are crowding the Danish prisons.

Ataturk is gone. What has been left behind is a country who left us holding the bag in No. Iraq and compromised our situation at the start of the war. And it is Turkey and Iran who massed on the border of Iraq to harrass the Kurds. They create the conditions for Kurdish terrorists and then complain about it.

The EU is such a mess, I don't know why any country would want to join a nascent USSR. Oh, EUSSR...

Paul's description of the fall of Constantinople is moving, but the one Oriana Fallacci wrote is utterly searing.

Pastorius said...

Hi Baron,
I added my own two cents to your post here.

I think you might agree with some of my points:

I won't encumber you with a link. You can check it out over at Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

Nilk said...


Is this what Christians would call a “Christian attitude”? In a smaller sense, no.


I would like to politely disagree with this.

While it is the Christian way to turn the other cheek, and do unto others, there comes a time when all the tolerance in the world must be set aside for definitive action.

In this case, the priests and opinion-makers are not advocating violence. On the contrary, they are merely stating the bleeding obvious.

God and Allah are not the same, and all the taqiyya in the world can not mask that.

Jesus is the Word made Flesh, and as such could never be superceded; how, therefore, can we accept a 'prophet' who declares that Jesus is not the Son of God, the sacrifice to complete the covenant with Abraham?

(I hope I'm making sense here - I'm new to the world of biblical scholarship.)

The quran is blasphemy, pure and simple. There is no getting around that, and all the muslims in the world declaring that they honour our Lord Jesus as another prophet are condescending and insulting in the extreme.

There is nothing wrong with telling it like it is.

Unless, of course, your truth is the Word of God, and not Allah or Marx.

ZMalfoy said...

nilk/leeianne--absolutely right!

I'm so glad to finally see some of the "professional religious" and theologians coming out and saying what's been increasingly obvious.

There are so many approaches to the conclusion that Allah is not simply another name for the God of Jews and Christians.

It's good that those with credentials are starting to point these things out.

Dymphna said...

I stand by my assertion that the stand of the small group of Danish church theologians and clergy is not Christian in the small sense. In the larger sense, it is absolutely necessary to draw a line in the sand and say "no further" to an ill-intentioned group like the imams who have caused Denmark and some of her citizens great harm, both psychologically and economically.

As for the loaded term "blasphemy" however, it is a word that ought to be struck from Christian language, given all the death and destruction and book burning that has gone on under the rubic "blasphemous." It was once considered blasphemy to suggest that earth revolved around the sun, for example.

This is a plural world, with many beliefs and not all of them should be treated disrespectfully just because they aren't Christian and their belief system is at variance with core Christian doctrine.

This is also a pluralist blog, attracting a spectrum of believing commenters from the devout atheists to the secular and the believing Jew to the spectrum of Christian sects to Hindus and Buddhists and even a few Muslims. I welcome them all, except for the trolls who want to call the rest of us names...

So, what I mean, nilk/leeianne, is that the short term, myopic view -- those big on "tolerance" but who have no idea of what respect means -- might find the Danish clergy's attitude un-Christian. While I find their phrasing infelicitous, I am glad they made their stand.

But for me, the age of blasphemy is over, mercifully over.

X said...

I agree with nilk, it is a christian attitude. What we today interpret as meek acceptance of a beating (turn the other cheek) was nothing of the sort in Israel. The phrasing of the text indicates that Jesus was speaking about attitude toward people who believed themelves to be suprioer; the description of the beating was that of a man back-handing another which, in the jewish customs of the day, meant that the man doing the hitting was declaring himself superior and the man being hit was being declared, essentially, to have no soul. Jesus commanded us to turn the other cheek in order to force them to hit again with the palm of their hand, which would in turn force them to acknowledge your equality with them.

These thigns were examples of how tolive, not a definitive list. Jesus was teaching that we should not retreat in the face of intimidation, that we should stand our ground. We don't need to go on the offensive; we need, like Ghandi said, to resist. Refuse to cooperate with Islam, build up our defences and keep on building them. Tha'ts what this group are doing when they refuse to engage with Islam. They're demosntrating a very christian attitude to it all by simply refusing to allow Islam to insinuate in to their lives.

X said...

Gad, what bad spelling I have...

Nilk said...

Point taken, Dymphna.

I'm also happy that we don't appear to have blasphemy laws on the books any more, nor do we burn witches.

However.... that said, I do still consider the quran as thoroughly blasphemous, as I do a lot of the new age drivel that has been declaring Jesus never died a la Dan Brown and the rest of the gang.

It offends my sensibilities, but in the end, it's God's call, not mine, so I suck it in and bite my tongue.

I can turn the other cheek that far, but any more than that would no doubt be taken under advisement on a case by case basis.