The Danes Are Voting

The latest word on the Danish elections comes from Steen: he says that VKO, the ruling coalition headed by Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is leading in the exit polls.

Steen is at an election results party this evening, with other Danish bloggers, a wide-screen TV, and draught beer. I wish I could be there…


Yesterday Flemming Rose, the editor of Jyllands-Posten, wrote in his PJMedia column about the election and the part that Asmaa Abdol-Hamid plays in it:

The strange alliance between the left and reactionary Muslims has taken center stage in the campaign leading up to tomorrows national elections for a new parliament in Denmark.

Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a 25 year old social worker and islamist, is running for the extreme left wing party Enhedslisten. Last year she was behind a lawsuit against Jyllands-Posten trying to have the newspaper indicted for blasphemy after the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

I wonder how many leftists since the birth of socialism as a political movement have been involved in lawsuits against people offending the Christian faith? Not many, I gather.

If elected, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid will be the first Muslim woman wearing the veil to address Denmark’s parliament. At the same time, citing her faith, she refuses to shake hands with individuals of the other sex. When a female leader of the party was asked how she would react if a man refused to shake hands with her, she insisted that she would welcome it. Fortunately, this kind of hypocrisy is obvious to quite a few people on the left, and in opinion polls the party has dropped below the minimum 2 pct. of the votes required for representation in parliament.

[…]

The imam Abdul Wahid-Pedersen, who used to defend the practice of killing adulterous women by stoning, but nevertheless has been labeled “moderate”, has called on his fellow believers to vote for Asmaa Abdol-Hamid.

Here is what he wrote back in 2002 about the practice of stoning in Nigeria:

- - - - - - - - -

“The people has by majority decided to implement Islamic law, and the rest of the world therefore has to accept it. I agree that stoning is a cruel punishment, but it doesn’t change the fact that according to Islam the practise has been ordained by our Creator. We are not in a position to change this. Things that are stated unambiguously in the Koran or by the Prophet Mohammed are not open to debate among Muslims. The moment we would accept to discuss these matters, we at the same time would have declared that we do not believe in Allah and his messenger and in doing so we would have put ourselves outside Islam.”

Nice quote. What a moderate, what a liberal!

In the comments on his column, one Safia Aoude takes Mr. Rose to task for being “angry that Muslims participate in the political affairs of society”, which is an interesting take on what he had to say.


“A vote for Asmaa is a vote for Al-Qaeda!”


Steen sent me a reference to an article from Denmark’s TV-2 about the role of Muslim’s in today’s election. Our Danish correspondent TB was kind enough to help me understand the gist of it:

About the article Steen sent you, the most important point is this:

Direktøren for analysebureauet Epinion, Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen, forklarer, at indvandrere næsten ikke figurerer i meningsmålinger og dermed kan udgøre en usikkerhed i forhold til målingernes resultater. “I princippet er det en gruppe, der er underrepræsenteret i meningsmålinger, og som på den måde kan udgøre en reserve,” siger Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen.

Han vurderer, at de manglende indvandrere i målingerne kan udgøre en forskel på omkring én procent i det samlede billede.

TRANSLATION:

The leader of Epinion [a bureau analyzing the voters], Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen, explains that immigrants almost never participate in the polls and thereby contribute to some uncertainty in connection with the results of the analysis. “In principle it is a group which is underrepresented in the polls, and in that way they can constitute a reserve,” says Mogens Storgaard Jakobsen.

He estimates that the missing immigrants in the polls can consists a difference of the magnitude of around 1% in the big picture.

In other words, a heavy Muslim turnout today could swing the outcome towards Enhedslisten and the hard Left.

Stay tuned. I’ll be reporting the results as they come in this evening, assuming that my Viking contacts remain reasonably sober…