← New Books Network
New Books Network
Radio ReOrient S14:7: Surveilling Muslimness in Denmark, with Amani Hassani, hosted by Claudia Radiven and Amina Easat-Daas
00:56:06
Loading summary
Transcript36 lines
- [00:00]
Quince Brand Representative
I love wearing clothing that's both comfortable and elevated. Outfits I can wear on a walk through the park or in a meeting with a client. Quince has become my go to with fabrics that are incredibly soft, clean and versatile. This spring I refresh my wardrobe with quints. I especially love their Pima cotton tees and bamboo jersey lounge shorts. Surprisingly soft and breathable with a quality level you'd expect to pay a lot more for. If you're looking for new clothes this spring, I highly recommend checking out their Italian swim trunks. I love swimming, but can never find swimwear that feels comfortable and looks good. Quince's swimwear is the best I've ever owned. I can't emphasize enough how affordable Quince is for the quality you get. Check out their incredible deals and offerings, especially if you're looking for clothes that feel good and look great. Whether you're at the office or the beach. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to Quince.com NewBooks for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N C E.com NewBooks for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com NewBooks welcome to the New Books Network.
- [01:43]
Saeed Khan
You're listening to Radio Reorient, the decolonial podcast in partnership with the New Books Network. Aslam Alaikum listeners and welcome to another episode of Radio Reorient, where you're your hosts today are myself, Saeed Khan, me,
- [01:55]
Chella Ward
Chella Ward, Alina Isaat Das and me, Claudia Radeven.
- [02:00]
Hizamiyeh
Today's episode was a really interesting conversation with Amani Hassani, who is a lecturer at Brunel University and he has published
- [02:08]
Amani Hassani
widely on the experiences of Muslims and Islamophobia in Denmark.
- [02:11]
Claudia Radeven
This conversation explored the specificities of the Danish Muslim experiences, the myth of Danish benevolence and exceptionalism, and the ways in which the Danish welfare state is used to surveil Muslimness. So without further ado, let's listen in.
- [02:27]
Amani Hassani
Salaam alaikum listeners and welcome to another episode of Radio Reorient. Today we're joined by Amani Hassani and she'll be discussing her recent work with us. Amani, welcome to Radio Reorient. It's a pleasure to have you here with us. I was wondering if you could perhaps start us off. Many of our listeners may not be familiar with the Danish context, so could you tell us a little bit about the nature of Danish Muslim communities and some of their experiences?
- [02:53]
Chella Ward
Sure. First of all, and thank you for having me. I'm really excited about this conversation. And so yeah, to start off with a little bit about Muslims in Denmark, I can give like a brief historical overview. So most Muslims, while the earliest Muslims started coming in the late 60s, early 70s with a scheme that Denmark titled the guest worker scheme. So this isn't unique to Denmark, this is dentist. This was happening already in Sweden and before even that in Germany where Denmark, similar to its neighboring countries, had invited unskilled workers from mainly Turkey, former Yugoslavia, Morocco, Pakistan to come and work in the Danish factories. So this is Post World War II, the early days of Danish welfare state and they needed hands and didn't have enough of them to rebuild society basically. So a lot of Muslims or this is kind of like the first influx of Muslims in Denmark and then by 70s came the oil crisis and then the start of a recession. So they stopped for the guest worker scheme. At this point these mostly male, able bodied men were on their own, didn't have their families with them. So it was an easy exploitative relationship where we have these capable men to come work in the factories and we can just ship them back home when we're done with them. However, these young men actually decided, many of them decided to settle down and family like having going through family reunification with their wives and potential children. And slowly they started creating small communities. But then the guest worker scheme stopped and now fast forward a few years to the 80s with the Lebanese civil war, the wars between Iraq and Iran, several other instabilities across the region. So now you had the first influx of refugees from, from Muslim majority countries and this continued on throughout the 90s. You had the Bosnian genocide that created a whole new influx of Bosnian refugees, Somalian refugees from the civil wars in Somalia and then the Gulf wars. Fast forward. So throughout the last 50 years there's been different streams of Muslims coming through initially through unskilled labor schemes and then later on the best opportunity for migrants to actually come to Denmark were through these refugee streams. So not necessarily chosen to come to Denmark, but through different migration streams actually happened to come to Denmark. And that's kind of like a little bit of their history of how they arrived there. Now a little bit about how they created their communities. Most of them were kind of around the bigger cities. These were kind of the hubs of where arrivals were. The unskilled workers were mostly focused on the bigger cities because they were rebuilding these cities and so mostly living in public housing, initially living in shared accommodation and then later on spread into the public housings. That they actually helped build and refugees then through social housing after going through the asylum centers and being granted refugee status, then they were also kind of spread out through these public housing communities across the country. And this is where the spark, the root of these Muslim communities actually started happening. Different ethnic communities would start little mosques, little gatherings, slowly becoming more and more official institute like Muslim institutions. And that's kind of how the Muslim community started flourishing in these public housing, becoming part of local communities. So if you're looking at the history from the ground up, it was a very dynamic, organic growth of communities. And then we can also just oppose it with the political conversations that were happening. And throughout this time, throughout these 50 years, the political conversation has been very interesting to follow, which is something I've been doing in my recent research where early on with the guest worker scheme, it's very clear that the political contention was that this is an easy fix to our lack of labors. This is a way of getting people to come and work and we don't have to invest in these communities. We don't have to give them schools or anything. They're just men coming to work and we can ship them off. Again, a very exploitative relationship. Interesting how the laborers themselves then kind of grab the opportunity to, to then create roots from themselves and create these communities. But then fast forward throughout the 80s, there's still this idea of no, we have to have, we have to welcome refugees. It's a humanitarian crisis, we have to make room for them. Then slowly, in the 90s, there was a shift in conversation of talking about ghettoization, about problematizing these Muslim communities, never actually mentioning that it's the Muslims that are the issue more the fact that o oh, they're not integrating, they're not becoming part of our society. And also they don't really fit with our lifestyles and our values. And this is slowly becoming more and more exacerbated throughout the 90s. And then comes the 2000s, the war on terror kind of links up with this, this discourse that was very slowly, very almost like you wouldn't notice it. You wouldn't notice the insinuations that is created through these ghettoization discourses. Unless you're actually tapping into what's happening on a policy level. But then the 2000 came and it war on terror. And then now a much more explicit political attention was raised towards the Muslim mother. I've been going on for a bit now, but yeah, I can go in more details, but there's a lot to unpack here of what's been happening then in the past 26 years, 25 years, where it's becoming more and more politically acceptable to say that we're not just dealing with other ethnic communities or people of the global south. Our issue is with Muslims per se. We just can't say that in policy. So we're using other categories to tap into what we're actually trying to target with our policies.
- [10:41]
Claudia Radeven
Yeah, I think it's going to be a theme throughout much of our conversation. But obviously there are a lot of parallels between what you've mentioned in terms of the way that communities were brought over in the Post World War II period and the kind of very exploitative use of that labor without very much investment back. And I think that's going to be something that's going to pop up in this conversation a lot. But thinking about, in relation to. You mentioned the kind of ghettoization process and in your recent work around racial capitalism and Danish ghetto policies, you spoke about notions of surveillance of Muslims. And we see this as quite a lot as a recurrent theme across global Islamophobia, whether that's with the PREVENT policy in the UK or, or the French state of emergency. How does surveilling Muslimness function specifically in Denmark?
- [11:41]
Chella Ward
This is a really important question because I think even within Denmark a lot of Muslims are not aware of surveillance technologies and what is used to kind of surveil because a lot of it happens through the welfare state services. Right. And it's, it has very similar results as prevent as the French state of emergency. All these policies are very similar in results in the sense that they socially control Muslim political agency. They control Muslims abilities to express themselves both as a Muslim community, but also in the sense of being explicit about their Muslimness, about, about their political opinions. You know, if, if their political opinions is not within the parliamentary, you know, system, then we're a little bit like wary about where, where, where you are going in terms of your potential radical radicalization. So very similar to, to what we see other places in Europe. There are surveillance technologies towards these, towards the Muslim community. But interestingly enough, they're very much obscured in the Danish context. There's very little political debate around CVE policies, for instance, because there's very little attention to how it plays out. If you look into the policies of the CVE policies in Denmark, they're very obscured in the way they kind of target which communities they target. They don't mention Muslims, they don't mention necessarily even non Westerners. It's very much in the idea of democratizing our population and creating that through different welfare institutions. But then if you then look into the, the police report, the policing reports of saying who is the threat? Who is the radical threat of Danish security, then it becomes clear that Islamist quote unquote is the actual threat. Now how do you define Islamists? That is something left for the reader to figure out. It just mentions that not all Muslims are Islamists and we have to be considerate about the fact that not all Muslims are, that they're good Muslims and bad Muslims. Right? This the same kind of like discourse that we know from other places in Europe and uk and then because the Danish welfare state is universal in its outreach and has become, is becoming more and more explicit in targeting what is a threat, it becomes very easy to kind of seep these policies through things like educational institutions and nurseries and kind of feed it into how do you raise a population into the right political citizen. And that's how surveillance can happen on one track. Like, kind of like the universal social control idea of how do we make the right Muslim subject. And then it can also happen through your regular policing. The ghetto policies actually has increased policing powers and has been, been. Been very useful in kind of broadening who has a reporting duty against potential radical Islamists, you know, quote unquote. Because now teachers and everyone, basically everyone in the public system, the public services, the welfare services, have a reporting duty to report anything that is, that seems to be radical and not just radical in terms of Islamists, but also radical in terms of they have a whole policy structure around negative social control. Basically Muslim families trying to instill Muslim values on their children and then actually preventing them from certain Muslims un Islamic, you know, actions of like premarital sex and all of that is, is very much part of the discourse of having to control Muslims and control their, their ability to, to kind of like give, give their values on to their, to their children. And all of these types of things are surveilled within the public system, so on. But we don't have a catchy phrase like prevent. We don't have a policy name for it. And so it's very easy to become obscured within these institutions because there's always been a very close connection between public institutions and civil society in Denmark. Something that's a little bit more separate in other places in Europe. But in Denmark they rely on each other, they build on each other. And so the surveillance mechanisms can also expand beyond the public institutions to also civil society initiatives.
- [17:31]
Amani Hassani
Interesting, that kind of creeping nature of surveillance within society. But Also the parallels, you know, as Claudia said, the sort of prevent state of emergency in France, et cetera, this continuous expansion of powers of the state to surveil the ambiguous kind of threat. And that ambiguity, I think is something very much that's mobilized in the face of all of that obscuring that's going on. How do Danish Muslims resist and reclaim their own narratives?
- [18:03]
Chella Ward
This is a really good question, and it's a question I'm still trying to unpack in many ways, because unlike the UK and France that has a very strong mobilizing civil society, Denmark is still. Muslims in Denmark are still kind of developing that infrastructure. And so the resistance in Denmark looks a little bit different than your. Okay, so a part of it is also the fact that if we have a generation of Muslims who grew up learning that you should not be political and being fed that from early childhood through the public school system, can we expect them to actually just be political then? Political in the sense of not party politics, but political in the sense of let's mobilize for our rights to actually resist some of these mechanisms that are trying to control us. So there's a slow movement towards pushing against this. But I think a lot of my research actually looks at the very, the less organized, less formalized ways of resisting within. Within the constraint of the political system, within the political structures. So how do you actually kind of navigate your way through, through a system that tries to limit your ability to express your Muslimness? What do you do in those. In those instances? And so some of my previous research looked at young Muslims ability to do this, and they really relied on their, like, class signifiers, being university students and all of that, and being Danish citizens to say and demand their rights as citizens. But now, fast forward more than 10 years later, where you have more and more strict citizenship rules. We have a growing Muslim population in Denmark. Not just immigrants, but descendants of immigrants who are struggling to gain citizenship. So there's a really interesting design in the Danish democratic model where they're slowly not just limiting Muslim political agency, but also limiting their ability to navigate a system. Because now they might be born and raised and never lived anywhere else but in Denmark, but they have no citizenship rights. So if my previous research, young Muslims were like, I'm just as Danish as you are. I have the passport. You can't do anything to me. I'm going to do what I want to do. There's a growing group of Muslims today who have no political agency, who have limited abilities to navigate the system. And Lublin's Abilities to mobilize. Because if they do mobilize, well, they should be mobilizing, but with a mobilization of saying that I'm gonna be pushing towards the boundaries, they're also risking, whether real or just felt risk of potentially being said that you have no claim to be in Denmark. Right. So I think there's a lot to unpack here in terms of the ability to resist and the slow movements of trying to resist and then always being met with structural power to kind of curb that ability to mobilize. I think there's still ways that it happens in informal, low level, grassroots level. And that's what I think with my ghetto research, the research I've been doing looking at the ghetto policies in Denmark. And I can go into that, to unpack that a little bit. But basically these policies are trying to dismantle migrant and Muslim communities in public housing across Denmark. What I'm seeing here with actually also creating that historical perspective into this is that one of the ways that they've been able to resist this very structural, violent process is creating informal networks of support, creating informal networks of solidarity, of knowing your neighbor can read whatever municipality letter you've received. Right. And there's a power in that. And that has actually enabled them to create these like little hubs of not just masks, but also like after school homework help for, for anyone who needs that support. Right. Or, or sports activities and sports, Sports communities. Right. Especially for youth to actually give them a sense of community. Right. So one way of seeing it is that on the grand scale, Muslims are not creating that infrastructure, but there is a political reason why they're not creating that. And then on the bottom up scale, there's a lot more hopeful stories to actually really unpack and see the potential in that movement from the bottom and, you know, bringing that to light. And I think that's part of what the ghetto policies are trying to do is erase that, erase that history that is being built and erase that ability to support each other outside of the welfare state, where the welfare state now becomes a way of surveillance, a way of being a punitive structure. If you don't do this, we will take away this, we will take away your benefits, we will take away your housing and so on, and then actually just oppose that with what's happening on the bottom of say, seeing people say, no, you know what, I'm going to help you as my neighbor. I'm going to figure out what we can do here. Right. So it's not the big resistance, but I think it has a lot of value in actually bringing that forward because it's a capacity to act. It's a capacity to act within their limitations.
- [24:25]
Claudia Radeven
I think that's a really fantastic way of looking at it. And I think it gives us the opportunity to consider looking at that kind of resistance in other European contexts as well. Again, that kind of shared history that a lot of Muslim communities feel in a number of different European countries. I was wondering if we could talk a little bit about that history, the kind of legacies of empire and colonialism, the impact that they've had on, on, in this case on Muslims in Denmark. But I mean in particular there was, there was a point that you made in racialization in a nation without race where you, you spoke about Denmark as viewing itself as the good, humane, benevolent colonizer and the relationship of that, how it impacts Denmark's relationship to its Muslim citizens and that process of othering. So on top of that kind of legacy of empire and coloniality, I was wondering if you felt that this is something that's limited to Denmark or if it's something that you see reflected in other European nations with colonial pasts and in some cases presence and in sort of what ways?
- [25:43]
Chella Ward
This is a really good and big question. I think in many ways Denmark is very similar to its colonial counterparts, imperial counterparts, but this is not the story that you meet in Denmark. So the fact of the matter is that Denmark as a previous empire, as a colonizing force, as a colonizing force today, I think oftentimes Danes today forget that they've still annexed Greenland and the Faroe Islands, right. And only recently gave up on iceland in the 1940s. And I think, but that history is never fed into the Danish self imagination, neither in schools or in public context. And actually saying that, oh, Denmark is still an imperial force and they're not being very just to the Faroe Islands or the green mainlanders or the Inuits can still be very controversial. And there's a reason for this that I think it has something to do with the fact that as opposed to the UK and France where they've always had this exploitative relationship and back and forth of their colonial subjects coming to the metropole and back and forth, Denmark never experienced that in, in that sense. So Denmark has been a hegemonically white nation until the Muslims came, right? And then with the few exceptions of some of the Inuits and the Faroe Islanders coming through in Denmark whenever for, for work and schooling. But historically there's the, the racialized other was never in Denmark. And so this Idea of Denmark as being good and humane and benevolent has never been challenged by this colonial subject or post colonial subject saying, hey, one second, you were a slave owner, you were part of the transatlantic slave trade and you actually helped produce it and reproduce it. So that's not part of the conversation. And so when Muslims come, they're like, there's a challenge to that self belief of Denmark as a very welcoming and tolerant society. But then, oh, but Muslims are so different. We can't tolerate that.
- [28:26]
Hizamiyeh
Right?
- [28:27]
Chella Ward
So this idea of we would be good and benevolent if our other was, was someone we could accept or someone who would, who would be, who is humane and shared a sense of equality as we do and are civilized as we are civilized. Right? So there's a way of shifting the gaze from yourself as a white colonizer towards the other as oh, but they're not, they're not civilized. We need to integrate them into our good Danish values because they're also not equal. Like they don't believe in equality, they don't believe in tolerance. They're very against ideas of freedoms. But what kind of freedoms, right, and then let's open that Pandora's box, right, and say, what kind of freedoms are we allowing or accepting and what kind of like supposedly unfreedoms are seen as a threat and how do we crush that? Right? So the fact that you're actually trying to crush that other and that is seen as a threat to ethno Danish ideas of social cohesion. It's a really interesting topic to unpack because now the gaze is constantly on the Muslim other without shifting the gaze towards yourself and reexamining your history and how that makes you respond to whoever is in front of you as an other. And I think a lot of my research focuses on Muslims, but is to shed a light back on the white supremacy of a lot of Danish thinking. Now this is a challenge to even say in Denmark, speaking of white folks and speaking of black and brown folks is speaking of race in that sense is very much frowned upon. But the very concept of the non Westerner builds on that legacy is a racializing concept, is an idea of global south populations. And then Danish politicians for all the good and bad, like for all the bad, they're actually really good at helping us unpack the racialization processes without them ever mentioning race. Because a Danish politician would say that when we're talking about non Westerners, we don't really have an issue with Thailanders or Vietnamese. We have an issue, issue with people from Muslim majority countries. And there you have it right. Like, it lays the groundwork for these colorblind rhetorical acrobatics that the policies themselves have to do to be in line with the Danish law and. But the politicians help us unpack it. They help us unpack it because they're directing our focus. Because if they don't, you would have more of an outcry from the general Danish population. Right.
- [31:50]
Carrington College Representative
Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors and learn about our associate degree in nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at Carrington. Edu events. For information on program outcomes, visit carrington. Edu Sci.
- [32:19]
Amani Hassani
Absolutely. I think that's a really relevant point, Emani. And it sort of brings me to other themes that are coming out through this series. The notion of the tolerant and benevolent nation with empire in its history, or indeed with the case of Denmark in its very contemporary existence. The idea that their myth of tolerance needs to be protected by being intolerant to specific communities and that intolerance is legitimate as part of protecting this bigger myth that is going on. And I think that word acrobatics that you use really describes actually what's going on. We see this kind of toing and froing and the paradoxes of it all coming out enormously. And I think it's not just Denmark that's doing this. I think we can draw parallels, at least across continental Europe in terms of these policies, this selective amnesia and the gymnastics that are going on and justifying these practices of intolerance essentially. Maybe coming on to our last question. In your work, you talk about Muslims being presented as a threat to social cohesion. And I was wondering, sort of, since the war on terror, etc. Do you feel that this has changed even more so in light of recent events, thinking about sort of Iran and Israel or indeed social movements in relation to this in Europe?
- [33:49]
Chella Ward
I think Denmark is. Well, it depends on what angle you're taking it from. From a political angle, I think Danish politicians are. Are using the genocide in Gaza as a way of framing the Muslim as the problem. You know, they're quintessential anti Semitic and they're against the state of Israel and so on and so forth. And I think. But it's a continuation of that idea of the global war on terror because it allows. It allows on One hand. Well, it not allows. It reassures the political establishment that, hey, we were right to surveil Muslims because they are a threat and look at it on a global scale. Right. And so let's keep going and let's really protect Denmark from this Muslim threat. Right. And right now there's political elections, so there's a lot of, of, okay, how do we contain Muslims? How do we limit their abilities to congregate? You know, really pushing the boundaries of civil liberties in Denmark.
- [35:13]
Claudia Radeven
Right.
- [35:13]
Chella Ward
So I think the rest of the Danish nation or the Danish public should actually question what if, if the government is infringing Muslims rights on that sense, in that sense, how is this going to be transferred into general civil rights? That's just one angle towards it, but I think it helps feed the similar rhetoric that's been brewing and building throughout. I imagine there's going to be a lot more focus now with a new government. I don't know which government, but whatever government comes into power will push the same type of rhetoric of saying that we need to limit Muslims political abilities, political agency, but also ability to create social movements. Because one thing that we saw with the Palestine movement in Denmark, and I think people outside of Denmark are really surprised, people who know a little about Danish politics were surprised to see the power of the Palestine movement in Denmark having weekly demonstrations across the major cities. I think there's something very hopeful in that because I think that allowed a social movement to kind of organically be created, obviously through really good activists that are really bringing a lot of different people. So people not just of the Palestinian. We have a very big Palestinian diaspora in Denmark, but also other Muslim groups, Muslim ethnicities as well as the left, and really bringing all of them together in this Palestine movement. And I think that's really hopeful on a grassroots level. I think it's very scary on a governmental, we need to crush political mobilization level. The next steps now will be interesting to see how will this rhetoric really translate into policies. We already know that CVE policies have been expanded to particularly focus on supposed anti Semitism. Very little attention is being given to Islamophobia, structural Islamophobia, the racism Muslims experience, xenophobia. Because the political climate is we need to limit access to Denmark from the global south. We need to limit Muslim migration. And so if, if we open up for a conversation on Islamophobia, on Muslim racism, like experiences of racism, experiences of racism by black and brown bodies, then there's a whole bigger challenge. Not just there's a threat to the political ability to socially control minorities in Denmark. And I think, I think it'll be important to see the next political steps. We've been leading up to an election in Denmark for this past year and it's been very interesting to see how the conversations are becoming more and more extreme to limiting Muslims ability to be Muslim, to express their Muslimness, to borrow public institutions and localities for Muslim events and so on. And it'll be interesting, interesting to see what happens next.
- [38:53]
Amani Hassani
Thank you, Imani. I think that's really pertinent. The period leading up to an election that run up is always a period of intensification of Islamophobia simultaneously. And I think it echoes what we're seeing in the uk there's this willful ignoring or backtracking on recognition of Islamophobia. And the goalposts for kind of the quote unquote acceptable or good Muslim, I think are forever moving. But unfortunately we have to wrap up there. I think we could talk for much longer about your work in relation to Muslimness in Denmark. But thank you so much for joining us. And thank you ever so much, listeners. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of Radio Reorient Salaam Alaikum.
- [39:40]
Saeed Khan
Now let's discuss what we've heard with Chella Ward, Hizamiyeh, Claudia Radovan and Saeed Khan. Welcome back, listeners, after a really fascinating discussion on Denmark and particularly its Muslim community with the hosts of that episode, Claudia Radovan and Amina Isardas. Claudia, you were discussing this topic with Amani Hasani in a way that makes one think about the concept of colonial amnesia, that sometimes empires or nation states don't really regard themselves as having been insidious in their colonial project. And to be fair, it would perhaps surprise many that Denmark actually was responsible for a colonial project. It's not thought of as a conventional or one of the major colonizers of the world. So how did you see that notion of colonial amnesia permeating your discussion?
- [40:46]
Claudia Radeven
Yeah, I thought this was sort of,
- [40:48]
Chella Ward
it was, it was something that was
- [40:49]
Claudia Radeven
really interesting for me as someone that hasn't really focused on Denmark in terms of coloniality and some of its surrounding nations.
- [40:57]
Chella Ward
It was.
- [40:59]
Claudia Radeven
Well, let me frame it differently. When we talk about coloniality, Britain is frequently one of the first countries that comes to mind as the Great Satan of coloniality. It did the worst. It did the most, often followed by countries like France and Belgium and then Spain and Portugal. And there seems to be in the kind of collective public imagination, this watering down of nastiness, the Further down you go down that list, the horrors are sort of, well, we weren't as bad as Britain. That's the oft said phrase. And I suppose we don't really hear about nations like Denmark that frequently. I hadn't really heard about it much at all. And it was interesting to see in that conversation how strong that colonial amnesia was. When we compare it to other conversations we've had with some of our wonderful guests about countries like France or India, and it sort of seemed like there's a collective. We don't need to talk about it because now we're this wonderful country. We have this great infrastructure at a societal level in terms of policy. And at the end of the day, we weren't as bad as some of our European neighbors. And it was a really stark contrast to some of our other conversations on the show.
- [42:24]
Saeed Khan
Well, even when it comes to Denmark of late, conversations surround its colonization of Greenland, thanks in large part to the American president, Donald Trump, although he's not invoking colonization from the standpoint of being a humanitarian savior of the indigenous people of Greenland. So it seems as though Denmark gets a pass again and again and again. And the default position is that it is, presumably, as a Northern European country, tolerant, benevolent. Cela. I know that you have a lot of experience with other Northern European countries, albeit maybe not not necessarily Scandinavian. How do you see the Danish model falling into that construct?
- [43:15]
Hizamiyeh
Yeah, it's interesting to sort of think about this within that, you know, that lens that you bring there. Saeed of thinking about this as kind of part or something that's influenced by the race for Greenland.
- [43:28]
Chella Ward
Right.
- [43:29]
Hizamiyeh
In the sense that we had the race for Africa and, you know, now we have this race for Greenland. And, you know, I think that we do need to see Donald Trump as a kind of wannabe colonizer. Well, we need to see him, first of all, as an ongoing colonizer, but also as kind of wannabe colonizer. And thinking of his recent comments that the Strait of Hormuz in Iran ought to be renamed the state of Trump. So it's not even. It's not even colonizing for the United States, actually colonizing for Donald Trump himself. But, you know, putting the question of Danish Islamophobia into the context both of an ongoing empire, you know, because I'm a. I'm a scholar of the ancient world. I'm think the way that the Romans referred to the Roman Empire as the imperium sine. Fine. Right. The empire that had no end. And, you know, Denmark is, in a sense, an empire that has no end. It's kind of an ongoing, just like the US is just like the Zionist entity is kind of ongoing project of colonization. So it's interesting to think about Islamophobia coming up in that context. But it's also interesting to think about the way that Denmark has, it seems to me, as a non specialist of this region, has done a decent job of sort of sanitizing its own image. It seems like a place that has progressive. I'm putting that in massive air quotes for listeners who can't see the video. Progressive values. And the other place that it really reminds me of that I think has done that kind of neoliberal shift is the Netherlands. You know, the Netherlands is a place that is often thought of as quite progressive. You know, it's often thought of as liberal in what a liberal would see as a positive sense. Right? A place where people can be direct, can be themselves, where, you know, homosexuality is not seen as a problem, for example. It's got those kinds of quote unquote liberal values. But at the same time, you know, those values are sort of providing cover to what is an extremely ethno nationalist construction of identity, to what is, you know, a place that is absolutely full of. Of Islamophobia, including state Islamophobia as, as we have seen on another episode in this series where we talked to Martine de Koning about Islamophobia in the Netherlands. And I think tracking those kinds of similarities are really important because they allow us to see how that kind of pretense of liberalism doesn't actually protect against ethno nationalism and its corollary, Islamophobia.
- [46:03]
Saeed Khan
Well, it seems thencello that what the Netherlands and Denmark have demonstrated that they have in common is in the case of the Netherlands, you have somebody like Geert Wilders who has made a political career and a movement, dare one say, on Islamophobia. And it seems as though it is weaponizing Islamophobia, ironically, perhaps, certainly cynically, as a form of tolerance that we are pushing back on Muslims and we have a right to be Islamophobic in the name of tolerance. And we have to remember that 20 years ago Denmark had a similar tryst with this relationship of Islamophobia and tolerance, with the Yellen's postern cartoons of the Prophet, peace be upon him, as a way to demonstrate that we are tolerant. And the way that we can be tolerant is even by being Islamophobic, because that is permissible. It's a fascinating way of looking at a country which, mind you only became Christianized in 965, which is of course 250 years after Islam reached Europe by way of the Berbers and Tariq bin Ziyad into the Iberian Peninsula. Until then, Denmark was in fact pagan and it was actually Harald Bluetooth, the king, who became Christian. And of course all of us do owe him a debt of gratitude because he has certainly made our tech lives much easier, including our ability to have these kinds of conversations online. Amina, you were in conversation with Amani regarding Denmark and particularly about how Denmark sees itself. It sees itself as tolerant, it sees itself as welcoming, at least to a certain extent, as it had with Danish migration in the latter part of the 20th century. But also another hallmark feature of Denmark that it, it prides itself on is it being a welfare state. And I was wondering if you could provide your perspective on that.
- [48:15]
Amani Hassani
Definitely. I think as you've quite rightly pointed out Saeed and Cela previously, the idea of Denmark as an incredibly tolerant place in its imagination of itself and its self construction and part of that tolerance a relies on being intolerant towards Muslims, but also the infrastructure of the welfare state. And I think it was quite interesting the way Amani picked up on the notion of any of these unskilled quote unquote, Muslim migrants coming to Denmark and therefore then the welfare state being presented as a benevolent tool. So we see that idea of kind of colonial imperial benevolence and then it's continued in the kind of current formation through the welfare state. And I think Amani quite rightly picked up on yes, on the one hand, Denmark itself frames this as a particularly generous feature of the kind of the landscape in the country, the infrastructure landscape, but rather the welfare state is not a tool of benevolence. It's actually in fact a way of controlling or a mechanism for controlling and regulating Muslims that are often quite heavily reliant because of their background, their kind of migratory backgrounds to the country and also structures that keep Muslims or don't necessarily afford Muslim the same access to spaces as we might see kind of indigenous Danish populations. And I thought that was a really interesting way of looking at it and the way in which I guess not only is the welfare state not a mark of Danish benevolence and Danish generosity, it's also, I guess, part of this infrastructure where we may see in the British context, the UK context, a more explicit prevent strategy that regulates and controls Muslims, or we may see in the French context the sort of state of emergency existing, the Danish way of doing it seems to be a much more subtle or seemingly subtle way of controlling Muslims. And that regulation really relies on a the reliance, but also the threat of non compliance being met with the removal of the benefits that the welfare state creates or affords people. So really it's not a tool of benevolence. Danish colonialism was not at all a benevolence and nor is the Danish welfare state. It's about regulating Muslimness and I think really tying into other episodes that we've looked at on this season. And Amani also talked about the Muslim resistance and that it's in its early stages that we could have or Muslims in Denmark could move beyond the reliance on the supposedly benevolent welfare state and form their own spaces of resistance and community support to move beyond these mechanisms of surveillance and control.
- [51:23]
Saeed Khan
Well, I think reliance is perhaps one of the biggest misnomers that is presented regarding the welfare state because reliance also has the buy in to the welfare state. Muslims are not immune from the very high tax rate, whether if one is a citizen or if one is simply an immigrant. And moreover, if one is a citizen, there is mandatory military service. At the age of 18 it was mandatory conscription irrespective of gender. And so Muslims do serve in the Danish military without question, without a barrier. And so it perhaps is better suited for Denmark to assert itself as a true example of citizenship, where one has rights that they can derive and from which they can benefit from the state. But there are also responsibilities that they provide to the state. And here it seems as though that is occurring. And yet Denmark, both as a cultural as well as on a political level of rhetoric, seems to fail to show that rather bilateral engagement between the two. Well, again, a fascinating subject about a fascinating part of the Muslim world that some may not consider very organically to be a part of the Muslim world, but given its population of Muslims, one really ought to. Thank you for listening in on this terrific conversation and we hope that you will join us for future episodes of Radio Reorient. This is Radio Reorient exploring the Islamosphere and navigating the post Western. How should we study the things that we study after the critique of Orientalism?
- [53:39]
Chella Ward
Sam.