fundamentally danish? the muhammad cartoon … viii 2/henkel-fm.pdf · fundamentally danish? the...

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ISSN: 1540-5699. © Copyright by Ahead Publishing House (imprint: Okcir Press) and authors. All Rights Reserved.

HUMAN ARCHITECTURE

Journal of the Sociology of Self-

A Publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)

While the related themes of immigra-tion and integration had come to play acentral role in Danish public debates sincethe late 1990s, the cartoon affair (in Danishusually referred to as

Muhammedkrisen,

orthe Muhammad crisis) galvanized publicattention in an unprecedented manner. AsPalle Weis, then editor of the Danish daily

Information

noted in 2006: “Suddenly allnormal public debate ceased. When

Jyl-lands-Posten

had published the Muham-mad cartoons, all the issues the Danes hadspent time discussing—the real estateboom, social security, and the challenges ofDenmark’s aging population—seemedunreal and banal.” Weis continues, suggest-ing that “even if it is difficult to imagine it

now, these issues will reappear. And yet,nothing will be quite as before” (Weis2006:7). But why is it that the cartoons andthe subsequent public debate had this enor-mous impact on Danish society? Whatwere these debates about? And what, ifanything, was not quite as it had beenbefore at the end of the affair?

Ironically, although the cartoons wherepublished in the name of securing freedomof expression in Denmark, in the eyes ofmany international observers Denmark’simage as an open and progressive societyhas been severely tarnished as a falloutfrom the crisis and its lingering aftershocks.And not without some justification. WhileDenmark in many ways remains a prime

Heiko Henkel received his PhD from Princeton University in 2004. He is associate professor at theanthropology department of Copenhagen University where he has been teaching since 2007. He haslongstanding research interests in European social and intellectual history as well as in the recent history ofMuslim revival movements, especially in Turkey. His current research interests focus on the encounter ofEuropean liberal publics with Muslim minorities.

Fundamentally Danish? The Muhammad Cartoon

Crisis as Transitional Drama

Heiko Henkel

Copenhagen University, Denmark––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

[email protected]

Abstract: A closer look at the Muhammad cartoon crisis illuminates some of the key issues thatwere, and continue to be, at stake for the various actors in the public contestations over thelegitimate place of Muslims (and the Islamic tradition) in Danish society. Using a conceptualframework developed by Axel Honneth, I suggest in this article that the cartoon crisis is part ofan ongoing struggle for recognition in Denmark, through which the terms by which Muslimsresiding in Denmark are recognized as legitimate citizens/residents of Danish society arenegotiated—and on which Muslims may recognize the demands of Danish majority society aslegitimate. As much as the cartoon affair was an event that, as Palle Weis (2006) writes,“suddenly” ruptured Danish society in 2005, it was therefore also part of a process that continuesto shape social actors and their relationships.

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example of a well-functioning liberaldemocracy, securing a high quality of life toa very broad percentage of its population,the question of to what degree Danish soci-ety is willing to accept cultural diversityhas yet to be answered. As elsewhere inEurope, the voices within Denmark thatseek to define “Danishness” in the narrowterms of ethnic nationalism and openlyquestion the legitimate place of “foreign-ers” (with or without Danish citizenship) init have become louder and more influentialover the past decade.

1

But the discomfortwith Denmark’s Muslim minority is by nomeans restricted to the “usual suspects” onthe political right. Also within traditionallyliberal sections of the Danish public, prac-ticing Muslims enjoy little sympathy. So lit-tle, in fact, that the mere association with“fundamentalist” Islam seems to placethose in question outside the limits of“Danishness” and at times even outside theprotection of due juridical process. Overthe past decade or so, a broad public con-sensus seems to have emerged in Denmarkthat perceives a particular kind of culturaldifference—the alliance to the Islamic tradi-tion—as intensely problematic. And yet, itwould be mistaken to view the cartoon cri-sis as a turning-of-the-tide from toleranceto xenophobia. In many ways, the conflictsand debates surrounding the cartoon crisisreflect trends that have long characterizedDanish society, but have surfaced in novelways as Danish society confronts new chal-lenges at the outset of the 21

st

century. A closer look at the cartoon crisis illu-

minates some of the key issues that were,

and continue to be, at stake for the variousactors in the public contestations over thelegitimate place of Muslims (and theIslamic tradition) in Danish society. Using aconceptual framework developed by AxelHonneth, I will suggest that the cartoon cri-sis is part of an ongoing struggle for recog-nition in Denmark, through which theterms by which Muslims residing in Den-mark are recognized as legitimate citizens/residents of Danish society are negoti-ated—and on which Muslims may recog-nize the demands of Danish majority soci-ety as legitimate.

2

As much as the cartoonaffair was an event that, as Weis writes,“suddenly” ruptured Danish society in2005, it was therefore also part of a processthat continues to shape social actors andtheir relationships.

In his now classic formulation, theanthropologist Victor Turner (1974) hassuggested that much of social interactiontakes the form of

social dramas.

According toTurner, social interactions are dramas in thedouble sense that they form sequences ofevents that unfold in certain structured pat-terns over time, and in the sense that ratherthan simply enacting given structural for-mations, the actors involved in social dra-mas perform and dramatize conflictinginterests and positions with uncertain andsometimes surprising results. Examiningthe cartoon crisis can thus help us under-stand what social actors may accomplishthrough the critique of Islam, on the onehand, and by foregrounding their indigna-tion over the publication of the cartoons, onthe other.

Taking its cues from Honneth andTurner, this paper argues that the signifi-cance of the cartoon crisis can best beunderstood by seeing it as a transitionaldrama in a struggle for recognition. What isat stake in this struggle are not only thelegitimate claims and counterclaims actors

1

According to a survey among 1,253 Danesconducted by Interresearch for the Danishthink-tank, Cevea, almost half of all Danes (48.1per cent) connect the chauvinist and relativelysmall Danish People’s Party “most” with theconcept of “Danishness” (

Information

, 18.9.2008,p. 1, 17). The Social Democrats, whose politicalinfluence during most of the 20

th

century wascrucial to the rise of the social welfare state thatcharacterizes Denmark until today, scored 14.8per cent.

2

Honneth 1996; see also Taylor 1994; Hab-ermas 1994.

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can make on each other in Danish society,but also the forms of identity that canmutually be recognized as “Danish.” In thedrama that unfolded around the publica-tion of the cartoons, it was not only the rela-tionship between Danish majority societyand its Muslim minority that became rede-fined, however. At least as importantly therelationships among various “Danish”actors were redefined. For instance, thepublic critique of Islam has enabled tacitnew alliances between the Danish national-ist right and the left in the wake of the car-toon affair. And finally, the critique of Islamhas helped Danes to re-imagine themselvesas Europeans in new ways, defining a par-ticular communality with their Germanand Swedish neighbors (and old rivals) incontrast to practicing Muslims near and far.In this performance of Danishness

as

Euro-peanness, a new emphasis on “secularity”has come to play a central role. And it is inthis dramatic performance of secularitythat the Danish drama converges moststrikingly with other European dramasbeing currently played out across the conti-nent.

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On September 30

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2005, the Danishbroadsheet

Jyllands-Posten

published thenow (in)famous 12 “Muhammad cartoons”it had solicited from members of the Danishnational association of cartoonists. In thefollowing weeks and months, the publica-tion of the cartoons became the object ofheated condemnations by many Muslimassociations and at public rallies and meet-ings. Numerous demands were made that

Jyllands-Posten

should retract the cartoonsand apologize to “the Muslims.” Inresponse,

Jyllands-Posten

’s editor-in-chiefinsisted that he “would not dream” ofretracting the cartoons or apologizing for

their publication.It soon became clear that the publica-

tion of the cartoons had severely escalatedthe simmering conflict between major sec-tions of the Danish public and Denmark’sMuslim minority. Increasingly over thepast decade, many Muslims—religiousMuslims and their organizations in particu-lar—had felt that Danish society and statehad failed to fully recognize what they sawas their legitimate demands. This non-rec-ognition was felt in the widespread andoften harsh critique of religious Muslimpractices, ranging from public condemna-tions of the Muslim headscarf as unsuitablefor Danish society to the bureaucratic regu-lations that require Muslims to arrangeburials through a pastor of the Danish

Folkekirke,

the Lutheran state church. It ismost visible in the intensely negative repre-sentation of Muslims in the Danish media(Hervik 2002, Hussein 2000) and the almostubiquitous display of suspicion towardspracticing Muslims since the September11

th

attacks. The publication of the Muham-mad cartoons, and the subsequent officialand public support for

Jyllands-Posten

, werebroadly perceived by Danish Muslims as adramatically staged escalation of this non-recognition of Muslim residents of Den-mark

as Muslims.

In the following weeks,the Danish media recurrently reportedthreats against

Jyllands-Posten

and individ-ual cartoonists that were, in turn, widelydiscussed and angrily condemned in themedia and in everyday conversations.While many in the Muslim communitywere seriously outraged at the publicationof the cartoons, the Danish majority publicwas seriously outraged at their outrage—apattern that would continue to define theentire affair.

The cartoons themselves were variedin style and content. While some of the car-toonists interpreted

Jyllands-Posten’s

call forproducing images of the prophet Muham-mad by presenting more or less aggressivecritiques of Islam through the use of

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heavily stereotyped images of a dangerousand misogynist Oriental, others appearedto have sought to present non-confronta-tional drawings. In a self-reflexive move,one contributor submitted a representationof his own anxiety on the issue, and one ofthe drawings poked fun at the newspaper’scontest itself in a way that was not immedi-ately recognized either by the newspaperor by its readers.

3

The 12 cartoons were pre-sented together with a commentary byjournalist Fleming Rose, who explainedthat the cartoons were initiated by

Jyllands-Posten

to challenge what he described asthe creeping submission of the Danish pub-lic to illegitimate Muslim demands. Con-trary to these Muslim demands, Roseargued, it was not only the right, but in factthe duty, of the press to disregard and chal-lenge such religious sensitivities whenMuslims sought to impose these concernson society in general.

Already 10 days after the cartoons’ firstpublications, the affair had created an echofar beyond Denmark. On October 10

th

, al-Jazeera’s Arab language website publishedan interview with Denmark-based imam,Raed Hlayhel, in which he discussed theoffensive cartoons and aired his anger attheir publication. Many other reports andcomments on al-Jazeera and on a widerange of news outlets in the Middle Eastand elsewhere were to follow.

4

The affairquickly developed into an internationaldiplomatic crisis: on October 12

th

numer-

ous ambassadors of Muslim-majority coun-tries called on prime minister Fogh Ras-mussen to take legal actions against the car-toons’ publication. Fogh Rasmussen notonly refused to intervene, but refused tomeet the ambassadors at all, and insistedthe government had no role in the disputeother than protecting the press’s freedom ofexpression. Over the next weeks andmonths, the cartoons became the focalpoint of angry demonstrations in a numberof Muslim-majority countries, condemningDenmark and the West. Most of theseremained non-violent. However, in a num-ber of incidents (including Syria, Lebanon,and Libya) violent clashes erupted with thesecurity forces and dozens of people werekilled, Danish embassies and consulateswere torched and other buildings associ-ated with Denmark were attacked.Although protesters linked the violence tothe Danish cartoons, in most of these inci-dents the organizers and their motivesremained unclear.

As the protests against the cartoonsspread around the globe and for monthsbecame a mainstay on the news the worldover, the cartoon crisis also became a majortopic in public debates in Europe andNorth America. While the public (with theexception of religious Muslim communi-ties) almost unanimously dismissed Mus-lim claims of state intervention againsttheir publication, the assessment of the car-toons was divided. While many supportedthe publication, and a number of Europeannewspapers re-published the cartoons insolidarity with embattled

Jyllands-Posten

,many others worried that the cartoonswould further worsen relationships withMuslims inside and outside Europe,already under strain from unresolved con-flicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, andthe ongoing controversy over the Muslimheadscarf in Europe.

In Denmark, a string of demonstrationsby Muslim organizations condemning thecartoons (with sporadic threats of retalia-

3

Lars Refn’s drawing shows a Danishschoolboy named Muhammed infront of ablackboard with Arabic script. The boy with hiscurly black hair wears a football shirt of a clubcalled Fremtiden (The Future) and teasinglysticks his tongue out at us. The note on theblackboard behind him says, in Farsi, ‘The Jour-nalists of Jyllands Posten are a bunch of reac-tionary provocateurs’.

4

Al-Jazeera’s English language websiteprovides an easily accessible overview overMiddle Eastern perceptions of the controversy,while http://da.wikipedia.org provides a use-ful chronology over the events from October2005 to February 2006.

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tion against

Jyllands-Posten

) on the onehand, and, on the other hand, an outpour ofcommentary in the media condemningMuslim protests kept the affair at the centerof public debate throughout much of 2006.The debate became especially heated whenit emerged in early 2006 that a number ofDanish imams had traveled to the MiddleEast to actively seek support for their pro-tests against the cartoons’ publication fromMuslim publics, media organizations, andgovernments. In the ensuing debate theimams claimed that they where forced toshore up support from outside Denmark,because the Danish state and the majoritypublic had failed to respond to their legiti-mate demands to protect Danish Muslimsfrom

Jyllands-Posten’s

defamatory publica-tions. Almost unanimously, public com-mentary in Denmark denounced the moveby the group of imams, seeing it as furtherproof that their allegiances were not withDanish society but with the Muslim world.The public and the media overwhelminglysupported the view that

Jyllands-Posten

waswithin its rights to publish the cartoons (orindeed had good reasons for doing so) andcondemned Muslim protests as infringe-ments on the right to free speech. A minor-ity of commentators, among them thewidely respected former foreign ministerEllemann-Jensen (like Fogh Rasmussen amember of the liberal-conservative Venstreparty), criticized the cartoons’ publicationand the government’s defiant stance. A pollfrom January 2006 shows that of thoseinterviewed 54 per cent thought it waswrong of Fogh Rasmussen not to have metwith the 11 ambassadors. At the same time,77 per cent were against an apology byFogh Rasmussen whereas 13 per cent werein favor.

5

In the course of 2006 the feeling of

immediate crisis at the cartoons’ publica-

tion slowly receded and was replaced by amore general discussion over the legitimateplace of (religious) Muslims in Danish soci-ety. As in other European countries thisdebate is far from over, and the continuingprofusion of news items pertaining to awide range of problems associated with thepresence of Muslims in Denmark (sus-pected political radicalism, problematicsocial practices linked to Islam, issues ofdelinquency linked to Muslim youth) indi-cates that the “Muslim problem” remains atthe center of Danish public consciousness.Fortunately, the protests over the cartoonshad not caused casualties on either side,either in Denmark or elsewhere in Europe,and thus the relationship between themajor Muslim organizations in Denmarkand the state never broke down entirely.

The dispute at the center of the crisis,whether or not the publication of the car-toons was legitimate or not, and whetherthe state had the duty to protect the Muslimminority from what many Muslims saw asa vicious attack on their religious identity,remained unresolved in the sense that noagreement or compromise was reachedbetween the struggling parties. It was

defacto

resolved in

Jyllands-Posten’s

favor,however, by the non-intervention of thegovernment and the broad public supportfor

Jyllands-Posten

. Nevertheless, the pro-cess of negotiation and dialogue betweenMuslim organizations and Danish majoritysociety continues, and even has gained anew sense of urgency and purpose sincethe crisis. While in many ways not muchhad changed, things were not quite likebefore either.

Before we turn in more detail to theconflict in Denmark, it is instructive tobriefly consider the dynamics of the car-toon affair’s international dimensions.Clearly, by traveling to the Middle East andactively soliciting support in their strugglewith the Danish state and majority public,the imams had seriously escalated the dis-pute. Not only did they radically expand

5

Percentages according to a Vilstrup pollcited in the newspaper Politiken, 30. January2006.

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the stage on which they could voice theirdiscontent, they also mobilized a transna-tional alliance that transformed the margin-alized Danish Muslim minority into a for-midable adversary. The enormous globalecho of the affair highlights that in 2005 the“local” conflict over the publication of anumber of cartoons in a nationally influen-tial but internationally virtually unknownnewspaper was “legible” for a global audi-ence—legible not in the sense that this glo-bal audience was necessarily able to fullyunderstand the drawings’ content (or wereeven likely to have seen the drawings) norin regard to the local context of the contro-versy.6 But across the globe, many peopleevidently assumed they understood themain aspects of the conflict well enough;and many felt sufficiently addressed bywhat seemed to be at stake to feel com-pelled to mobilize—and to a considerableextent polarize—the public opinion on aperhaps unprecedented scale.

Two factors are often mentioned toexplain the enormous echo of the cartoonsin Muslim publics: (1) within Islamic tradi-tions the representation of the prophetMuhammad is generally (although not uni-formly) seen as prohibited by Islamic law,and (2) the cartoons constituted (and weremeant as) a direct provocation of Muslimsensitivities. While both are important fac-tors, taken separately they are hardlyenough to explain the reaction the cartoonshave provoked. After all, there are surely analmost infinite number of practices aroundthe world that contradict Islamic legal rea-soning and provocative critiques of Islamare evidently fairly common. The cartoons,however, connected these two aspects in aparticularly effective way: They (some ofthem, anyway) not only depicted Muslimsin a derogatory fashion, they did so in ahighly stylized and recognizable manner

by commenting on the most venerated fig-ure of the Islamic tradition, the prophetMuhammad. The drawings thus becameiconic in that they both represented West-ern non-recognition of Muslim sensibilitiesand dramatically performed this non-rec-ognition. Once the Danish cartoons andtheir story had been taken up by the mediain the Middle East and elsewhere, theycould be mobilized to unite a usually frag-mented Muslim public already fluent in thelanguage of Muslim-Western antagonism.

Therefore, if the Muhammad cartoonspresented the Danish imams with analmost perfect object to mobilize a pan-Muslim public, the angry condemnation ofthe cartoons by religious Muslims also pro-vided a potent rallying point for a broadrange of critics of Islam. Not only did manyobservers in Europe, North America, andelsewhere sympathize with the criticalcommentary the cartoons sought to make,the angry condemnation of the drawings,and especially the often perceived (andsometimes real) threat of violence related tothese condemnations, exemplified to thesecommentators the problem they connectedwith Islam: its apparent intolerance. Toshow, in fact to provoke this “intolerance”was, of course, the explicitly stated purposeof the cartoons’ publication in the firstplace.

In Denmark, the cartoons provoked notso much a single Muslim response but acluster of responses. In spite of this diver-sity, two poles can be distinguished: formany Danish Muslims, the cartoons pro-voked an immediate and angry response asthe news of their publications filteredthrough media outlets and the social net-works connecting Muslims resident inDenmark. For others, the response wasequally prompt and clear, as they defendedJyllands-Posten’s right to publish the car-toons in the name of freedom of expression.For many others, however, the publicationof the cartoons provoked an often slow andreluctant, and sometimes agonizing and

6 To my knowledge, there are as yet no stud-ies of the perception of the cartoons in the Mid-dle East.

FUNDAMENTALLY DANISH? THE MUHAMMAD CARTOON CRISIS AS TRANSITIONAL DRAMA 73

HUMAN ARCHITECTURE: JOURNAL OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE, VIII, 2, FALL 2010

contradictory, response as they tried toweigh their conflicting impulses and alli-ances that impacted on their assessment ofthe stormy public dispute over the car-toons. One thing, however, was shared byvirtually all those who lived in Denmarkand identified themselves as Muslims (orwere identified so by others), and whichradically distinguished their position fromthe “international” contestation over thecartoons: As Muslims living in Denmarkthey were compelled to take—or rather,they had to find and modulate—a positionin the hostile public contestation over thecartoons.7 They had to declare in whichsense they were Muslim in a public debatein which the very legitimacy of Muslimidentity in Denmark 8was at stake. In otherwords, they had to show that as Muslimsthey could comply with a “Danish” way oflife.The indignation about the cartoons’publication and the critique of Muslim“intolerance” quickly created an opposi-tion between “Muslims” and “secularists”in the globalizing public—an oppositionthat was reinforced in the ensuing publicdebates in a process described by theanthropologist Gregory Bateson (1958) asschismogenesis. As is characteristic for schis-mogenetic processes, each side began todefine the other in increasingly strongterms as its opposite, leading to a discur-sive constellation in which “Islam” becamejuxtaposed to “freedom of expression,” andvice versa. The alignment produced by thisschismogenetic process thus made plausi-ble a particular dualistic imaginary withinwhich people, despite their wide range ofexperiences and life-histories, could

inscribe themselves into a simple dichot-omy. The emergence of this global dichot-omy, in turn, quickly enabled actors in theDanish conflict to feel part of a much largercontest, extending solidarity along a linethat divided those who felt offended by thecartoons and those who did not. Despitethe apparent ability of the conflict to polar-ize public opinion on a global scale, how-ever, much of the commentary around theworld was actually markedly guarded.This was notably the case in the Anglo-American public, where the angerexpressed by many European commenta-tors found little echo. Former British for-eign minister Jack Straw, for instance,known for his otherwise hawkish critiqueof political Islam, criticized the publicationof the cartoons. Also notably guarded wasthe response of Yeni Safak, one of Turkey’smost influential “Islamist” newspapers,which hedged its own critique of the car-toons by citing a long list of prominent(non-Muslim) European critics of the car-toons.

The terms of this challenge were notentirely transparent, however. Althoughthroughout the cartoon crisis it oftenappeared as if Danish Muslims were facingthe demands of a virtually unified Danishmajority public to demonstrate their Dan-ishness, these demands contained differ-ent, even conflicting impulses. On the onehand, the demand for Muslims to demon-strate their Danishness often was a call fortheir assimilation to a particular ethno-national tradition. On the other hand, thereference to Danishness often referred notso much to a particular (Danish) nationaltradition, but to Danishness as a nationalvariety of a more universal liberal model ofsociety. Perhaps the most significant aspectof the cartoon affair was that it enabledthese conflicting versions of Danishness toconverge in their critique of Islam. To betterunderstand the emergence and significanceof this hegemonic configuration we need totake a step back for a moment and consider

7 For a compelling compilation of responsesby Danish Muslims see for instance Lotte FolkeKaarsholm, ed. (2006), Muslims-Dansk Dagbog:19 dagbøger fra Muhammed-krisen [Muslim-Danish diary: 19 diaries from the MuhammadCartoon crisis], Informations forlag, Copen-hagen.

8 ‘US, British media tread carefully in car-toon furor’, Christian Science Monitor, 2. June2006

74 HEIKO HENKEL


the demand for “tolerance” as a centraltopic in contemporary public debates.

TWO SIDES OF “TOLERANCE”

Across Europe, the intensified pushtoward globalization that followed the dis-integration of the Warsaw Pact in 1989 pro-voked a renaissance of nationalist senti-ments. In Eastern Europe, this renaissancewas nourished by aspirations of nationalistmovements to state power; in WesternEurope, the major focus points of thisrenaissance were the emergence of newminorities through immigration and thechallenges that increasingly pluriculturalsocieties seemed to pose for the social cohe-sion of established nation states (Appadu-rai 1996; Beck 2000; Gingrich and Banks2006). These debates often generate twoopposing camps. On the one side are thosewho emphasize the necessity for nationstates (or ethnic groups aspiring to nation-hood) to assert the primacy of one distinct“national culture” over other cultural tradi-tions in society and to make this “nationalculture” the source of national identity, thenormative basis of state legislation, and anational code of civility. On the other side,critics of these neo-nationalist tendenciesargue that liberal democracies must taketheir cultural plurality into account in orderto maintain their democratic legitimacyand must not in the name of defending(anyhow spurious) “national values” dis-criminate against and marginalize minoritycommunities, whether these are long estab-lished or recently emerged through immi-gration.

The public debate in Denmark aboutimmigration and the legitimate place of“new” cultural traditions in Danish societyis in many ways recognizable in theseterms. Although the supposed threat toDanish society from immigration had beenon the political agenda in Denmark sincethe 1970s, it had mostly been a fringe issue

evoked by the populist rightwing Frem-skridtspartiet (the Progress Party). By thelate 1990s, however, immigration hadbecome a central feature in the Danishpolitical debate. Under the leadership ofPia Kjærsgård, the party had morphed intothe more successful Dansk Folkeparti (DF,Danish People’s Party) with a sharpenednationalist profile and an agenda claimingto defend the interests of “common” Dan-ish people. Moreover, the former primeminister Anders Fogh Rasmussen from theliberal-conservative Venstre party hadfought a successful and unusually aggres-sive campaign to oust the Social Democrat-led coalition government in 2001, central towhich was the accusation that the SocialDemocratic government was too lenient inits immigration policies. Since 2001, FoghRasmussen has led a coalition governmentwith the smaller Konservative party thatdepends for its majority in parliament onthe support of Kjærsgård’s Dansk Folkeparti.

In many ways, therefore, the conflictover the cartoons neatly fits into a trend inDanish society that Ulf Hedetoft (2003) hasdescribed as the substitution of a “human-ist” framework that underpinned earlierDanish approaches to immigration with anew “cultural absolutism.” While he notesthat the assimilationist discourse is notnew, Hedetoft suggests that this it is todayaccompanied by three elements that give ita new virulence: “its near-total hegemony;the assumed link between ‘culture’, ‘cohe-sion’ and ‘social functionality’ …; and theway in which this discourse has, on its ownterms, started to assimilate and demotepluricultural discourses” (Ibid.). As schol-ars of nationalism have often pointed out,the “cultural absolutism” of ethno-nation-alism is not simply the reflection of stronglyintegrated societies but a product of whatArjun Appadurai has called “ethnic mobili-zation”: the mobilization of nationalist dis-courses and forms of identity for the pur-pose of achieving and maintaining politicalpower. Without doubt, Denmark’s histori-



cal trajectory provides rich resources for themobilization of such a nationalist dis-course. In the second half of the 20th cen-tury, Danish society had emerged to anunusual extent as a socially, culturally, andindeed ethnically integrated society—if onechooses to look past the immigration of“new Danes” with a wide variety of cul-tural traditions since the 1960s.

A decisive moment for this process ofintegration is the year 1660, when King Fre-derik III, after an almost lost war withneighboring Sweden, disempowered theDanish landowning nobility, aligned him-self with the emerging urban bourgeoisie,and declared absolutism (enevælde) the offi-cial state form, giving the king and his cab-inet direct administrative power over allcitizens,. The emergence of the characteris-tically strong Danish state over the nextthree centuries, with its centralized bureau-cratic administration and an increasinglywell-integrated society, coincided with theprogressive loss of territory. As a 19th cen-tury saying had it: what Denmark had out-wardly lost was to be inwardly gained.

Among the many developments thatcontributed to the progressive integrationof Danish society, three deserve particularmention: (1) The privileged place of theLutheran Protestant church as state church(today known as Folkekirke, literally: Peo-ple’s church) has been a cornerstone ofDenmark’s constitutional order since 1848.Within this institutional framework, it wasthe Lutheran reform movement led byNikolai Grundtvig (1783-1872), whoseinfluence is still felt in Denmark today, thatdefined the central place of the Folkekirkein Danish society. Grundtvig turned thefostering of a combined Christian-nationalsentiment in all Danes (including the ruralpoor) into a national credo in Denmark; (2)The wide reach of Denmark’s cooperativesmovement (andelsforeninger) contributed tothe strong economic integration of Danishsociety. These cooperatives became crucialactors in Denmark’s soaring agro-industry

in the second half of the 19th and first halfof the 20th century. They were also centralto shaping both Denmark’s food retail busi-ness and the structure of its urban housingsupply. Finally (3), while the early decadesof the 20th century had seen its share ofdivisive political conflict and polarization,the so-called Kanslergade-agreement of1933 laid the basis for a rapprochementbetween all major social and political seg-ments of Danish society. Politicians repre-senting the working class, the bourgeoisie,and the rural classes agreed on a politicalplatform that centered on the creation of asocial welfare state that was to benefit allsocial layers. This agreement pioneered asocial model that was to be adopted bymost western European states after WWII.On the basis of this social consensus, Dan-ish society emerged as a society that wasexceptionally integrated politically, eco-nomically, socially, and not least culturally.As Steffen Jöhnke points out9, the welfarestate can be seen as an extraordinarily effec-tive integration machine—one notdesigned in the first place for integrating“foreigners” but to forge successive gener-ations of Danish citizens into proper Danes.The acquisition of a particular canon ofcivic virtues, of Danishness, is thus at thesame time the likely result of this historicalprocess of integration and the preconditionfor being recognized as a proper citizen ofDanish society.

In Denmark, as in many other Euro-pean countries, debates concerning immi-gration have often been entangled withother debates about the plurality of sociallife. While conservatives tended to criticizeboth immigration and the emergence of“alternative lifestyles” on the basis thatpublic norms and values should be derivedfrom an apparently inherited “national cul-

9 Steffen Jöhnke (2007), Velfærdsstaten somIntegrationsprojekt [The welfare state as inte-gration-project], in Fog Olwig and Pærregaard(eds.) Integration: Antropologiske Perspektiver,Museum Tusculanum, Copenhagen, pp. 37-62.

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ture,” others, who argued that societyshould reflect the plurality of people’s incli-nations, championed openness to “alterna-tive” ways of life (like communal livingarrangements, the use of “soft drugs,” therecognition of gay civic unions, radical eco-logical projects, etc.) and tended to cham-pion the toleration of lifestyles related toforeign cultural traditions. At least initially,the publication of the Muhammad cartoonsand the crisis that followed seemed to mir-ror this constellation. The cartoons werepublished in Jyllands-Posten, a conservativenewspaper with a track record of calling for“tougher” immigration policies and worry-ing about the undermining of “Danish”values by immigrant communities appar-ently unwilling to properly “integrate.”And it was the government of Anders FoghRasmussen that fuelled the crisis by longrefusing any kind of conciliatory gesturetowards the Danish Muslim minority or theintervening ambassadors. But as the car-toon crisis unfolded, it quickly becameclear that this opposition of ethno-national-ist right and a multicultural left had lostmuch of its meaning in the Danish debateand helped little to explain the frontlines inthe conflict. In fact, the two camps seemedto have merged into one and “all of a sud-den” a new political constellation hademerged: On the one side, Denmark’s Mus-lim minority, and on the other side, a broadmajority of the Danish public, defined byits critique of the Muslim minority. Whilethis Muslim minority was defined by itsindignation over the cartoons (on variousgrounds), the Danish majority publicdemanded that Danish Muslims had to tol-erate the offensive cartoons and sharplycriticized them for refusing to do so. Inother words, while previously the demandfor “tolerance” was primarily directedtoward “illiberal” tendencies within Dan-ish (or German, or Dutch, etc.) society, nowit became directed toward the Muslimminority. Whereas previously the demandfor tolerance demarcated a room of possi-

bility, it now described a conditio sine quanon to be fulfilled by those seen as not fullyqualified to be members of Danish society.

As Wendy Brown (2006) has pointedout, in recent years the concept of “toler-ance” has been central to public debates inEuro-American societies. While “toler-ance” has also been an important conceptin liberal social theory, over the past decadeor so it has emerged as central in a broadrange of discourses and policies that seek toregulate civic conduct within Euro-Ameri-can societies as well as to legitimize politi-cal and military interventions outside theirterritories. Brown notes that almost allpolitical projects within these societies nowclaim to be “tolerant,” although disagree-ments over the degrees and modalities oftolerance certainly persist. Drawing on thework of Michel Foucault, Brown suggeststhat current discourses and practices of“tolerance” can best be understood asexamples of “governmentality,” that is, theassemblage of concepts, rules, and prac-tices that define and modulate the modes oflegitimate practice of the inhabitants of lib-eral societies. Brown argues that, just as inFoucault’s classic formulation, the conceptsand practices of “tolerance” have become a“conduct of conduct” in the sense that,without providing an overt and rigid set ofrules, they regulate the actor’s possibilitiesand limits. As Brown and also Saba Mah-mood (2006) point out, religious Muslimsin particular have become objects of thisnew concern for “tolerance” as they arewidely perceived to pose a particular prob-lem to the regime of tolerance in liberalsocieties.

How seamlessly a “humanist” and a“nationalist” critique of Islam can gotogether becomes clearer if we look, as anexample, at the comments of the Danishpolitician Villy Søvndal in 2008.10 Theremarks made in his official blog and a sub-sequent interview were Søvndal’s response

10 Information, 21. February 2008.



to a rally by Danish Muslims who voicedtheir discontent with the renewed publica-tion of some of the cartoons in the Danishpress. This, in turn, had happened as aresponse to the apparent last-minuteuncovering of a murder plot against one ofthe original cartoonists a week earlier. Thepolice operation was broadly publicized bythe security services and hailed in the press,but it quickly became apparent that despitelengthy observations, the security serviceshad very little evidence to substantiatetheir dramatic allegations. Indeed, the caseagainst the accused had to be dropped; oneof the accused, who had acquired Danishcitizenship, was freed shortly after, the twoothers, who had gained permanent resi-dency, were to be deported without juridi-cal hearing. At the point of writing, one ofthem has left Denmark, the case of the otheris still pending.

Søvndal is the leader of Denmark’sSocialistisk Folkeparti (SF, Socialist People’sParty), which, with a “progressive” andexplicitly multicultural political platform,gained 12% of the vote in the past election.At the same time, leading members of theparty have been highly critical of Muslimorganizations in Denmark, not least theirstance in the cartoon crisis. Søvndal’s com-ments are framed as a strong critique ofHizb-ut-Tahrir (HT), a group with branchesin many countries, known for its provoca-tively confrontational (if non-militant) cri-tique of liberal society, and its project toestablish a new “Kalifat.” There is thusnothing surprising in Søvndal’s dismaywith the group, and Søvndal correctlypoints out that it represents only a fractionof Muslims in Denmark. What makes Søvn-dal’s comments relevant for this discus-sion, however, is that his critique of HTbecomes the conduit through which hesketches the contours of the conflict aroundthe Muslim presence in Denmark moregenerally.

From the outset Søvndal’s critique istwo-pronged: it is directed both at HT and

against all those who do not explicitly(enough) distance themselves from HT.Søvndal singles out a leading member ofIslamisk Trossamfund (‘Islamic Congrega-tion,’ the largest Muslim association inDenmark, with a longstanding record ofaccommodation with the Danish legal sys-tem) who had demonstrated together withmembers from HT against the renewedpublication of the cartoons. After havingestablished a chain of association betweenHT, Islamisk Trossamfund (IT), and allthose who feel offended by the publicationof the cartoons, Søvndal then draws a linebetween what is proper to Danish societyand what is beyond its limits and thus can-not be part of an inner-Danish politicaldebate or indeed of Danish society proper.Those holding these “fundamentalist”views, Søvndal suggests, should thereforego elsewhere (presumably to the MiddleEast) where their medieval views would bewelcomed. (It should be added, perhaps,that it is not immediately clear which Mid-dle Eastern regime would welcome thepolitical demands voiced by HT). For Søvn-dal and critics like him, Muslims associatedwith “fundamentalist” Islam are thus in aposition categorically different from otherpolitical opponents, say, supporters of theDanish People’s Party: while the latter canbe politically engaged the former arebeyond the pale of political debate.

Søvndal’s comments indicate some ofthe challenges (practicing) Muslims face inthe current debate about Islam in Euro-American society. In the polemical polar-ization between “us Danes” and “themfundamentalists” there is little place forthose who wish to register their dismaywith the publications of the cartoons and/or their association with the mainstream ofIslamic traditions and yet to claim belong-ing to Danish society. This is emphasized ina passage where Søvndal criticizes BirtheRønn Hornbech, minister for integrationand Church affairs, for her public offer tomeet with a representative from IT. Unde-

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terred by the fact that IT is the biggest Mus-lim organization in Denmark and hasestablished an agenda of interpreting Islamwithin the Danish legal framework andexplicitly aiming to be compatible with lib-eral society, Søvndal suggests that such ameeting would give undue legitimacy tofundamentalist organizations that claim torepresent Muslims without democraticlegitimacy.

As minister for integration and Churchaffairs, Hornbech is both responsible for theadministrative leadership of the Folkekirkeand for overseeing other religious tradi-tions in Denmark. By assailing Hornbechfor her public offer to meet with a represen-tative from IT, Søvndal presents us with acandid reading of the state of Danish secu-larism: clearly, in his reading, religious tra-ditions are not to be treated equally in Den-mark. While we can assume that Søvndalhas no qualms about Hornbech’s meetingwith the representatives of the Folkekirke(in fact, the minister being the church’schief representative), in his view the largestDanish Muslim organization is unfit to bemet by the minister of religious affairs.Søvndal’s position reflects a political con-figuration in Denmark where theFolkekirke is simply an accepted part of abroadly hegemonic social consensus,whereas Muslim religious organizationsare not.

Some commentators were quick topoint out that Søvndal’s position con-verged with the rhetoric of Denmark’sother “people’s party,” the chauvinistDansk Folkeparti, which routinely arguesthat Muslims are alien to Danish cultureand society. Perhaps, it was suggested,Søvndal’s comments even constituted anattempt to reach out to its voters. My pointhere is not to suggest that Søvndal’s com-ments were intended to signal a divergencefrom SF’s traditional support for culturalpluralism in Denmark in favor of joiningDF’s xenophobic political platform. The cri-tique of Muslim protests over the publica-

tion of the Muhammad cartoons, however,allows commentators such as Søvndal tocasually expand their critique of a particu-larly provocative “fundamentalist” groupsto mainstream Muslim organizations—andto establish in the name of Danishness atacit alliance across the political divides ofDanish society on the grounds of a sharedoutrage over the un-Danish demands ofMuslim political activists. The critique ofIslam has become an avenue throughwhich a particular inner-Danish, andindeed inner-European, communality andsolidarity can be claimed and, at least rhe-torically, established.

CONCLUSION

As with other struggles for recognition,the conflict over the legitimate place ofMuslims and their alliance to the Islamictradition in contemporary Denmark is noone-sided affair. While Danish civil societyand state seek to define the conditions onwhich Muslims and other new Danes areaccepted as fellow citizens (whether withor without formal citizenship), Muslimsresiding in Denmark are in turn vying tocarve out such spaces in terms acceptable tothem. Of course, neither side is itselfhomogenous but contains groups and indi-vidual actors with diverse and often con-flicting interests and demands. And, asHonneth (1995) suggests out, all actors instruggles for recognition are likely to betransformed in these contestations in oftenunforeseeable ways.

As citizens or residents, Muslims inDenmark have the same legal, political, andsocial rights (to use the classical typologydeveloped by T. H. Marshall (1964)) asother Danish citizens/residents. Neverthe-less, many Muslims in Denmark, especiallypracticing Muslims, have long felt thatDanish society does not properly recognizethem as Muslims and thus negates a centralaspect of their identity. To put it in Haber-



masian terms, it could be argued that in theDanish debate over the legitimate role ofIslam in society, the Danish majority publicfails to separate its own cultural traditionfrom Denmark’s political culture. Whereasthe former is rooted in a particular histori-cal experience shared only by this majoritysociety, the latter must be negotiatedamong all citizens. According to Habermasthis distinction between the cultural tradi-tion of majority society and a country’spolitical culture is the structural conditionfor democratic society under pluriculturalconditions.11

Whether or not this is the case, orwhether it is the Muslim side that seeks touniversalize its own particular cultural tra-dition continues to be disputed. Whateverthe truth of this, in the current situationMuslims in Denmark also have a widerange of possibilities for pursuing theirclaims for recognition. One avenue is forMuslims to embrace the mainstream ver-sion of “Danishness” and to downplay orabandon links to the Islamic tradition.Another avenue, pursued by many reli-gious Muslims in Denmark, is the ongoingconstruction of networks and associationsthat provide the infrastructure for Islamicforms of discourse and practice—and,making use of the space provided by legal,political, and social rights, for projectingMuslim forms of life into Danish society. Inthe dispute over the cartoons, moreover,religious and non-religious Muslims oftenhad the opportunity to have their viewsheard in the media—though seldom to thesame extent as critics of Islam. Most dra-matically, they were able to expand thestage on which the debate over the legiti-macy of the cartoons took place. This strat-egy proved extraordinarily effective eventhough it carried both costs and benefits. Asthe chorus of Muslim protests grew louder,and especially when embassies weretorched and people died abroad in clashes

with security services, when Danish firmsbecame the target of consumer boycottsand Danes at home and abroad foundthemselves the targets of anger and poten-tial violence, many Danes saw their suspi-cions against religious Muslims confirmed.At the same time, the dramatic show of sol-idarity from Muslim publics, and not leastthe specter of violence, suddenly made theDanish Muslim minority appear as a veryserious adversary that could hardly beignored. After all, as Honneth also pointsout, in many struggles for recognitionmajority publics have historically extendedrecognition to minorities in exchange forsocial peace.

Danish society (the state as well as civilsociety) responded to the escalating conflictstrategy in a complex way. Muslimsbecame the object of an intense process of“securitization” and often exceedinglypolemical critiques by pundits and politi-cians. At the same time, both the state andcivil society actors put forward a widerange of offers for dialogue that held thepromise of working toward a recognition ofMuslim demands. To use again VictorTurner’s model of the social drama: after anagonizing period of crisis, where the veryfoundations of coexistence between Danishmainstream society and the Muslim minor-ity were put into question, during 2006 thiscoexistence found a new (albeit prelimi-nary) equilibrium. In the end, Danish Mus-lims accepted, albeit grudgingly, the publi-cation of the cartoons; and the Danish pub-lic accepted, equally grudgingly, theMuslim discontent with them.

But if the Muslim struggle for recogni-tion in Denmark is not one-sided, it isclearly uneven. Muslims in Denmark are apolitically marginal minority and thereforehave little influence on the enormouslypowerful institutions that regulate modernsocieties. Further, the dispute over the legit-imate role of the Islamic tradition in Den-mark has evolved in such a way that certainMuslim demands, such as the request for11 Habermas (1998: 105ff),

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the government to censure the publicationof the Muhammad cartoons, appear tomany Danes to challenge the very founda-tions of Danish society, and indeed of lib-eral society more generally. Counteringthese demands has thus emerged as a pas-sionately held project of a wide range ofpolitical actors in Denmark and other Euro-American societies. Moreover, as I havetried to show, the critique of Islam hasacquired a positive, solidarity-inducingaspect. In the critique of Islam, the cohesionof Danish society is experienced and rein-forced. There is, in other words, a“speaker’s” benefit connected to the cri-tique in the demarcation and enactment ofcommunity through a sharp drawing of thelimits of solidarity and belonging. As I havenoted, something similar holds true forMuslim critics of Denmark across theworld who experience common bondsacross other divisions in their condemna-tion of the cartoons and those who supportthem. But if, as surely they must for pursu-ing a future life for themselves and theirchildren in Denmark as (practicing) Mus-lim citizens, they maintain ties both to theIslamic tradition and seek to be recognizedas legitimate members of Danish society bythe Danish state and majority public, Mus-lims in Denmark face a painful dilemma.

If, as I have tried to show, the demandfor “tolerance” articulates as a shorthandthe demand for complying with a particu-lar, historically emerging form of citizen-ship (as both proponents and critics of lib-eral society seem to agree12), the question iswhether these demands are formulated interms of “ethnic” citizenship—and thusdemand assimilation to a particular cul-tural tradition—or in terms of republicancitizenship—and thus open up the possibil-ity of a process of incorporation of new cul-tural traditions into a pluricultural context.

Or perhaps, rather, as the Danish case sug-gests, we should ask whether these conflict-ing notions of citizenship can be suffi-ciently disentangled so as to offer aspirantmembers of society the possibility ofbecoming members of that society withoutdenying their own sense historical experi-ence and identity.

The question, in other words, iswhether Danes and Muslim residents ofDenmark will find a formula in which theycan recognize each other’s demands. Whatis called for is thus nothing less, but alsonothing more, than an update of theKanslergade agreement of 1933 in whichthe major sections of Danish societyworked out a framework within whichtheir mutual demands were recognized fordecades to come. In the absence of this,both Danish majority society and Muslimnew Danes are likely to face considerablechallenges in the future. If Danishness isnot expanded to incorporate hyphenatedidentities such as Muslim-Danes (similar toMuslim-American) it is difficult to see howthe antagonism between Danish majorityand Muslim minority should be overcome,with obvious repercussions for the life-chances of Danish Muslims and the poten-tial for social peace and security for Danishsociety.

Moreover, the enormous pressure onMuslim minorities to conform to narrowlydefined versions of secularity is in dangerof undermining the very foundations onwhich Danish society (like other contempo-rary Euro-American societies) claims tobuild its moral superiority: a liberal consti-tution that grants every citizen the sameopportunities to pursue his or her life-project. In his blog, for instance, Søvndalcriticizes the continuing discrimination ofMuslims in Denmark. But in his commen-tary on the second cartoon affair he doesnot even in passing engage with the prob-lematic conduct of the Danish state in itshandling of the alleged murder plot, whichoverruled established legal safeguards by

12 The most prominent of those I have inmind are Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth,Charles Taylor, Sheila Benhabib, Talal Asad, andWendy Brown.



referencing the alleged exceptional dangerposed by Muslim militancy.

It is difficult not to be reminded here ofthe figure of homo sacer, used by the ItalianPhilosopher Giorgio Agamben (1998, 2005)to draw attention to the common recourseof modern states to a “rule of exception” inorder to justify the suspension of legalnorms in relation to certain groups.Although the claims touted by the securityforces, the government, and an endlessstream of public commentators were neverconfirmed, the suspects remained in cus-tody, apparently both beyond the rules ofdue process and even a residual sympathyof the public. The accusation of being aMuslim terrorist made the released suspectquite literally an outcast to Danish society,and the sad centerpiece of a public specta-cle in which the authorities demonstratedthe extent to which they were prepared toclaim a state of emergency that allowedthem to circumvent due legal process. AsHannah Arendt (1951) has famously noted,rather than following from universalhuman rights, the access to civic rights is infact the precondition for human rights tobecome meaningful.

The disconcerting ease with which theDanish government and large sections ofthe public are prepared to suspend long-established legal safeguards in dealingwith those associated with Muslim mili-tancy can only be explained, it seems to me,against the background of the dramaticallystaged suspicion that religious Muslims—both within and without—represent thevery opposite of Danish civility.

REFERENCES

Agamben, Giorgio. 1998. Homo sacer: sovereignpower and bare life. Stanford, Calif.: Stan-ford University Press.

Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. State of exception. Chi-cago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press.

Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at large: cul-tural dimensions of globalization. Minneapo-lis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press.

Arendt, Hannah. 1951. The origins of totalitarian-ism. New York: Harcourt.

Bateson, Gregory. 1980. Naven. Stanford, Calif.:Stanford University Press.

Beck, Ulrich. 2000. What is globalization? Cam-bridge: Polity Press.

Brown, Wendy. 2006. Regulating Aversion: Toler-ance in the Age of Empire and Identity. Princ-eton: Princeton University Press.

Gingrich, Andre and Marcus Banks. 2006. Neo-Nationalism in Europe and beyond. Oxford:Berghahn Books.

Habermas, Jürgen. 1994. Struggles for Recogni-tion in the Democratic ConstitutionalState. In Multiculturalism ed. Charles Tay-lor, 107-148. Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press.’

Habermas, Jürgen. 1998. The inclusion of theOther. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

Hedetoft, Ulf. 2003. ‘Cultural transformation’:how Denmark faces immigration. OpenDemocracy web journal: http://www.opendemocracy.net/ (30 October2003, accessed October 25, 2009).

Hervik, Peter. 2002. Mediernes muslimer. Køben-havn: Nævnet for Etnisk Ligestilling.

Honneth, Axel. 1995. The struggle for recognition:the moral grammar of social conflicts. Cam-bridge: Polity Press.

Hussein, Mustafa. 2000. Islam, Media andMinorities in Denmark. Current Sociology,vol.48(4):95-116.

Mahmood, Saba. (2006). Politics of Piety. Prince-ton: Princeton University Press.

Marshall, T. H. 1964. Class, citizenship, and socialdevelopment. Garden City, N.Y.: Double-day & Company, Inc.

Taylor, Charles. 1994. The Politics of Recogni-tion’. In Multiculturalism ed. Charles Tay-lor, 25-74. Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress.,

Turner, Victor. 1974. Dramas, Fields, and Meta-phors: Symbolic action in human society. Ith-aca: Cornell University Press

Weis, Palle. 2006. Forord. In Muslimsk-Dansk dag-bog ed. L. F. Kaarsholm, 7-9. Copenhagen:Informations Forlag.

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