This does not bode well for the Government’s efforts to encourage integration. And indeed, some Danes want to crack down against migrants still harder.
As the mainstream politicians react to a growing sense of disillusion about mass migration, a new party led by a 42-year-old architect called Pernille Vermund has seized the moment.
The divorced mother of three, who lives far from the Copenhagen ghettos, hopes her party — the New Right — will gain seats in elections next year on a hardline anti-migrant manifesto.
It calls for the residence permit of any ‘foreigner convicted in court’ to be withdrawn and for no more welfare benefits, housing subsidies and other state payments to anyone except Danish citizens.
She told me:
‘Politicians for decades have let people into our country who do not share our values. They do not assimilate. Now the politicians make a patchwork of rules to try to correct their own mistakes. Forcing Muslim mothers to deliver their toddlers into state-run daycare is not going to make them Danish, or less Muslim. It simply will not work.’
Her views would have been condemned as xenophobic extremism in liberal Denmark a few years ago. But mass immigration has hardened attitudes.
Politicians fear that if they ignore the problem, they will lose ground to parties such as the New Right.
Back in Mjolnerparken, where 1,752 people of 38 nationalities live cheek by jowl, I meet one of the community elders.
An Iraqi Kurd by birth, smartly dressed Taher Mustafah, 59, came to Denmark in 1985. He has worked for years as a civil servant and helped run an Islamic charity.
We stand on a busy street corner to chat, as Danish girls in skimpy shorts cycle past women with veiled faces shepherding children along pavements, closely watched over by their husbands. Truly, it is a stark clash of cultures.
Taher looks at one of the veiled women and shakes his head.
‘I know her,’ he says. ‘She is Tunisian and her husband is an Iraqi. My view is that if you live in a country, you should show respect for the society in which you live. She should not wear the burka here in Denmark and soon she will not be allowed to.’
Yet nearby, in an Iraqi-owned cafe, I hear a different opinion from an Iraqi migrant father called Jaber Saleh, 40, who is eating a pitta bread-and-hummus lunch with his wife Farah, 29, and son Hassan, six.
The Salehs are angry with the Danish Government. Despite living and working here as a truck driver for 17 years, Jaber has still not been granted citizenship.
Since the day he arrived, he has clung to his roots. He sent his son to an Arabic school in Copenhagen until it was closed by the Government, which accused some staff of having links to terrorism.
‘The Government was wrong,’ says Jaber. ‘It was a good school where Hassan was taught in the Arabic language, not Danish, and he learnt the Koran. He speaks Arabic at home and has no Danish friends, and I am pleased about that. I don’t want him to learn from them bad things, the swearing, the low moral code of Denmark.
‘This society is too lax. I will do anything to avoid my son learning the values of Denmark.’
As I help Hassan write his name in the English alphabet in my notebook, I wonder what life will bring for this bright, well-behaved child, growing up torn between two cultures.
His family are not preparing him for life as a Dane and, in a rapidly changing country, he may never be accepted as one even if he wishes to be.
And that surely spells trouble for him and his adopted nation.
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Originally Posted by Swordsmyth
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