Assimilation vs. Parallel Societies

The Danish Experience with Jews and Muslims

by Norman Berdichevsky (December 2017)

The Emperor’s New Clothes, Roberto Weigand

 
 

Denmark of the mid-nineteenth century set a marvelous example of community relations and brotherhood based on mutual respect. It was possible because a small minority had seen how it was incumbent upon them to win the respect of their neighbors. In today’s topsy-turvy world, Denmark and other nations are struggling to maintain their noble traditions and culture in the face of provocation from a militant minority of Muslim immigrants that is seeking to impose its will and culture/religion on the majority.
 

This began to radically change in the 1980s when large numbers of immigrants received the right to settle and work in the country to fill a shortage of labor. The one groups that established a highly visible presence consisted of Muslims from the Middle East. How have they fared and how do they compare with the veteran Jewish community? This is of interest to many Americans as Denmark has often been given prominence by those on the political Left as a model to follow.
 

 

 

Only briefly mentioned were the astronomically high Danish taxes (and a regressive sales tax of 22% then, currently 25%) as well as other issues that many Democrats would have been reluctant to hear, such as stringent requirements for collecting unemployment benefits, photo identity cards, and the increasingly hard-nose Danish policy of restricting immigration (especially Muslims). This anti-refugee sentiment was apparent even then in 2015 as Denmark had just closed its border to trains coming in from Germany as well as government ads in Lebanese newspapers to discourage migrants from attempting to enter the country.
 

It is noteworthy in determining how accurate a Danish model is for the United States to follow as many American arch-leftwingers believe, by examining how successful almost 50 years of these Danish policies have been, designed to turn Muslim immigrants into equal citizens enjoying the same rights and duties as the general population while preserving their sense of community and religious identity.
 

Jewish population of the country. A large part of the Danish Jewish population of the country at the time of Hans Christian Andersen circa 1800 simply “disappeared” through assimilation and full integration into the surrounding society. Had the Jewish population then of 2,000 kept up a growth equal to the general surrounding Christian population) without any emigration or immigration), there would be close to 20,000 Danish Jews today without any further immigration from abroad after 1850, instead of only 7,000 (many of them not affiliated to a synagogue). Where did they go? Most demographers agree that they must have freely chosen to fully assimilate. The ancestors of most of today’s Danish Jews are refugees from Czarist Russia and Poland who entered the country from 1880 to 1914.

Prime Minister Rasmussen acknowledged that Muslims have taken control of parts of Denmark where the authorities tread with utmost care or ignore, regarding them as parallel societies. Queen Margrethe II has used similar language in warning Muslim immigrants they must obey the law equally This is part of a continuing debate on parallel societies, which neither Denmark nor any other Western country has successfully overcome.

The Prime Minister specifically mentioned Muslims in connection with the problematic legal situation that has arisen in those parts of the country regarded as “no-go areas” (as in France, England, Spain) and expressed his foreboding that the state is unable to maintain law and order in places controlled by criminal Muslim gangs:
 

How would either Bernie or Hillary, noted lovers of Denmark, react to the recent (February, 2017) declaration by a majority in the Danish parliament that public policy should not favor or help contribute in any way to the formation or maintenance of ethnic or religious majorities in residential areas. It states, “Parliament notes with concern that today there are areas in Denmark where the number of immigrants from non-Western countries and their descendants is above 50 percent. It is parliament’s opinion that Danes should not be a minority in residential areas in Denmark.”  The only ethnic, religious, or immigrant group for which this declaration is applicable are the Muslims living in precisely those high crime ‘no-go areas’.
 

In 2007, he left this party to found New Alliance (later Liberal Alliance), whom he represented from 2007 until 2009. Regarded as the leading proponent of peaceful co-existence of democracy and Islam, he has won only scant support, especially from the younger “second generation” who many had hoped would rally to his cause. Since then he has had to change parties several times and was last reelected as a Conservative in the 2015 election. He has advocated a ban on the burqa describing it as “un-Danish” and “oppressive against women”. He is fluent in Danish and was one of 12 contributors to a special commemorative Hans Christian Andersen volume in which “Leading cultural figures in Danish society” explained what was their favorite story of the great author and why. Not surprisingly, his choice was The Emperor’s New Clothes.
 

What we know from the written record—in the newspapers and municipal archives of the towns where Jews resided—was that they generally were held in high regard. In no provincial town were they more than 2%—in Randers on the mainland peninsula of Jutland about 1870 and in Faaborg on the island of Funen around 1850. Jews could easily walk from their residences to the synagogue but nowhere was there any sense of an officially circumscribed ghetto.
 

The local authorities today in Faaborg (where I visited on a trip in 2014) and other small provincial towns have provided access to the Jewish cemeteries for visitors who must ask permission for the key to enter a locked gate. They are protected from vandalism. The serenity and simple beauty of each is enhanced by the pathos and beautiful poetic language in Hebrew of the inscriptions on many headstones are clearly legible.
 

The number of Danish Jews who excelled in the arts and sciences and sport is astounding in relation to their miniscule numbers. In addition to Nathansen, they include Victor Bendix, composer, conductor and pianist, Harald Bohr, mathematician and footballer (Jewish mother), Niels Bohr, physicist, Nobel Prize (1922) (Jewish mother), Victor Borge, star entertainer who was popular  in both the United States and his homeland, Edvard Brandes, politician, critic and author, minister of finance from 1909 to 1910, Henry Grünbaum, minister of finance 1965 to 1968, Ernst Brandes, economist and editor, Georg Brandes, author and critic, father of Danish naturalism, Meïr Aron Goldschmidt, author, poet and editor, Heinrich Hirschsprung, industrialist, art patron (Den Hirschsprungske Samling-Leading Art Gallery), Arne Jacobsen, architect and designer (Jewish mother), known as ‘the father of Danish design’, Arne Melchior, politician and former Transport Minister and Minister for Communication and Tourism, Marcus Melchior, chief rabbi of Denmark, father of Arne Melchior, Michael Melchior, rabbi and Israeli politician, Ivan Osiier, seven-time Olympic fencer, Abraham Kurland, Olympic wrestler (Silver medal winner in 1932), Herbert Pundik, journalist, Raquel Rastenni, jazz and popular singer, Edgar Rubin, Gestalt psychologist, Dan Zahavi, philosopher.
 

Hans Christian Andersen, a Christian from a very poor family, was sent by his mother to the tiny private Jewish school in his native Odense. This was the poorest section of town where all Jews in the city lived at the time. Andersen had become the victim of constant bullying in the ordinary state school where he was mocked for his effeminate nature and fondness for storytelling. Many years later, when he was acknowledged as one of the most famous writers in Europe, he sent a letter to the rector of the Odense Jewish school he had attended, expressing his gratitude for the refuge it provided him! Upon moving to Copenhagen, he was shocked to find that some of the wealthiest citizens of the capital were Jews, contrary to his experience in Odense as a young teenager. He was sheltered by several of them who became his patrons.
 

From the latter part of the 18th century until the beginning of the 20th, Jews resided in a dozen provincial towns, half of which maintained synagogues until they withered away as Jews and either intermarried, assimilated, migrated to the capital, Copenhagen, or emigrated abroad (some of them to the Danish West Indies—the current U.S. Virgin Islands).
 

 

 

The experience of the last 40 years has demonstrated the inability of anywhere near a majority of the growing Muslim community to seek acceptance and integration into Danish culture. Excluding the possibility of a Christian revivalist movement to challenge this trend, the secular state in Denmark will continue to wither on the vine. The Danish Cartoon controversy was proof of this. Muslim religious institutions and the power of imams and their all-encompassing religious ideology reinforce the view that divides the world in to Dar al-Islam (The House of Islam, i.e. the Muslim world-wide community which has accepted and succumbed to Islam) and the Dar al-Harb (The House of non-believers, or the House of War).

 

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The Left is Seldom Right and Modern Hebrew: The Past and Future of a Revitalized Language.
 
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