"Denmark loses tolerance" - Guardian

I'm working my way through my collection of older articles : this one is taken from the Guardian from 2008, written after the Danish embassy in Pakistan was bombed. Here are some interesting quotes.

Marianne Vestager, the leader of the social liberal party De Radikale, pointed out that it is now time for Denmark to revise its foreign policy and its confrontational stance on Islam and Muslims...

Yes, and if you'll recall, she was skewered in the Danish press afterwards for daring to suggest this.

On the whole, it would seem that the bombing has not changed the Danes' already polarised views on Islam and coexistence. The tragedy in Islamabad only confirms the views of those on both sides of the argument...

While some Danes worry about similar attacks on Danish soil, it would seem many are proud of Denmark's newfound role as a "player" in the international conflict between the west and Islam. This is certainly not a position we used to pride ourselves on - nor is it one that is shared by other Scandinavian countries....

But let us not forget that a group of experienced and highly respected Danish ambassadors during the prophet cartoon crisis appealed to the Danish government to show more understanding of Muslim sentiment. This was not about appeasing, just people used to dealing with diplomacy on an international level providing sound advice.

It's not easy getting a rational view of the Muhammed cartoons inside Denmark these days. Sadly, they have become icons of Danish culture, and while I'm so sick of them that I'd rather just forget they ever existed, hardly a week goes by without them being dredged up by the Danish press in some way or another. Just today, the German tv station ZDF was excoriated in the Danish press for "chickening out of" doing a piece on Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard (details in Politiken). ZDF argues that the piece isn't entertaining enough to warrant showing; Erik Guldager, a Danish gallery owner who was scheduled to appear in the editorial countered that ZDF was exercising "self-censorship" out of fear for Islamic extremists.

There's that eye-rolling expression again, self-censorship. Is that the new and convenient contraction for "Wait, why have you stopped offending the people in the turbans?" Now I'm not sure who's right in this latest pickle, but I do get where ZDF are coming from when they say Westergaard isn't entertaining : the man barely makes likable. Why does every mention of him end up escalating to the tired "clash of civilizations" thing? Didn't we leave that behind us when GWB left the White House? If my civilization does end up marching off to Armageddon, I'd prefer it if our banner wasn't a wild-eyed Muhammaed with a bomb strapped to his dome. Whatever kind of message that sends, it's the wrong kind.