News & Comment

Go Ahead - Keep Sawing Off the Branch You Are Sitting On

News:

On Wednesday the 6th of April, Danish politicians held the first of three meetings to plan how to fight “radicalized” environments and “hate-preachers”.

So far they have agreed that they should hit hard against radicalization, but so far they fail to agree how it should be done.

Comment:

There are several proposals to fight “hate-preachers” and “radicalized” environments, among which are:

An attempt to criminalize utterances. Restraining orders, so certain persons cannot attend certain mosques. License revocations to make marriage contracts from “hate-preachers”. Closure of certain Islamic webpages without warning and without a typical trial. Rejection of foreign “hate-preachers” at the border. Finally, they want to reinforce the supervision with Muslim private schools to ensure they indoctrinate the pupils with secular western values.

While some politicians focused on not falling in the trap of doing something that will look impressive but not have a real effect, others were worried about damaging democracy. 
Sofie Carsten Nielsen of the Radicals said: “We are not in for undermining our democratic values, because then we have sold out ourselves”.

The political will to go far is there, but they should however know that nothing of this will move the Muslim community one inch, but rather it has only made the community come closer together and closer to Islam. Also they should not worry of damaging democracy, because democracy is inherently damaged, and cannot be fixed. In an ideology built on compromises, pragmatism and hypocrisy, they are bound to sell out on their own values.

Every time Danish politicians try to tighten existing laws or introduce new laws in the fight against Islam and Muslims, they undermine their own principles and values, and thereby expose how fragile and hypocritical they really are. Not only to Muslims, but also to their own populations.  

So to the Western politicians in general and the Danish in particular we will say: Go ahead – keep sawing off the branch you are sitting on. Muslims will stick to Islam, and Islam as an alternative will catch you when you fall.

Written for the Central Media Office of Hizb ut Tahrir by

Junes Kock

Media Representative of Hizb ut Tahrir in Scandinavia