Agora

Jyllands-Posten, Friday, February 8, 2006

Education of the Mind

By Per Nyholm

Denmarks needs to see beyond money and growth rates and begin an education in the life of the intellect, where society is a commitment carrying with it more duties than responsibilities.

(Rome) After the succesful Nazi grab for power in Germany in 1933, it became costumary for Danish Foreign Ministers, first P. Munch and then Erik Scavenius during the second world war, to regularly remind leading members of the press of the need for delicacy in dealing with the Germans.

Both Munch and Scavenius preferred not to hear about concentration camps or the mass murder of Jews and Hitler’s political adversaries. They would much rather hear about amazing German triumphs, of the German economic miracle and of new autobahns.

Journalists who brought down the wrath of the German Ambassador upon themselves were cast out. Among these was the foreign correspondent of Berlingske Tidende (Danish Conservative Daily), Nicolas Blædel. Many years later, the firing of him made the honorable Erik Seidenfaden vent his wroth, not only on Berlingske Tidende but also on Politiken (Danish Radical Daily) which in 1940 smeared Blædel for "a mistaken line of inquiry into foreign affairs, which has in no way benefited Danish interests."

After the war, free thinking journalists were asked to be mindful of of the Soviet Union. Especially The Left was more than happy to oblige and continued this tradition untill the disappearance of European Communism in 1989. During this period the "efficient entrepeneurial sector" was as eager to be helpful. The respect for Democracy was nowhere near as common as the childrens’ books would have us believe.

The workings of the same system is recognizable in connection with the Jyllands-Posten Muhammed caricatures though we are not dealing with aggressive super powers at our back door but with remote, substandard regimes who might be able to boycot Danish cheese but apart from that are absolutely baffled on the point of how to deal with the cartoons. I think Jyllands-Posten was well within its rights to publish said cartoons and all the whining and the threats and the torching of our embassies only acts to confirm my opinion.

The cartoons are legal and clearly within the bounds of the freedom of the press which naturally may seem offending to political, religious and other interests. It must be so. The freedom of the press is not a bargaining chip in democratic societies.

But the confirmation of my conviction is tempered by sorrow. I have always been well received in the Arab countries and I am especially moved by the plight of the Palestinians - now a people without a country.

That anger and despair rules the Arab Street is no wonder. People there are poor beyond belief and have gone from defeat to defeat; the Crusades, the dissolution of the Caliphate, German, French and English Colonialism, the Jewish immigration to Palestine.

That is a road of tears which in no small part is due to Islam remaining the core of a society which increasingly came under pressure, ending in a state of fossilisation and single-minded regard for The Beyond; a contrast to The West which is increasingly focused on the here-and-now. These people shall now, by the hands of manipulating religious leaders, suffer a new, unnecessary defeat.

Because about the cartoons there is only this to say: they cannot be undone.

Another perceived injustice will burrow into the Arab mind, a harsh diet for people not motivated by Democracy and Freedom but Supreme Justice.

The Moslems in Denmark have remarkably poor leaders, which is another in the line of reasons why we must educate Danish Imams in order to further an interpretation of the Quran in keeping with the times, to be based around public Mosques, schools and other institutions.

Danes are generally open-minded and cheerful, be they Protestants, Catholics, Jews or something else. We have space for the 200000 Moslems of whom we know that the great majority are peaceful and good citizens.

But there are bottom-feeders on both sides. Talk is heard of Danish Pigs and Moslem Vermin. Some use such harsh language that it reminds one of certain Germans immediately before the Kristallnacht. Events - splintered shop windows, people beaten, fear, hate - the things that please the harbingers of civil strife.

What is needed is an extensive debate: why do the great majority of intellectuals not get what is at stake with these cartoons, whose publication they criticise? How do we integrate the Moslems into the Danish society at large? How can we dampen the hate in some Danish circles towards Islam and vice versa?

Many - among those the infamous Imams and the scarecrows of the extreme right - simply need an education in how to coexist with people different from themselves. But we mustn’t make the mistake of equipping the immigrants with special rights. They may live their lives as they chose but they are not to be given privileges that are not available to natives nor are laws to be passed on their account which are not in keeping with the traditions of the host country. We must strive for a mutual, broad tolerance which (in the word of Fernando Savater) does not tolerate everything.

These goals are not furthered by too quickly making technicians, gas station attendants, physicists, and computer experts out of people without instilling into them some sense of community. On this count, the current administration has not been helpful.

But none can fault the Prime Minister for his actions these last troubled days - he has seen what neither Munch nor Scavenius ever saw. But we need to move on, get past the talk of money and growth rates. We need an education of the mind, an education in the life of the intellect. We need to learn that society is a commitment which brings with it more duties than rights.