Translater’s note: It’s a bit ironic that in a debate where we Danes have been accused of being Neo-nazis, the one man we can all agree on loving is… brown. It says something about the powers of observation of our enemies that they have failed to notice this pertinent little fact.
Update: This post was originally titled "A Prize Sandnigger", since that was the most direct translation I could think of from the Danish "En Præmiperker", but I understand that Sandnigger is in fact a bit more offensive in English than Perker is in Danish, so I have retitled it "A Prize Immigrant" and changed the references in the story accordingly.
Jyllands-Posten, February 19, 2006
A Prize Immigrant
By Orla Borg
Naser Khader has a vision: Islam must be reformed. His network of Democratic Moslems is going to help him make Islam make a leap of centuries in just a few years. The backing the network has received so far has been overwhelming. In just a few weeks Naser Khader has come to personify all Danish hopes of a better future with peaceful coexistence and integration. But who is he, what makes him tick, and what does he want?
It meant a lot for Tattoo-Liz in Fiolstræde in Copenhagen to make the tattoo perfect that Wednesday in August of last year.
She had spent hours finding the perfect arabic fonts on the library and she intended to use the finest calligraphy could offer.
Now the word was there, shiny and clear on the biceps and the customer was overjoyed.
Because now his body had on it the word that was also engraved on his soul: DEMOCRACY.
Some of his colleagues on Christiansborg were slightly amused when they heard. Wasn’t it a bit emotional to have that word tattooed to his biceps?
He didn’t care. They were lucky, they were born with it - democracy.
He wasn’t.
He was born in Syria.
Naser Khader still clearly remembers his father instructing the children not to repeat the words that were spoken at home.
Everybody knew that some of the 25 pupils in his class had parents working for one of that country’s seven security services, all directly controlled by the dictatorial president, Hafez Assad.
So even if his father called the President a "fool" and worse at home, he knew that it was never to be spoken elsewhere. Because there was no democracy and no freedom of speech.
Naser, the oldest of five siblings, proved himself a gifted scholar. He did well in school and impressed people in the mosque.
The boy often went to the mosque with his grandfather, who was the second-most important man in the mosque outside Damascus, after the Imam.
It impressed the men at the mosque that Naser rapidly learned whole sections of the Quran by heart. He attended the Friday prayers, went to the Quran-school, prayed five times a day and fasted all through the month of Ramadan.
The Great Upheaval
Naser thrived with Islam. He was therefore also overwhelmed by sorrow when he was told at only 11 years of age the family would uproot and be transplanted to a strange country in Europe.
The father, who was a Palestinian with roots in Nablus in the West Bank, felt watched by the Syrian authorities and went to Denmark where the family was granted asylum.
Suddenly the 11 year old Naser found himself living in Istedgade in the Vesterbro quarter of Copenhagen in an apartment in a public housing project, wedged between porn shops and prostitutes.
The family survived the transplant. A few years after immigrating to Denmark, the father had started his own business, a grocery store on Nørrebrogade and the children were doing well at The Oehlenschlägergade School.
Naser was again primed for life. He quickly advanced to become one of the brightest pupils of his class, a success achived through many hours of studying. Almost too many hours, his friend Ahmed from Egypt thought. The boys learned to use the public playgrounds of Nørrebrogade where they played football till dusk.
The spiritual base for the family was still Friday prayers at the mosque of The Islamic Community.
The New Imam
One day the father told Naser that a new Imam had come to the mosque. Some of the fathers’ friends had fetched him to Denmark from Nigeria, a place he had come to after being expelled from Kuwait.
The name of that Imam was Abu Laban.
Naser went to Friday prayers and listened to the Imam who preached with such intensity that not a man in the abandoned warehouse wasn’t moved.
But as Naser entered his teenage years, a change came over his way of perceiving at the world. He would sit for hours reading Danish litterature, learning how Danish society had evolved through the ages to finally reach the stage of modern democracy. He came to look at the equal rights between the sexes with a growing admiration, although it was very different from what he knew from his childhood.
And when the teachers at his school recommended his parents that he be allowed to go to community college, it lead to his own personal battle of cultures.
Especially when he was introduced to the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who said: "God is Dead", and the Danish Kierkegaard with his "Either, Or" of the the duty of each single man to choose his own way in life, Naser decided: He would no longer practice Islam.
For him the religion was no longer compatable with the values he now held the dearest: first and foremost the will to democracy and the independent relation of each man to his duties and his responsibilities.
He moved away from home when he was still in college.
The family had moved to the Noth-Western quarter of Copenhagen and Naser found an apartment nearby. That also gave him the space to be with his Danish girlfriend.
A Passion for Democracy
His parent weren’t pleased when he moved. And they didn’t become elated when he didn’t follow their wish for him to become either a doctor or an engineer after he graduated.
Instead he chose to study his passion; the rules of democracy. He was accepted to the polit-education at Copenhagen University.
His feeling of being Danish and belonging in the Danish frame of mind was constantly strengthened by reading great Danish authors and philosophers such as Hal Koch, N.F.S. Grundtvig and Georg Brandes.
And while his passion for Danish democracy grew stronger, Naser was constantly reminded that he was from a part of the world where democracy did not exist.
For many years he was an interpreter at a number of treatment centres for victims of torture, where he listened to one horror story after the other of the way dictatorial regimes will persecute people who don’t agree.
After interviews, he more than once experienced the need to go to the toilet and vomit.
He also began to function as an interpreter in situations where it became clear to him that the Danish case workers, social advisors, teachers, pedagogues, policemen, to name a few, where talking to immigrants of whose situation they knew nothing. He was especially struck by the fact that most Danes’ knowledge of Islam was almost non-existant.
Therefore Khader published the book "Honour and Shame" in 1996. Here he tried to give an introduction to the central tenets of Mid-Eastern culture which were based partially on ancient culture and partially on Islam.
The book became a bestseller in Denmark. Here was finally an immigrant able to explain the way things were, the people working with immigrants were saying.
Shamed at Friday prayers
But in The Islamic Community, Imam Abu Laban railed against this Naser Khader who was daring enough to write a book about Islam without consulting an Imam!
The wrath of Abu Laban was so great the Naser Khader’s father was devastated. He faithfully came to prayer every Friday and he was hurt to hear his son reviled in front of all the member of the community.
He therefore decided to arrange a meeting to reconciliate Khader and Laban.
Accounts of the meeting differ, but it was clear that Abu Laban did not accept Khader’s book.
That proved not to be the last confrontation the two had.
Now, having put aside Islam, Naser Khader began to call himself a "Cultural Moslem". He acknowledged his cultural heritage, but only practiced it to the degree that he would participate in prayers at funerals.
At the same time his political career began. He was elected to the Citizens’ Council of Copenhagen for the Radical Party. But he knew that his goal was to enter the legislature of the democracy to which he had turned when religion failed him. He wanted to be elected to Folketinget.
Nasra and Nidal
A special night - a week before the election of 2001 - Naser Khader did something that removed any doubt as to whether he would be elected.
He appeared on prime time in the TV-Avisen news program, clad in a light blue denim shirt, his face covered in sweat from running to a studio in Amman in Jordan to appear on live TV to tell the story that was on everybody’s lips those days. The story of the two immigrant children Nasra and Nidal, who had first been removed from their Jordanian parents’ home in Denmark, the parents being charged with willfull neglect, only to - due to a colossal screwup by the local administration - be sent home to their parents who had sent the children on to Jordan where they lived in squalor.
All of Denmark was incensed by the matter and many were moved by the young, dark-haired politician from the Radicals who intervened on behalf of the children.
Naser Khader was the first immigrant ever to be directly elected to Folketinget.
A small step for Denmark, a huge leap for Naser Khader.
It was considered right up his alley to appoint him spokesman on immigration, but he didn’t want to branded an immigrant politician, so he has been spokesman for the Radicals on health, culture, equal rights, ethics and development.
Though he couldn’t keep away from - or be kept away from, for that matter - immigration policy.
Soon he was both revered and reviled.
To many Danes, he was the essence of the form of integration the majority of Danes would like to see - close to assimilation - since he closely resembled us. He wasn’t against having a pint now and then, either. One of his friends considers him a man of good intentions: He has become "A Prize Immigrant".
Traditions Must Be Challenged
Some Moslems consider Naser Khader an apostate - a person who has left the faith of Islam and who has even criticised it in public. That has led to several threats on his life.
Those were the lines on the battlefield when the (in)famous Muhammed cartoons were published in Jyllands-Posten September 30, last year.
At first Khader didn’t react at all.
He found a few of the cartoons to be rather distasteful, though most were funny. Apart from the first, he saw the cartoons as an act of necessary cultural radicalism - necessary to challenge the dogmas of religion.
But then things took a turn. 3000 Moslems demonstrated in the streets of Copenhagen. Khader knew many of them. A delegation of Imams went to the Middle East to plead for help from Moslem leaders and heads of state. He knew most of them too. The first place the Danish flag was put on fire was in Nablus in the West Bank - his father’s place of birth.
The first place they torched a Danish embassy was in Damascus in Syria - the city he left for Denmark when he was a child.
And the first to issue death threats were Palestinians - the People of his family.
The violent reactions abroad led to suspicions against a certain group in Denmark - the Moslems.
They were apparently the ones who wouldn’t have any freedom of speech in Denmark and rallied the masses and the governments of the Middle East against Denmark.
And the obvious symbol of the Moslems was easy to find - it was clearly the Imams, the ones who acted as the only conduit for Moslems to the general society in Denmark.
Khader faces Laban
It was then Naser Khader decided. He had to stand up to the Imams.
In his view, the Imams don’t represent the Moslems of Denmark at all. They may speak for a few thousand, but there are 200000 Moslems in Denmark.
He decided to form the Democratic Moslems to show that the majority of Moslems in Denmark want democracy. Inevitably this would have to lead to a showdown, a showdown with his Arch Enemy.
Khader versus Laban.
This has so far lead to Laban calling Khader "a rat" at Friday prayers.
Khader believes so much in his initiative that he has decided it would be beneath him to respond.
After two weeks 800 Moslems have joined and 5000 ethnic Danes have joined a financial support group. A bank has donated 100000 DKK for rooms and entrepeneurs and businessmen are lining up to support the Democratic Moslems. Last week they were warmly welcomed by PM Anders Fogh Rasmussen in his official residence at Marienborg.
Countless letters to the editors mention one word over and over again when they speak of him and his initiative: HOPE.
After weeks of nothing but negative news of Denmark and the Danes, Khader has lit the flame of hope. As he did for a 72-year old pensioner from Silkeborg who pledged 500 DKK to the Democratic Moslems because it has relit in him the fire of hope.
A Life of Threats
Privately, Khader pays daily. He has received several death threats, mostly from people he consider Islamists.
His wife, Bente Dalsbæk, who used to work as the top judicial advisor to the Chairman of Folketinget, says that she will be there for him always and urges him to go on in spite of the threats.
The pair met at Culture Night 2003 on Christiansborg. "Multicultural Night" is what they jokingly have named it. They each had a child of five and six respectively and have a son of a year and a half together.
Naser Khader is followed by two Security Agents when he arrives in a dark blue Peugeot 605 on loan from the Intelligence Service of the Police for our meeting in central Copenhagen.
He has just spent an hour in a fitness-center but grabs an apple and a cup of tea and sits, relaxed as ever.
Why form this network? You’re risking your life, after all…
"For me it’s about identity and existence and life and death. I see the fundamentalist ‘cerebral haemorrhage’ close in around me. I have people I know who sympathize with Bin Laden, people who start sending their children to Quran-schools, who sympathize with the regime in Iran - and that is my reason for intervening. I think that what is going on at present is the most important battle for values Denmark has ever fought. To stay on the sidelines would mean giving up my identity."
Publicans and Imams
What is your vision for the future?
"My modest hopes are to create the determining factors needed to create a reformation and enlightenment for Islam. That may sound ambitious. But the people who are needed to create the conditions needed for that are us - the Moslems of the West. My ambitions are - apart from making integration less painful - to show that Islam and democracy can be made to be compatable. If the Moslems of the West can not reform Islam, nobody can.
And I have contacted Moslem democrats in Great Britain and th United States, so I think we are getting there."
Whose fight are you fighting?
"I think I am fighting my mother’s fight. She’s a Moslem, religious, who prays five times a day and wears a scarf. But she believes in Danish democracy. In that way she is a lot like many of my friends - Moslems with their hearts, but not Islamists or Extremists. I feel I am fighting a fight for the majority of Moslems. Islam was once a religion which was about the personal relationship of man to Allah. But some Imams have intervened, like the publicans of the Bible and have taken for themselves the power of Allah."
The words are part of a torrent, filled with self-confidence and energy.
Right now, the wind is at his back.
But his friend Ahmed, who he has known since school, warns:
"He must be careful not to create a rift between Moslems. I would like it if he and Abu Laban could reconcile."
Nothing in Naser’s manner suggests that is something he is willing to do.
On the contrary.
The rift has been made.
Moslems in Denmark now have two spokesmen.
The question will be whether the reformists or the traditionalists prove to be stronger.
