Agora

Lately there’s been a lot of debate in Denmark about the host of a new debate programme on TV which Asmaa Abdol-Hamid will be hosting together with Adam Holm. The most talked-about subject has been Asmaa’s hijab scarf. Here’s a picture of her:

Personally I don’t think it’s a problem. If that’s her choice - and she has indicated that it is - then let her keep it. People stick metal rods through their tongues and that’s not a problem either - though I daresay it would create a stir if a host on TV had one. But I do object to the views she represents and the fact that she can’t keep them to herself while acting as a host. This rather long post is going to be about that.

Who is Asmaa Abdol-Hamid?

Asmaa is a social worker in the town of Odense. She came to Denmark in 1988 when she was six. She and her family - six siblings and her mother and father - had fled first from Lebanon to the United Arab Emirates and then to Denmark.
Source: Article in Jyllands-Posten “Asmaa på hjemmebane”. March 16, 2005

The earliest news I can find about her is from June 16th, 2001. At a bazaar in Vollsmose, an immigrant-dominated neighbourhood in Odense, she and her sisters are photographed selling falafels, cookies and snacks. She is reported to be heading the Young Women’s Activity Organisation.
Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “Hyggedag in Vollsmose”, June 16th, 2005

At a demonstration two months later, the Young Women’s Activity Organisation is heard from once again. This time they are demonstrating against the to-be-appointed Israeli Ambassador to Denmark, Carmi Gillon. Carmi Gillon was once the head of Israel’s intelligence service, Shin Beth, which has used “physical pressure” against detainees. Quoting:

With blood and soul we’re liberating Denmark, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid shouts to the demonstrators.

Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “Piger demonstrerede mod ambassadør Gillon”, August 16th, 2001

In a debate in Fyens Stiftstidende’s Letters section during July and August of 2004, she debates the 24-year rule, which says that Danes (though it’s aimed at immigrant who have a tradition for arranged marriages) cannot bring their spouses to Denmark before they’ve turned 24. Asmaa claims that the purpose of the rule is to lessen the number of foreigners in Denmark and that the rule may be in violation of Human Rights. That wasn’t the intention of the rule, many respondents say. It was aimed at preventing forced/arranged marriages between young immigrants and desperate young people from their home countries.
Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, letters to the editor through July and August of 2004

On December 23rd, 2004 Asmaa is told by the local Social Democrats that she won’t be a candidate for the Social Democrats.
Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “S-forening vragede Asmaa”, December 23rd, 2004

On March 22nd, 2005 she instead decides to run for the Unity List, a hodge-podge of Socialists and Communists.
Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “Muslimsk debattør stiller op for Enhedslisten”, March 22nd, 2005

In a letter to the editor of May 18th, 2005, she attacks the Queen for having made some remarks about immigrants in a new biography about her. Quoting from her letter:

It’s very sad that the Queen of Denmark in the biography ‘Margrethe’ makes remarks about limits to tolerance when it comes to Moslems in this country and that Denmark at the moment is being challenged by Islam.

Quoting Queen Margrethe from Nomos:

We are presently being challenged by Islam. Both globally and locally. […]Resistance has to be shown and sometimes one has to run the risk of being labelled something less than flattering. Because some things one shouldn’t be tolerant about. When one is tolerant, one should stop and make sure whether it is out of convenience or conviction.[…]Perhaps we are at a crossroad. Crossroads unfortunately very often only show themselves after one has passed them. But we’ve in any case understood that we mustn’t submit to what’s frightening. We cannot sell our conception of justice and legality.

Her letter received a flurry of responses, all of them condemning her.
Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “Dronning svigter”, April 18th, 2005

In May of 2005, 24 year-old Ammar Hasan was shot outside a the Copenhagen disco Rust by a bouncer. Imam Abu Laban urges the bouncer’s family to pay 200,000 DKK to the family of the deceased in blood-money so they won’t be bothered. In a letter to the editor in Fyens Stiftstidende of June 16th, Asmaa supports him.
Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “Se på krigen i Irak”, June 14th, 2005

On July 6th, 2005 Asmaa participates in a demonstration against George Bush.
Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “Bush-modstand samlede bredt”, July 7th, 2005

On October 29th of 2005, acting as the coordinator for 11 Moslem organisations, she filed a complaint with the police against Jyllands-Posten’s caricatures of Muhammed, saying:

The Culture Editor of Jyllands-Posten says in the article that Moslems must be ready to be subjected to insult and ridicule. This proves to us that the purpose of the article was to insult and ridicule a legally existing faith community and that is prohibited by the article regarding blasphemy.

Source: Jyllands-Posten, “Muslimer melder JP til politiet”, October 29, 2005

On November 1st, 2005 Asmaa refuses to shake hands with a Alex Behrendtsen of the DPP at a debate, saying that Moslem women don’t touch men. This is disputed by many Moslems and Danes.
Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “DF forsøgte med en udstrakt hånd”, November 2nd, 2005 + Fyens Stiftstidende, “- Det er høfligt at give et håndtryk”, November 4th, 2005

On November 8th, 2005 the Unity List distances itself from Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, saying:

The message Asmaa sends [through her actions] is not the primary message of the Unity List

Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “Afstand til Abdol-Hamid”, November 8th, 2005

On November 11th, 2005 Karsten Hønge of the Socialist People’s Party attacks Asmaa, saying she is a Moslem fundamentalist who shouldn’t call herself a socialist. Quoting from the clip:

We [the socialists] are rooted in Free Thought, Liberation, Tolerance and Humanism and I think that if you are trying to limit Freedom of Speech in Denmark by banning some so simple drawings as those in question, then you belong to the reactionaries.

Source: Clip in TV2/Fyn, November 11th, 2005 - link

The election turned out to be a succes for Alex Behrendtsen of the DPP and Karsten Hønge of the Socialist People’s Party. Asmaa Abdol-Hamid wasn’t elected.
Source: Fyens Stiftstidende, “Odense Byråd 2006-2009″, November 16th, 2005

On March 16, 2006 Asmaa tells the Danes that the 11 Moslem organisations she represents are going to take the case of the Muhammed cartoons to the European Human Rights Court in Brussels, since the Crown’s Prosecutor found that the cartoons didn’t break Danish law.
Source: Jyllands-Posten, “Muslimer vil gå til tops med klage”, March 16th, 2006

Comments on her history
I find it strange that the publicly-owned Denmark’s Radio is willing to allow Asmaa Abdol-Hamid on the air as a host of her own programme. It’s just not done, allowing people so involved with politics and with such extreme views to be hosts on a programme. I wonder what their reasons for hiring her were…

The Programme
The first programme was shown March 29th and was called “The Dangerous Multiculture”. Karen Jespersen, a former Minister for Integration for the Social Democrats was the guest.
Here I will translate some excerpts from the programme. It can be viewed online by clicking this link.
This programme is actually a perfect example of media bias. Here we have a person who tried to get the newspaper which published the cartoons censored and who now attacks Denmark as such for not censoring it, asking this question:

Has [the Muhammed-crisis] increased the distance between Moslem and non-Moslems in Denmark?

Of course it has, you silly twit! Censorship is not taken lightly by the Danes. A fact which I find it difficult to believe you haven’t noticed. And what’s with the “Moslems and non-Moslems”? Surely you mean Danish Moslems and Danes in general? Moslems aren’t the majority yet, you know… Or didn’t you have the courage to say “Moslems and Infidels”?

Talking about the cartoons, Asmaa says:

[…]the Prophet Muhammed - God’s peace and blessings be upon him - […]

That was just uncalled for. Fuck the Prophet and don’t use your religious language in a programme that’s financed by MY money where I’m paying part of your salary, you dumb bitch.

Something I noticed just after that, is that whenever the camera turns to Asmaa, she has a mocking little smile on her big cow-face.

At one point Karen Jespersen says that the whole thing was about fear of retaliation - that Jyllands-Posten was testing the limits of free speech because some people didn’t dare to draw Muhammed. This is a well-documented fact. Quoting Wikipedia:

On September 17, 2005, the Danish newspaper Politiken ran an article under the headline “Dyb angst for kritik af islam”[12] (”Profound fear of criticism of Islam”). The article discussed the difficulty encountered by the writer Kåre Bluitgen, who was initially unable to find an illustrator who was prepared to work with Bluitgen on his children’s book Koranen og profeten Muhammeds liv (”The Qur’an and the prophet Muhammad’s life”). Three artists declined Bluitgen’s proposal before an artist agreed to assist anonymously. According to Bluitgen:

One [artist declined], with reference to the murder in Amsterdam of the film director Theo van Gogh, while another [declined, citing the attack on] the lecturer at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute in Copenhagen[12].

Asmaa obivously doesn’t do much homework, otherwise she wouldn’t have asked this question:

But wasn’t that something we discovered after the crisis erupted and not before the cartoons were drawn?

The rest of the programme is more or less a normal debate programme. Asmaa asks critical questions of Karen Jespersen where she does her best to try to prove that the poverty and the conditions in Moslem countries have nothing to do with Islam. She also asks whether the 24-year rule is reasonable - a subject we know her opinion on from my history of her political ‘career’. Adam asks question in the best tradition of leftist academics which are critical of the “tone” of the debate and at one time accuses Karen Jespersen of being kind-of-a-xenophobe because she isn’t a full-blood multiculturalist like he is.

The programme would have been very depressing had not the guest been Karen Jespersen who gives good answers to all the questions. My impression is that it is more of a court of multiculturalism and Islamophilia than it is a debate programme. If a leftist Moslem multiculturalist was invited to the studio, there wouldn’t be much to debate.