"We will keep on working for integration, to build bridges. If you don't know who is Muhammad I am telling you please read about Muhammad," said the imam. | That might not be such a good idea. Most folk's idea of a prophet doesn't include banditry, slavery, rape and sex with 9 year olds |
Danish Muslims have bought land for a purpose-built modern mosque, but they say their application somehow always gets stuck in the planning stage. It is one more grievance.
Space may be cramped, but mosque attendance is high because all the major newspapers have just reprinted one of the controversial cartoons that shows the Prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban. This was after Danish intelligence said they had uncovered a plot by three Muslims in Denmark to kill one of the cartoonists. "We were all punished by the printing of those pictures," says the imam in his sermon.
He is angry that none of the men accused of masterminding the plot are being put on trial - the Danish intelligence services say revealing their evidence would compromise their intelligence network.
Instead, they are expelling two of the suspects who do not have Danish citizenship and freeing the third who does. "How does it make sense that a person who is trying to kill somebody is being arrested, charged, interrogated and then released and yet still we should feel that he's a terrorist?" asks Imran Hussein, who runs Network an advisory body for Muslim organisations in Denmark. Like many Muslims here he was appalled by the discovery of the plot to kill the cartoonist but now he is more sceptical.
'We despair'
Denmark has about 250,000 Muslims - from Pakistan, Somalia, Turkey, Iraq and many other countries. It is a small figure, but Muslims make up 5% of the population. "A lot of people are afraid of Islam today in Denmark and when they are afraid of Islam it means they are afraid of me too," says Sofian, who was born in Denmark but feels he no longer has a future there.
| "The Danish press should have learned from their previous mistakes and the only thing the Muslims are asking for is respect, nothing else". |
Feisal says he cannot understand why the media keeps focusing on the idea that Muslims are trying to take their freedom of speech away from them. "It's the media who started it this time, so I feel a lot of it is their fault," agrees Kamran, who also thinks there has been some positive dialogue with ordinary Danish people.