Goes to full attack on the mosques’ monetary gifts from dictatorship – Human Rights Service
Leading Danish politicians have had enough of rabid mosques receiving millions upon millions of kroner from dictatorships like Saudi Arabia. A ban list is now presented, which will stop the donations. Which country and any organization that comes on the list must become public today. For now, a rabid preacher is on the list. A key question is whether one dares to point the nose at Turkey’s president, Erdogan, who has established around 30 mosques in Denmark, paid for by Erdogan’s regime, with imams sent by the same president.
The foreign donations to mosques in Denmark have been on the radar for a number of years for politicians in the Folketing. Now Mattias Tesfaye, Minister of Immigration and Integration (S), will make his way into the porridge. Empty threats must be transformed into realpolitik: “Democracy must turn away when extreme forces want to undermine Danish democracy,” says Tesfaye.
For a number of years, some of the most controversial regimes, such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran, have supported a number of Danish mosques with large sums of money. This is despite the fact that changing governments have tried to slow down the flow of money. Today, Wednesday 23 March, it is announced which potential first investor will be shut down. So far, the first individual on the list is Kuwaiti Rashed Alolaimi, who has close ties to the extreme Grimhaj mosque in Aarhus.
Opposes our values of freedom
The immigration authorities will present a ban list on countries, organizations and persons, which the Danish side will prevent from “counteracting or undermining” Danish values, as described in the legal text from the autumn of 2020.
I have read articles, including in Berlingske, about large cash flows to Danish mosques. We have wanted to intervene above this. Fo democracy must have the opportunity to defend itself against anti-democratic forces that infiltrate Danish mosques, says Tesfaye.
One will especially go for donations that exceed 10,000 kroner, something that was announced in February 2020. Then it was revealed that several rabid mosques had been sponsored by not least Saudi Arabia.
The Taiba mosque in outer Nørrebro received around five million kroner from the Saudi embassy in Denmark, revealed Berlingske in January 2020.
This mosque, which is considered one of the most conservative in Denmark, is particularly controversial because several Islamists with terrorist connections have had to the mosque, as the terrorist from February 2015, Omar el-Hussein who attacked debate meeting and killed a film director, and affiliation the Jewish guard outside the synagogue in Copenhagen, Dan Uzan, before he himself was killed by the police. Afterwards, he was hailed by, among others, Norwegian-born Ubaydullah Hussain as a martyr. The Taiba Mosque has great similarities with the Rabita Mosque run by the Islamic Federation in Norway. A number of known terrorists have been housed in this mosque – without a single consequence, either financially or ideologically. The mosque has even been added to the Emirates’ terrorist list, which defines it as a mosque under the umbrella of the totalitarian Brotherhood.
Several rabid mosques with foreign funding
The Islamic Association in Copenhagen (also a Brotherhood Mosque?), Received in 2018 371,000 kroner from saudierne. But the largest donation came from institutions in Qatar, which for a number of years until 2018 donated at least 227 million kroner to Copenhagen Grand Mosque. The donations helped to create enormous divisions in the government of the mosque, and despite the unusually large donation, the mosque today is characterized by financial problems.
The very controversial Grimhøj Mosque in Aarhus, which is made up of most famous IS fighters, received a large sum of money from the Society of the Revival of Islamic Heritage in Kuwait years ago. And in connection with a major mosque building, the Grimhøj mosque again applied in 2020 for funding from Kuwait. In 2016, completely rabid sharia ideology was revealed there with hidden camera.
Politicians from the entire political spectrum in Denmark are up in the red field after that TV2’s hidden footage in the infamous Grimhøj Mosque shows an imam teaching a study group of women and children Sharia law and subsequent barbaric methods of punishment. The handsome imam, Abu Bilal, pedagogically explains that in an “ideal Islamic state”, unfaithful women should be stoned and sex without marriage should be punished with whipping. Apostates and deniers of Islam as well as Muslims who should not be killed faster.
Another imam in the same mosque tells the congregation that it is mandatory for a child to be from the age of seven and that it is mandatory for parents to beat them from the age of ten if they do not. An imam tells women that they can not get a job if the man does not want it and not at all work with other men.
According to Lene Kühle, professor specializing in Danish mosques at Aarhus University, the religious-political, direct influence is probably strongest in the Turkish-funded mosques. – It is probably more (influence, ed.) In relation to the long-term donations that the Turkish Ministry of Religion Diyanet has given to the Turkish mosques and the state envoys imamene i Danmark that one can expect that there is a regular impact with donations, says Lene. Kühle explains that one especially experiences an ideological element in the donation when they are used to pay imas.
This is seen especially in close ties between the Turkish embassy and the imams who are sent and paid from Turkey who operate in Denmark, among other places.
– In other cases, it’s probably more like when Qatar supports football clubs. In other words: The donations are about nurturing the image of country or individuals, says Lene Kühle.
Religiously neutral list
The special ban list is religiously neutral for legal reasons. This means that churches or Buddhist temples can also be affected if they receive money from “wrong” people / actors.
But specifically, the law prohibits donations where the intention is to “counteract or undermine democracy and fundamental freedoms and human rights” in Denmark. We assume that here the Danish government will lean on Article 9 No. 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states that interference with religious freedom can be made when this is “necessary in a democratic society for the sake of public safety, to protect public order. . , health or morals, or to protect the rights and freedoms of others ”(the link goes to a consultation statement from HRS regarding the financing of mosques from abroad).
At the same time, foreign policy considerations for, for example, Turkey or Saudi Arabia may mean that, for example, state institutions are not placed on the Danish ban list. The same applies to Norway.
The Danish ban list should be accurate, because then it can also pave the way for other Western European countries to copy Danish policy in the area.
Main photo: HRS of Turkey’s mosque in Aarhus.