Today a court in Denmark found three Muslim men guilty of planning a terrorist attack. A fourth man was acquitted of the same charges. Two of the men, Mohammed Zaher, 34, and Ahmad Khaldhahi, 22, were sentenced to 11 years in prison, while the third, Abdallah Hansen, who is a convert, will have to spend four years behind bars. Khaldhahi who is not a Danish citizen will be expelled from the country after having served his sentence.

The four were arrested in September 2006 in Odense, Denmarks third largest city, in a big police operation. The police successfully planted an agent inside the cell, that according to the verdict was in the process of planning an attack. Two of the convicted have admitted that they tried to make a bomb, but they insisted that it wasn’t to commit a terrorist attack, just to celebrate a child’s birthday with fireworks.

During the arrests the police in the homes of the suspected found TATP, an explosive compound used in the 2005 bombings in London, fertilizer, hydrogen peroxide, sulphuric acid, acetone and other material that may be used to make explosives. They also found bomb-manuals downloaded from the internet, more than a hundred sound files with jihadist-material, speeches by Osama bin Laden, films about the London bombings in 2005, slips of paper filled with chemical expressions.

In the summer of 2006 the cell travelled to Copenhagen to point out possible targets for an attack, Denmark’s parliament and the newspaper Jyllands-Posten’s Copenhagen office. Earlier they had spoken about blowing up me and my house with a car bomb, just for fun, as they put it in court. A year before Ahmad Khaldhahi had written a letter of praise to Al Qaida’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, saying that he wanted to go to Iraq and join the Jihad. Shortly thereafter he, in fact, travelled to Iraq, but in his own words he went to make a documentary. He only spent one week in Iraq, his country of birth.

In november of 2005 Ahmad Khaldhahi wrote to Osama bin Laden on an Al Qaida affilliated website that he was willing to volunteer to take revenge for the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in Jyllands-Posten. Three months later on another website he was asking for poison in order to kill those who had offended the prophet.

At one point the cell tested a bomb in a soccerfield, and all along they were downloading material from the internet that contained information about the art of bomb-making.

The conviction of the three is a victory for Denmark’s intelligence service. It was the first terror-case involving a policeagent. The defence had tried to point the finger at the agent inside the cell claiming that he had provoked the three to engage in the planning of an attack. This was refuted by the chairman of the court, and the jury followed his lead.

The prosecution had asked for sentences of 12-14 years. They said that they would not appeal the sentences. Magnus Ranstorp, a Swedish expert on terror, said to Berlingske Tidende that the verdict may have a deterring effect on people flirting with the thought of joining a jihadist group.

”The length of the sentences send a clear signal that if you go down this road, you risk harsh punishment. It may deter young Muslims, who are on their way into a radicial Islamist group. Hopefully they will think twice and turn their back on the group,” said Magnus Ranstorp.

On the contrary he indicated that these sentences will have no effect at all on the most committed Islamists.

”They think that the convicted are innocent victims, and the verdict will confirm their conspiracy theories about how Danish society is against Muslims and convict innocent people. But this kind of people is beyond reach anyway.”

The verdict was handed down on the same day as Prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen appointed his new conservative government after national elections was held on November 13. Fogh Rasmussen, a staunch ally of the US, is serving his third term as head of government.

Once upon a time art was meant to provoke and challenge authority and widely held opinions, be they of religious, political or cultural nature, but that obviously isn’t the case anymore. Grayson Perry, known for his decorated pots featuring sex and violence, admits in an interview with the London Times, that he out of fear is avoiding artistic comment on Islam.

”I’ve censored myself,” Perry said at a discussion on art and politics organised by the Art Fund of the UK according to the Times.

”The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat.”

I think Grayson Perry needs to be commended for his honesty. He admits that he is afraid. He isn’t trying to avoid the issue by saying that he respects people’s religious feelings, and therefore he will not ridicule Islam.

Perry once depicted a teddy bear being born from a penis as the Virgin Mary, so it would be difficult for him anyway to say that he refrains from taking on religion as such.

”I am interested in religion and I’ve made a lot of pieces about it. With other targets you’ve got a better idea of who they are but Islamism is very amorphous. You don’t know what the threshold is. Even what seems an innocuous image might trigger off a really violent reaction so I just play safe all the time.”

I feel your pain.

Perry points to the killing of the Dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh after he made a movie attacking Islam for condoning violence against women as a chilling example of what can happen to an artist who insults Islam. He also said that he had been very scared to see the violent reactions across the Islamic world to the Mohammed cartoons published by me in Jyllands-Posten, and the protests against Salman Rushdie’s knighthood this year.

Reactions like the one by Perry was exactly what prompted me to commission the Danish cartoons, and that is the reason why we need more cartoons of the Prophet, not less. In fact, Tate Gallery censoring avantgardist artist John Latham’s installation God Is Great was one of the examples I used defending publication of the cartoons. I think Perry makes the distinction between good manners, editing and self censorhip very clear. He says, that he would really have liked to target Islamism, but he is afraid of doing so. That is self censorship, while good manners imply that one refrains from doing something in order not to offend. If one holds that position, though, I think one has be consistent and needs to avoid ridiculing or challenging any religion, and not just Islam.

Says Tim Marlow, director of exhibitions at White Cube, a London gallery:

”It’s something that’s there but very few people have explicitly admitted. Institutions, museums and galleries are probably doing most of the censorship. I would be lying if I said of course we would show something like the Danish cartoons. I think there are genuine reasons for concern. Fundamentalism is a really complex issue and one of the things artists can do is to help us through that complexity. Whether or not it’s their responsibility to do that I’m not sure though.”

I think it’s very simple. Anyone who crosses the line of the rules of public debate and resorts to violence is out, and should be treated accordingly. The only limit a society needs to impose on speech involves incitement to violence.

Remember Mark Steyn’s apocalyptic vision of Europe?

In America Alone the funny and witty Canadian predicted the end of Europe.

Why?

Because Europeans are having too few babies. Demography is destiny, Steyn said. And once Europeans aren’t willing or able to reproduce themselves, they will slowly but surely dissappear. The number of elderly people in need of care will grow and grow, and at some point no one will be left to pay the bills. The only way out is immigration to fill an empty labor market, and this opens the door for Muslims from the third world, which will lead to the islamization of Europe.

Those are the happy choices of Europe.

The first will kill the body of Europe; the second will kill its soul.

Sounds convincing and logical. Maybe, but not to conservative philosopher and writer Roger Scuton. He happens to disagree, though he concedes that those profetic thoughts are not entirely without foundation.

In the latest issue of the American Spectator Sruton welcomes the declining birth rates of Europe. He calls on the Europeans to skip the welfare state and to stay in the labor market beyond retirement age.

”Declining birth rates is no bad thing. There are too many people in Europe: far too many. And they consume too much of everything.: too much food, too much water, too much fuel, too much land.”

He continues:

”No one aware of what Europe has meant, as a way of life and a cultural icon, can roam the highways and byways of the continent as it is today without wanting to shout ”stop!”. And the best way to stop is to stop reproducing. The Europeans have therefore hit on the solution to their self-inflicted problem. Somewhere deep down in the conscience collective, they have formed the policy to have fewer children, to retreat to a level of population that might just be sustainable with destroying what remains from the century of civil war. Well done, Europe! There is hope for your future!”

To Scruton the problem is not declining birth rates but the welfare state. More than half of the economy is managed by the state, and more than half of those in employment are employed by the state.

”The state achieved its dominance by ever more fantastic promises – promises that cannot be honored, but the dishonoring of which can be postponed by mortgaging the country’s future. The state promised early retirement for all its employees and a secure pension thereafter; it promised free health care forever, and free education at every level… It promised every kind of security to those in employment, and promised to make the employer bear the cost.”

The consequence?

”When the state compels you to offer security of tenure to your employees, to bear the full cost of their absences, and to make a full contribution to their health-care needs and their pensions, it is sending a very direct message to employers: Don’t employ young people. That is why there is widespread unemployment among young people in Europe.”

So:

”The welfare state has made older people redundant before their time, and younger people unemployable. That is the real cause of the ”demographic crisis”, which is not a demographic crisis at all, but the immediate and inevitable effect of socialist ways of thinking.”

”My right to pension for life”, ”my right to employment”, ”my right to welfare”, ”my right to this, that or the other that the state, in its madness, has promised me” – all these rights will one day have to be exposed for what they are: not rights at all, but gifts, promised in vain by the bankrupt…Here and there the message is beginning to be heard, that an aging population is no bad thing, if it is also a working population, that to retire in the prime of life, with skills painfully acquired and everywhere needed, is to mistreat not only society but also oneself.”

Scruton concludes:

”it is quite possible that the collective will move against the welfare state with the same determination as it has moved against reproduction. Maybe Europe is being drawn by its own instinct for survival towards a smaller population, more disposed to give to society than to receive from the state. One sign of this is the rapid growth of in self-employment.”

Ibn Warraq’s new book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said’s Orientalism recently hit book stores. Earlier this year I sat down with Warraq to talk about the book and his disagreements with the late Said. Here are som exerpts.

Why did you write this book taking on Edward Said and his critique of the orientalists?

”I bought Orientalism when it was published in 1978, but I didn’t read it right away. It ended up somewhere on the shelves. Only 20 years later did I begin to study it in depth. I couldn’t believe my eyes, so much nonsense and so many factual errors. Said is contradicting himself on almost every page.”

What kind of errors do you have in mind?

”Well, in one place he says that the orientalists, authors of Western origin writing about the East, acquired real knowledge about the region, but he doesn’t make any difference between specialists, travel writers or dilettants. In other parts of the book he on the contrary claims that the knowledge of all orientalists was false and based on prejudice. At the same time he subscribes to the view that there isn’t such a thing as the truth. But if he is serious about that, how can he complain that it is just the work of the orientalists that is false.”

Do you have any examples?

Lots of them. Said insists for example that Western imperialists ruled the region based on knowledge that orientalists had acquired, but how could they possible govern if the knowledge of the orientalists’ was so bad? Said accuses the orientalists and the imperialists of being responsible for all the crimes and misfortunes committed in the region, but if you take a look at the greatest and most important orientalists, Western experts on the Middle East and Islam, you’ll find they were Germans, and the Germans didn’t have any colonies in the Middle East. They were not imperialists.”

Do you think Said’s impact only has been negative? His fundamental insight that the study of a foreign culture is informed by one’s own and that it determines our process of understanding a foreign culture has been fruitful, hasn’t it? His insisting on the relationship between knowledge and power?

I think the impact of Said has been a pure diaster, it’s been very harmful for the arts and humanities in the West. And add to that its destructive influence on Arabic culture and the self image of the Arabs. Said isn’t saying anything original. It’s banal. Every student comes to the study of foreign cultures with a certain baggage. The idea that you are excluded from giving any useful information and knowledge just because of who you are has been the most harmful in Said’s work. The claim that it by definition is impossible to free oneself from one’s background and acquire some form of objective knowledge is just crazy. And it’s nothing new. Foucalt wrote about it, and so did Karl Marx. He said that if an individual belongs to the bourgeoisie he or she can’t be objective, and Freudians will explain that my understanding of a certain issue is determined by my early childhood experiences.
Said refuses to investigate the message, and disqualifies instead the messenger. He doesn’t review the merits of the argument and observations. You have ways to control if a specific observation is right or wrong. If 20 people with different backgrounds identify the same phenomena, it is probable that there is some truth to their observation. And if this observation is confirmed by native scholars and writers, then it’s pure nonsense to insist that all Westerners writing about the Orient are prejudiced and unreliable. It’s true that many were racists, but if a racist identifies something as a fact you can’t just refute it as false. According to Said a foreigner will never be able to understand a native culture, not because of what he does, but because of who he is and where he comes from. This is a reverse kind of racism.”

What is the result of Said’s work in the Arab world?

He has taught one or two generations of Arabs the destructive art of self pity. His orientalism legitimized the Arabs’ accusations against the West and Israel for being responsible for all their problems. He provided them with intellectual arguments for not taking responsibility for their cultural and economic diaster. At the same time he has made it extremely difficult for scholars to be critical of Islam. People are terrified by the prospect of being called an orientalist, and that’s the reason why scholars of Islam haven’t been able to look at Islam with the same critical eye as in the case of the Old and the New Testamente. This is very unfortunate. Said is guilty of intellectual terrorism. Today the word orientalism is being used synonymously with islamophobia. The free and critical enquiry of Islam is being blocked, the subject matter is treated with reverence and servility. Scholars for example accept the claim that the Koran is the revelation of God’s word, though anyone in his clear mind understands that the text is a human creation.”

You’ve said that Said’s writings have encouraged fundamentalists in the Middle East. What do you mean by that?

”He has empowered them by priori refuting the orientalists as reliable.”

You defended the publication of the Mohammed cartoons by Jyllands-Posten. But don’t you think that the critics have a point when they say that one has to avoid offending religious feelings, and therefore the newspaper should have refrained from publishing the cartoons?

”No. What kind of right not to be offended are they talking about? No one cares about my rights when the words of the Koran are being spread all around. I see the Koran as an extremely offensive book.”

How come?

”It’s an extremely violent book. It’s filled with hate against non-Muslims. It calls for the killing of infidels and calls on Muslims not to have Jews and Christians among their friends. It gives men the right to beat women, and it proscribes the most cruel punishment for theft. It’s a barbaric document, that is deeply insulting.”

Denmark’s Prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen scored a historic victory in today’s national elections. In spite of opinion polls speaking to the contrary the coalition that has governed Denmark for the last six years will be able to continue at the helm of power.

Mr. Rasmussen is the fist European head of government who has been reelected twice after having supported the war in Iraq and supplying Danish troops to the coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Mr. Rasmussen is also the first leader of his conservative party (this isn’t a conservative party in the American sense. Mr. Rasmussen’s party is supporting a welfare state that Bill Clinton never would have signed on for) to be reelected twice as Prime minister, and his conservative party has turned out to be the biggest party in three national elections in a row, i.e. 2001, 2005 and now in 2007. This is also a historical achievment. It never happenend before.

Though the coalition behind the government is in place, Mr. Rasmussen on election night reached out to all parties supporting his candidacy as Prime minister. He invited them to take part in negotiations in order to work out a political platform for the new government.

This means that Naser Khader, leader of the new party New Alliance and a democratic Muslim, also will get a seat at the negotiating table, though his influence with just five seats will be limited. New Alliance has been advocating more laxed policies for immigrants and asylum seekers. But it doesn’t look as if he will get his way. On the other hand his votes may be instrumental for much needed reforms of the welfare state.

The Danish People’s party that over the last ten years has been demonized as racist by the left once again improved its standing, and they did so against all odds. They insist on keeping strict immigration policies, and have been reluctant to support lower taxes, and it is now up to the Prime minister to find out if the Danish People’s party and New Alliance can be part of the same coalition.

Another big winner was the Socialist party that almost doubled their number of seats in parliament. They did so due to the successful economy, one of the best performing in Europe with growth rates around 3-4 pct. The good economy has increased political pressure for social benefits and welfare, and the socialists have gone all the way. Almost any demand from any group has elicited support from the Socialists, so it is fair to say that they have been cashing in on the success of a conservative government.

The Social Democrats, the founding fathers of the welfare state, have definitively lost their monopoly as the sole guardian of the welfare. In the nineties the Social Democrats usually would get around 35 pct. of the votes, but now they have been permanently reduced, and I doubt that they ever again will cross the limit of 30 pct. Today they received 25 pct., which is a historical low figure. Ten years ago the party leader would have been forced out of office after an election result like this, but today the Social Democrats’s leader Helle Thorning-Schmidt is being perceived as successful.

Finally, it seems that the islamist Asmaa Abdol-Hamid didn’t receive enough votes to get a seat in parliament, though her party of the extreme left did pass the threshold of 2 pct., but they lost 2 seats. She may, though, get a seat if she receives more than 10.000 personal votes. On election night Asmaa Abdol-Hamid indicated that she may leave politics, if this doesn’t materialize, so this time around it looks like Denmark will not have to deal with a Muslim member of parliament wearing the veil while addressing the nation.

The strange alliance between the left and reactionary Muslims has taken center stage in the campaign leading up to tomorrows national elections for a new parliament in Denmark.

Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a 25 year old social worker and islamist, is running for the extreme left wing party Enhedslisten. Last year she was behind a lawsuit against Jyllands-Posten trying to have the newspaper indicted for blasphemy after the publication of cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.

I wonder how many leftists since the birth of socialism as a political movement have been involved in lawsuits against people offending the Christian faith? Not many, I gather.

If elected, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid will be the first Muslim woman wearing the veil to address Denmark’s parliament. At the same time, citing her faith, she refuses to shake hands with individuals of the other sex. When a female leader of the party was asked how she would react if a man refused to shake hands with her, she insisted that she would welcome it. Fortunately, this kind of hypocricy is obvious to quite a few people on the left, and in opinion polls the party has dropped below the minimum 2 pct. of the votes required for representation in parliament.

Asmaa Abdol-Hamid hasn’t been very clear in denouncing undemocratic practices in the Muslim world, so several spin doctors have been allocated to her campaign in order to prevent her from saying what she actually thinks.

The imam Abdul Wahid-Pedersen, who used to defend the practice of killling adulterous women by stoning, but nevertheless has been labeled “moderate”, has called on his fellow believers to vote for Asma Abdol-Hamid.

Here is what he wrote back in 2002 about the practice of stoning in Nigeria:

”The people has by majority decided to implement Islamic law, and the rest of the world therefore has to accept it. I agree that stoning is a cruel punishment, but it doesn’t change the fact that according to Islam the practise has been ordained by our Creator. We are not in a position to change this. Things that are stated unambigiously in the Koran or by the Prophet Mohammed are not open to debate among Muslims. The moment we would accept to discuss these matters, we at the same time would have declared that we do not believe in Allah and his messenger and in doing so we would have put ourselves outside Islam.”

Nice quote. What a moderate, what a liberal!

Abdul Wahid-Pedersen endorses the candidacy of Asmaa Abdol-Hamid this way:

”I am going to vote for her because I know her personally. With her in parliament we will get a totally new situation in the political life of Denmark. A woman wearing the veil in parliament will send a strong message about tolerance, both to the Muslim minority of Denmark and to the rest of the world, where we are perceived as mistreating minorities.”

Speak for yourself, imam. I wonder what the women of Nigeria, Iran or Saudi-Arabia will say to your call for tolerance?

Do you remember the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar?

It was staged on Broadway in the seventies and caused controversy because some Christians found it blasphemeous. Now Swedish artist Lars Vilks plans to stage an opera featuring the prophet Mohammed as the main character.

”Mohammed is a superstar in the modern sense of the word,” Lars Vilks told Dagens Nyheter.

The working title of the opera is Dogs as a parallel to the legendary Broadway blockbuster Cats.

In September Vilks received death threats from Al Qaeda in Iraq after publishing a cartoon depicting Mohammed as a dog.

Vilks is cooperating with the band Neurobash on the opera.

”We haven’t decided yet if Mohammed will appear in disguise of one or more people. Other characters are the Swedish Prime minister, the president of Iran and Al Qaeda, that will perform a nice song. They do better as music. We also plan to include an elegy featuring The Offended Cows. I think it can be very entertaining and relaxing as a musical. No one will be able to resist the rhytm and the music.”

Vilks is being asked:
What do you think of the Mohammed cartoons today?

”I am still more convinced that it’s a great project and that is confirmed by the strong reactions. People will realize that this is a positive debate. But so far there has been too little humor.”

Do you understand the Muslims that feel offended?

”I understand everybody, but what’s the point? The right to criticise religion and politics is part of the game. It isn’t personal and I am not out to get anyone.”

Today the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, - the man behind drawings of the prophet Mohammed as a dog that has earned him death threats from Al Qaida – was supposed to present his work at the Esloev Biennale in south Sweden. But Vilks who is under police protection, was denied access to the exhibition. Nobody knows what mr. Vilks was planning to put on view, but the decision to exclude him had to do with his drawings of Mohammed.

”It’s an unnecessary provocation to allow Vilks to join the exhibition…Many people are offended by his art,” comments Celilia Lind, socialdemocratic member of the city council, to Skaanska Dagbladet.

All the fuss around Lars Vilk’s Mohammed drawings began back in august when two Swedish art institutions refused to exhibit them referring to security concerns, and subsequently a local newspaper published one of the drawings to start a debate.

Eva Hallberg, head of the city’s culture department, told mr. Vilks that the invitation to put his work on view had been cancelled. She feared that his very presence would create problems.

Khalid El-Haj, another socialdemocratic member of the city council, explained his position on Vilks to Skaanska Dagbladet:

”I don’t want to say he is a bad artist, but I do think so. It would create negative attention around Esloev if we allowed him to join the exhibition, and that’s the reason why we don’t want him here.”

El-Haj added the often repeated insult to millions of Muslims that he as a Muslim was offended on behalf of 1 billion Muslims around the world.

Fortunately, not all the locals agreed with the position taken by the city council. Art consultant Frederik Axwik said:

”This isn’t good for our town because we risk being denounced as narrow minded people. Threats have been directed against Lars Vilks, and I understand the politicians’ concern, but we have the police to take care of matters if any trouble occurs.”

Art critic Pontus Kyander has called on the judiciary to take action. He thinks the censorship of Lars Vilks is a violation of the Swedish constitution.

”It’s not for local authorities to decide which artists are permitted to exhibit their work. It’s a local berufsverbot. The right to free speech is thoroughly defended in the constitution, and especially artistic freedom has wide limits… As I see it, Esloev city council has violated the constitution, and the case need to be given af hearing in court.”

On his blog Vilks comments that his exclusion from the exhibition is very similar to what happenend to artists in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that the authorities didn’t like and therefore denounced as offensive.

Some of Vilks’ supporters in Esloev invited the Danish artist and free speech activist Uwe Max Jensen to take his place, and at todays opening he performed a brillant stunt. A few days ago Uwe Max Jensen received a copy of one of Mr. Vilks’ drawings of Mohammed, and today he put it on a table and started to erase the drawing with a piece of rubber. Before initiating this operation Mr. Jensen said that he did it to protest the censorship of Lars Vilks. The final product, a piece of white paper will be put on view in the room where Mr. Vilks’ work was supposed to be shown.

According to Mr. Jensen his Erased Mohammed is a paraphrase of Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooening. In 1953 Rauschenberg erased a drawing made by the expressionist Wilem de Kooning. It’s a classic work of modern conceptual art.