Publication date:
21 December 2011Length of book:
268 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
239x164mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780739150924
Little has been published in English about Islam in Denmark although interest grew after the cartoons crisis of 2005-6. Danish research on the subject is extensive, and this volume aims to present some of the most recent to an international audience. While many of the circumstances which apply across western Europe — the history of immigration and refugees, settlement, the growth of Muslim organizations and international links, challenges of social and cultural encounter, and more recently Islam as a security issue — also apply in Denmark, there are also differences. A small, compact country with no recent imperial history, Denmark's unified institutional, religious and social culture can make it difficult for newcomers to integrate. The fourteen chapters in this book cover the topic in three parts. The first part deals with the history and statistics of immigration and settlement, and the religious institutional responses, Christian and Muslim. Part two looks at specific issues and the interaction with the developing national debate about identity and minority. Finally part three presents the experience of four active participants in the processes of integration: youth work and hospital chaplaincy, interreligious dialogue, and the views of an imam.
[T]he book offers some apprehensions of Islam and Muslims in Denmark. Readers will get insights into the history of Muslim settlement in the country and learn some things about the process of the institutionalization of Islam. The book also mediates a feeling of how a specific type of multiculturalist Danish scholars and activists position themselves in the Danish debate about Muslim immigration and Islam.