“They think I’m a woman from the Middle East. No. I’m a Danish Muslim.”
She proudly carries a headscarf all around while campaigning for her elections. The 25 year old social worker and town councilor has vowed to take on the Danish parliamentary elections. She has gay friends, supports the centre right, opposes the death penalty, wears a hijab and offers her prayers regularly. The striking mixes of Islamic practices and liberal views heralded in Asma Abdol Hamid’s person have fired up a heated debate among the conventional politicians of Denmark, as well as, other European countries.
Apparently for the Danish establishment; her headscarf is the major concern. For a feminist who talks of women rights and equality; being labeled as an ambassador of male chauvinism certainly comes as a surprise. That’s just what Asma is facing these days. Though she is a devout Muslim who has out rightly refused to let go of her headscarf owing to her religious duties, she is a woman who couldn’t care less what goes on in other people’s bedrooms. Standing ground on the fact that she has an equal right to enter the Folketing –Danish parliament; she believes that her personal values, religious practices and much less her dressing has nothing to do with it. Off the record, if she does get through the criticism and the bigotry, she will be the first Muslim woman to enter the Danish parliament in Copenhagen.
Asma is of Palestinian origin and lives with one of her six sisters in a one room council flat who, according to the extreme right, is an agent of Islamic fundamentalism and someone who is simply insisting to disrupt the settled democracy of Denmark i.e.; a direct threat to their democracy. Even to many on the left, she is someone who is personifying Islamic repression of women and has no place among any of the political wings due to this illiberal agenda. In words of Toger Seidenfaden editor in Politiken daily newspaper:
“This goes far beyond the extreme right,”
Because:
“Asma is insisting on the right to be a religious Muslim, and that’s provoking broad debate among the public.”
The Danish People’s Party (DFP) the element that is holding together current Danish Prime Minister’s weak centre-right government has been outrageous about Miss Abdol Hamid going beyond the normal criticism and starting a comparison between this and the Nazi Swastika, says DFP spokesman Kim Eskildsen:
“We don’t like the idea of her performing as an Islamist in the parliament, we find it wrong that she’ll use the parliament as a tool for Islamism … We don’t consider this woman a Nazi. But the way the headscarf is used is comparable to other totalitarian symbols.”
The ambitious lady, on the other hand, is totally unruffled by all the skepticism and crude criticism. She still insists that Denmark is a much better place for Muslims and humans overall than many of the Middle Eastern countries. She is of the opinion that sees more of Islam in Europe and Denmark than in Iran and the Middle East. The ambitious young politician is very lighthearted about the Muslim and non-Muslim critics:
“Some Muslims don’t think it is right for a female to act like this. They go to my father and tell him, get her married, get her married, others think you can’t be Muslim and Danish at the same time. Some of the Muslims and the extreme right are just the same.”
Denmark whose welfare system she compares to Islam; has tarnished the hopes of some 200,000 Muslims living there by tightening immigration rules that resulted in barriers that don’t let some immigrants get residence in Copenhagen and other such atrocities, but it is still a country that Asma Abdol Hamid is affectionate for –such is the young woman’s optimism.
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