Islam in Denmark

[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. * ID: International Dialogue, A Multidisciplinary Journal of World Affairs *
The 2006 responses to Danish cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad thrust Islam in Denmark into the news, but Danes and immigrant Muslims had been interacting for many years prior to this event. This volume is the first in-depth treatment of Muslims and Islam in Denmark, with a fine combination of ethnographic, historical, political, and demographic perspectives. We learn about the lived realities of Muslims and non-Muslims in schools, neighborhoods, and religious settings. Denmark's particular self-perception as a mono-cultural state makes the Danish experience importantly different from those in France, Germany, and Britain, and adds in important ways to our overall understanding of Islam in Europe. -- John R. Bowen, Washington University in St. Louis
Jørgen S. Nielsen, an internationally-renowned scholar on Islam, has in collaboration with fifteen other scholars produced a brilliantly comprehensive book on all aspects of the integration of Islam and Muslims into Danish society. Danes who used to be regarded as among the most tolerant people in Europe have in recent years acquired a reputation for anti-Muslim sentiments. This book tells a more nuanced story about a fifty-year long history of acculturation and gradual accommodation to a pluralist society. The chapters range from the history of Danish converts and not-in-my-backyard resistance to mosque building to fertility rates and an ethnographic study of why Muslim youths join extremist groups. The contributors who are drawn from all fields of the social sciences and include two imams present their research on Danish Muslims grounded in the theories and facts of comparative migration research. The book will appeal to readers who want to know what the real story is about the Danish reaction to the presence of Muslims in their midst as well as to those interested in migration studies. -- Jytte Klausen, Lawrence A. Wien Professor of International Cooperation, Brandeis University
Denmark in recent years has become an epicenter of the debate on Islam and Muslims in Europe. Islam in Denmark: The Challenge of Diversity demonstrates that it is also producing some of the best scholarship on the topic. Nielsen's edited volume is the definitive multidisciplinary study of Islam in Denmark. -- Peter Mandaville, author of Global Political Islam