Seorang Muslim hanya bisa menjadi sekularis 100% bila bermukim di sebuah
negara sekuler? Apa Indonesia sekuler 100% atau hanya 77%?
Published on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 by the Guardian/UK
Feminist, Socialist, Devout Muslim: Woman Who Has Thrown Denmark into Turmoil
by Ian Traynor
ODENSE, DENMARK - In the land that launched the cartoons war between Islam
and the west, Asmaa Abdol-Hamid finds herself on the frontline, gearing up for
a new battle.
The 25-year-old social worker, student and town councillor describes herself
as a feminist, a democrat, and a socialist. She has gay friends, opposes the
death penalty, supports abortion rights, and could not care less what goes on
in other peoples bedrooms. In short, a tolerant Scandinavian and European.
She is also a Palestinian and a devout Muslim who insists on wearing a
headscarf, who refuses, on religious grounds, to shake hands with males, and
who is bidding fair to be the first Muslim woman ever to enter the Folketing,
the Danish parliament in Copenhagen.
For the extreme right, the young activist is a political provocateur, an
agent of Islamic fundamentalism bent on infiltrating the seat of Danish
democracy. To many on the left, Ms Abdol-Hamid is also problematic,
personifying through her dress the reactionary repression of women and an
illiberal religious agenda that should have no place in her leftwing
red-green alliance of socialists and environmentalists.
As a result of announcing her parliamentary candidacy earlier this month, the
young Muslim and Danish citizen has been thrust to the centre of a debate
tormenting Denmark and the rest of western Europe - on the place and values of
Islam in modern Europe and the treatment of large Muslim minorities.
Ms Abdol-Hamid is unfazed. I see more Islam here in Denmark than in Iran or
in other places in the Middle East, she says. Its easier to be a Muslim in
Denmark than in Saudi Arabia. I dont feel a stranger here. Im interested in
politics. I want to talk about this society, about political issues. But Im
not in politics because Im a Muslim.
Her ambition, combined with her insistence on flaunting her religious
affiliation, have outraged the Danish political establishment and triggered a
new bout of soul-searching almost two years after the publication of cartoons
of the Prophet ignited violence and protest across the Islamic world.
This goes far beyond the extreme right, says Toger Seidenfaden, editor of
the Politiken daily newspaper. Asmaa is insisting on the right to be a
religious Muslim and thats provoking broad debate among the public.
The key issue is the headscarf and whether it can be accommodated in
parliament. This month Ms Abdol-Hamid gained the candidacy for a safe
Copenhagen seat for the leftwing Unity List.
The Danish Peoples Party or DFP, the far-right movement that unofficially
props up the weak centre-right government of the prime minister, Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, is on the warpath. A couple of DFP politicians compared the
headscarf to the Nazi swastika. One described the prospective MP as
brainwashed.
We dont like the idea of her performing as an Islamist in the parliament,
says DFP spokesman Kim Eskildsen. We find it wrong that shell use the
parliament as a tool for Islamism
We dont consider this woman a Nazi. But
the way the headscarf is used is comparable to other totalitarian symbols.
The happiest country in the world, according to one detailed survey of
international living standards and public attitudes, Denmark is economically
highly successful, with the lowest unemployment in the EU.
For the countrys 200,000 Muslims and immigrants, however, that happiness is
increasingly somewhere else. By virtue of the DFPs influence on the
centre-right government, Denmark has enacted the tightest anti-immigration
legislation in Europe in recent years.
Many Danes married to foreigners now commute into Copenhagen every day from
the southern Swedish town of Malmo across the bridge linking the two cities
because they cannot obtain residence for their spouses at home.
Ms Abdol-Hamid, who shares a one-room council flat with one of her six
sisters in the ghetto of Vollsmose, in the town of Odense, says her political
mission is to fight for this underclass.
This is such a rich country. But we have people in Denmark in deep poverty
and nobody helps them. For me the welfare system is very close to Islam. But we
need to change the government.
But conservative Muslim leaders are also disapproving of her activism.
Some Muslims dont think its right for a female to act like this. They go
to my father and tell him, get her married, get her married, she laughs.
Others think you cant be Muslim and Danish at the same time. Some of the
Muslims and the extreme right are just the same.
And there are women in my party who say that anyone who wears the headscarf
is oppressed. Its like they think Im dumb. Theyre taking away my
individuality. We need the right to choose. Its up to us whether or not we
wear headscarves.
They think Im a woman from the Middle East. No. Im a Danish Muslim.
43 Comments so far
karlof1 May 16th, 2007 12:38 pm
Bravo!!!! If there were only more folks with her attitude.
It would seem Denmark is in gross violation of the Declaration of Human Rights
through its law separating spouses.
And the head scarf as a totalitarian symbol? How about the business suit.
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