After Attacks, Denmark Hesitates to Blame Islam – NYTimes.com

The debates in Denmark regarding the role Islam played in the recent attacks and the sophisticated response by the Danish Minister for Integration and Social Affairs, Manu Sareen:

Mr. Mann [a former Copenhagen gang member], who is now studying law and works part-time as a counselor to troubled Muslim youths, said Denmark and other European countries needed to defend, not stigmatize, Islam, as only this can combat “street Islam,” a toxic jumble of half-digested lines from the Quran and political passions plucked from the Internet.

Olivier Roy, a leading French expert on Islam, has taken a similar line, telling Information, a Danish newspaper, that Denmark should counter wild strains of Islam imported from the Middle East by building up a “national version of Islam” through state funding for mosques and preachers, just as it funds Denmark’s state church.

But Mr. Sareen, the integration minister, said such an approach would do nothing to “prevent scenes like we saw at the weekend” because young people were just as likely to get radicalized in jail or sitting at home watching videos on YouTube. “The state could finance dozens of mosques, but you would still see people getting radicalized,” he said.

The trigger for extremist violence, added Mr. Sareen, a self-declared atheist and former social worker, is rarely the result of a single cause. “You have a part that is social, part that is psychiatric, part that is brainwashing and part that comes from messages in the mosque or from radical preachers.”

Mehdi Mozaffari, an Iranian-born Danish political science professor, complained that mainstream Muslims and Western governments often play down the powerful pull of Islamist ideology, which mixes piety and politics.

“It is very evident that this ideology is playing a major role,” he said. “Without it we are facing just hooligans. But these people have an ideology that is very strong. It justifies their behavior and identifies their enemy.”

Sharp contrast to the rhetoric and pandering in Canada.

After Attacks, Denmark Hesitates to Blame Islam – NYTimes.com.