Denmark: Integration minister pulls out of anti-radicalization conference, refuses to appear with radical Muslim scholar

Islamophobia gone wild.

One of the keynote speakers at an anti-radicalization conference is …… radical. These intellectual acrobatics defy even the most creative of fantasists and delusionists. When you sanction sharia, when you sanction jihad, this is inevitable.

As for the minister missing the conference …… it’s just one less dawah (proselytizing) session.

“Integration minister says she will not share stage with a
controversial Muslim scholar that helped create Pakistan’s
anti-blasphemy laws” Copenhagen Post, September 6, 2012 (thanks to David)

Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri, a controversial Muslim scholar, is on a six-day tour of Denmark (Photo: World Economic Forum)

The
minister for integration and social affairs, Karen Hækkerup
(Socialdemokraterne), has pulled out of a conference on religious
radicalism next week after she discovered that one of the speakers
helped fashion Pakistan’s highly controversial anti-blasphemy laws.

The conference’s organisers, the Danish Ethnic Youth Council, had
invited the scholar Muhammad Tahir ul-Qadri, leader of the Muslim
organisation Minhaj-ul-Quran, to speak on tackling religious
radicalisation. The head of the domestic intelligence agency PET, Jakob
Scharf, was also invited.

While ul-Qadri is best known for declaring a fatwa, or religious
ruling, against terrorism, he also worked as a legal adviser to the
Pakistani government in the shaping of anti-blasphemy laws that were
recently used to arrest a mentally-challenged girl for allegedly burning
the Koran.

This morning, Hækkerup announced that had she would not have agreed
to speak at the Conference for Political and Religious Radicalism, which
is being held at Copenhagen Business School on September 11, if she had
known that ul-Qadri was also planning on attending.

“I am very angry at being connected with something that is so
contrary to my views,” Hækkerup told Ritzau. “Politically, I see no
reason to take part in the debate. I think it is deplorable that he is
coming.”

On the conference’s event page, the Danish Ethnic Youth Council confirmed that Hækkerup had cancelled.