Denmark PM mulls restricting burka, niqab

Report shows that use of burka by Muslim women to be 'extremely rare' in Denmark.

COPENHAGEN - The face-covering burka and niqab veils worn by some Muslim women have no place in Denmark, Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen said Tuesday, adding his government was considering restricting them.

Rasmussen stopped short, however, of calling for a ban on the veils, noting "legal and other limits".

"The government's position is clear: the burka and the niqab have no place in Danish society," Rasmussen told reporters.

"We look at the person to whom we are talking, whether it's in a classroom or on the job," he said.

"That is why we don't want to see this garment in Danish society," he added.

He said his center-right government was "discussing ways of limiting the wearing" of the veils without violating the Scandinavian country's constitution.

The prime minister's comments came a day after the publication of a report which showed that use of the burka was "extremely rare" in Denmark, though no figures were given, and that the niqab was worn by "between 100 and 200" women.

The report was commissioned by the social affairs ministry and written by researchers at the University of Copenhagen.

It follows a heated debate on the burka that has divided the two-party coalition government since the summer amid pressure from its key parliamentary ally the far-right Danish People's Party.

Some 100,000 Muslim women live in Denmark, representing about 1.9 percent of Denmark's total population of 5.5 million. Some 0.15 percent of the Muslim women wear the niqab, according to the report.

Denmark has had tense relations with the Muslim world following the publishing in 2005 of cartoons depicting Islam's Prophet Mohammed that were considered insulting by much of the Islamic world.

Meanwhile, Rasmussen on Tuesday criticized an auction house for refusing to sell a drawing by Kurt Westergaard, the cartoonist behind the most controversial Mohammed caricature.

Westergaard said he was "very pleased" by the prime minister's support.

A vast majority of Danes agree with the Danish media's decision to refrain from reprinting controversial caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed, a poll showed Tuesday.

A total of 84.2 percent agree with the decision, some 11.7 percent disagree and 4.1 percent are undecided, the Ramboell/Analyze institute poll published in newspaper Jyllands-Posten showed.

The daily is the same one that originally published the 12 caricatures of Mohammed in September 2005.

The Ramboell/Analyze poll questioned 1,010 people from January 11 to 14.

Source: Middle East Online.
Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=36742.