Jacob Christensen

By the way: I’ve had Mark Lilla’s The Stillborn God lying around forever but because my life has been pretty messed up during the last few months, I haven’t managed to get beyond the opening chapter.

If one of more of my readers could bug me to get going, that would be appreciated.

Yes, I ought to do a serious post about the latest head-scarf case. The short version: It all began when the Court Administration, a semi-autonomous agency under the Justice Ministry, for whatever reason decided to discuss if a female judge¹ wearing a head-scarf would breach the neutral appearance of courts. The Administrations typically judicial take was that present legislation did not allow a ban on judges wearing head-scarves or other religious symbols.

This, of cause, was water on the Danish People’s Party’s mill: The party put its propaganda machine into full overdrive with a poster campaign raising the image of Burqa-dressed judges bringing evil sharia on decent unsuspecting Danes.

Not that there was a real issue – nobody has complained about the appearance of judges in recent years and to the best of my knowledge no judge has wanted to chair a court wearing a head-scarf, a turban or the like.

Anyway, the Liberals and Conservatives decided to follow the flow, if only because the Social Democrats flip-flopped and managed to present something like three different positions in two days. Anything related to immigration and integration policy still creates huge problems for the Social Democrats.

Then the integration minister Birthe Rønn Hornbech – frequently criticised by journalists for being invisible in the public debate – published an essay in yesterday’s Politiken which didn’t really take sides in the argument. On the other hand, the essay didn’t recommend changes in Danish legislation to ban religious symbols in courts and in this way it could be seen as breaching the government line. The publication, apparently, wasn’t cleared with the prime minister’s office.

The latest round included the Liberals’ hatchet men Inger Støjberg and Søren Pind as well as the justice minister calling for a total ban of head-scarves – which in practice equalled a public humiliation of the integration minister and according to the inside dope a private blasting of her. Birthe Rønn Hornbech was a surprise as integration minister in November and the question is how long she will be able to stay on the post. And of cause the Danish People’s Party is raising the odds and calling for a complete ban on head-scarves for all public sector employees as well as happily accepting the description anti-Muslim.² Not that that is a surprise in any way.

The real issues here? Well, beside noting the interesting question of integration policy as inclusion or exclusion and the relationship between state and religious symbols and that the officials at the Court Administration lack anything remotely reminiscent of political fingerspitzengefühl, the Danish People’s Party and the Liberals have a big interest in making this a major issue as immigration and integration policy issues – as mentioned above – hurt the Social Democrats.

And in case you ever doubted that the Danish People’s Party’s ultimate goal is to bring Denmark back to the 1950s – or rather the kind of idealised 1950s you will see in popular films – look no further than this.

Update: I had hardly put this post on the net before Karen Jespersen, left socialist social democrat liberal welfare minister and one half of the feared Jespersen-Pittelkow pack published an essay blasting head-scarves in Berlingske Tidende, while the president of the first-instance court on Frederiksberg wrote a piece accusing Pia Kjærsgaard and the Danish People’s Party for lying and misrepresenting the courts’ position. Enjoy.

1. The paper which started all this isn’t public but apparently it dealt with judges, not laymen or jurors. [↩]
2. It is worth noting the DPP spokesmen generally conflates Islam, Islamist and fundamentalist. To them all muslims per definition are islamists [↩]

One of the commenters on the BoingBoing post pointed to this:

Via BoingBoing

Shamus Khan of Scatterplot went to the ASA Conference and lived to tell the tale. It all sounds very familiar to a political scientist. For some reason, he will also be going this year. Academics are strange.

As I, as of Feburay 2008, was without institutional affiliation for August 2008, I will not be going to Tromsø for the tri-annual NOPSA conference. I will probably be moving instead. Just in case you wondered. I would have liked to attend this group, though.

PS: Remember to read Kieran Healy’s comment to the post (#2). Spot on!

• Podcasterprisen » Blog Archive » Nomineringer talt op – afstemning på vej
  (tags: podcast denmark)
• Birthe Rønn Hornbeck: Dommertørklædet og de to regimenter – Politiken.dk
  Hvis det danske Folketing ligesom i diktaturer begynder at lovgive for den enkeltes sindelag, så brister både Luthers og Grundtvigs forudsætninger.
  (tags: denmark politics religion birtherønnhornbech)
• John Quiggin – In praise of Rachel Carson
  The article shows how the legend that Carson caused the banning of DDT, just as it was about to wipe out malaria, was invented and popularised by tobacco lobbyists, most notably Steven Milloy, who wanted to mount a flank attack on tobacco’s archenemy, t
  (tags: science politics rachelcarson environment)

I kid you not. Someone had to come up with this.

Actually I’m procrastinating while writing about the 1994 general election in Denmark – you know, the one where Jacob Haugaard not only was elected to parliament but also turned out to be the median legislatior – but the present US presidential campaign also has its intriguing moments.

I give you Matthew Yglesias who notes that people from the Clinton campaign argue that as Clinton won West Virginia and as no Democratic candidate since time immemorial has won the presidential election without winning WV. Hence, Hillary Clinton must be the Democratic candidate or else…

Yglesias strikes back by noting that no Democratic candidate has won without winning Minnesota. So, Barack Obama must be the candidate or else…

To sum up: The Democrats can’t win. They might as well cancel the rest of their campaigns as well as the convention and let John McCain cruise to victory.

But wait: There’s more. The first to comment Yglesias’s post of cause has to note that a 72-year-old geezer has never been elected president. So McCain is out and who knows, perhaps Brian Moore will be the next president of the United States.

PS on a slightly more serious note: As far as I can see, this is the first election since World War I when none of the major candidates have had executive experience as either president, vice president or state governor.