Karen from Denmark

I hadn't heard of Karen Jespersen before but this article has been an eye-opener, a former Social-Democrat Danish female politcian who wants immigrants to adapt to the new countries values. In other words, Muslims need to give up their former cultural non-democratic behavior and despotic attitudes.

Here are some excerpts:-

Since her appointment to the post in September, she has emerged as a stalwart defender of a country’s right to require immigrants to accept its basic values and, inevitably, a lightning rod in Europe’s continuing debate over immigration...

...Ms. Jespersen’s defenders say that, sooner than most here, she had read Scandinavia’s discomfort with immigration laws that overburdened schools and social programs, and even threatened law and order.

...“I think immigration is a benefit for society,” she said. “But you have to be very cautious in dealing with it, to keep your basic values.”

Most Danes favor immigration, she said, but refuse to surrender the achievements of their society. “We will keep the equality of men and women and freedom of speech.” Like most of northern Europe, Denmark has been in a quandary over immigration, notably from Muslim countries.

...“I gave a speech about Turkey,” she said. “I was against Turkey becoming a full member of the European Union. I don’t think we can cope with it. It’s a very large country, with very different values. I said we should at least have a referendum, that there would be a great migration.”

Her role in immigration issues grew, even after the collapse in 2001 of the leftist government and its replacement by the current government. In October 2004 a lecturer at Copenhagen University was beaten by a gang of Muslims who accused him of having read parts of the Koran to non-Muslim students.

In 2005, Jyllands-Posten, which by then had hired Mr. Pittelkow as a columnist, published the Muhammad cartoons. In response to the reaction in the Islamic world, Mr. Pittelkow and Ms. Jespersen published a book, titled “Islamists and the Naïve,” in which they went so far as to assert that some qualities of Islam could also be found in Nazism and Communism. It became a best seller.

THE book did not equate the movements, she said, “but they had in common that one truth was in the world, and that one truth goes deeply into your private life.” She added, “Not all Muslims are reading the Koran in that sense, but those who interpret it this way are growing fast, in organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, though I am convinced we can isolate them.”

She said, “I think we are letting down freedom-loving Muslims if we are not fighting the radical Islamists.”

In addition to sharply limiting immigration, the current government has enacted laws to prevent honor killings, which still occur in Muslim families. If a teenager is ordered to perform such a killing to avenge the honor of a female relative, she said, parents and even uncles and aunts are held liable.