Top Muslim Scholar Says Stop Pretending That Orthodox Islam and Violence Aren't Linked

Marco Stahlhut

Indonesia, the world’s biggest Muslim-majority country, has a constitution that recognizes other major religions, and practices a syncretic form of Islam that draws on not just the faith’s tenets but local spiritual and cultural traditions. As a result, the nation has long been a voice of, and for, moderation in the Islamic world.

Yet Indonesia is not without its radical elements. Though most are on the fringe, they can add up to a significant number given Indonesia’s 260-million population. In the early 2000s, the country was terrorized by Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a homegrown extremist organization allied with al-Qaeda. JI’s deadliest attack was the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people. While JI has been neutralized, ISIS has claimed responsibility for recent, smaller terrorist incidents in the country and has inspired some Indonesians to fight in Syria — Indonesians who could pose a threat when they return home. The country has also seen the rise of hate groups that preach intolerance and violence against local religious and ethnic minorities, which include Shia and Ahmadiya Muslims.

Among Indonesia’s most influential Islamic leaders is Yahya Cholil Staquf, 51, advocates a modern, moderate Islam. He is general secretary of the Nahdlatul Ulama, which, with about 50 million members, is the country’s biggest Muslim organization. Yahya. This interview, notable for Yahya’s candor, was first published on Aug. 19 in German in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Here are excerpts translated from the original Bahasa Indonesia into English.

Many Western politicians and intellectuals say that Islamist terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. What is your view?

Western politicians should stop pretending that extremism and terrorism have nothing to do with Islam. There is a clear relationship between fundamentalism, terrorism, and the basic assumptions of Islamic orthodoxy. So long as we lack consensus regarding this matter, we cannot gain victory over fundamentalist violence within Islam.

Radical Islamic movements are nothing new. They’ve appeared again and again throughout our own history in Indonesia. The West must stop ascribing any and all discussion of these issues to “Islamophobia.” Or do people want to accuse me — an Islamic scholar — of being an Islamophobe too?

What basic assumptions within traditional Islam are problematic?

The relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims, the relationship of Muslims with the state, and Muslims’ relationship to the prevailing legal system wherever they live … Within the classical tradition, the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims is assumed to be one of segregation and enmity.

Perhaps there were reasons for this during the Middle Ages, when the tenets of Islamic orthodoxy were established, but in today’s world such a doctrine is unreasonable. To the extent that Muslims adhere to this view of Islam, it renders them incapable of living harmoniously and peacefully within the multi-cultural, multi-religious societies of the 21st century.

A Western politician would likely be accused of racism for saying what you just said.

I’m not saying that Islam is the only factor causing Muslim minorities in the West to lead a segregated existence, often isolated from society as a whole. There may be other factors on the part of the host nations, such as racism, which exists everywhere in the world. But traditional Islam — which fosters an attitude of segregation and enmity toward non-Muslims — is an important factor.

And Muslims and the state?

Within the Islamic tradition, the state is a single, universal entity that unites all Muslims under the rule of one man who leads them in opposition to, and conflict with, the non-Muslim world.

So the call by radicals to establish a caliphate, including by ISIS, is not un-Islamic?

No, it is not. [ISIS’s] goal of establishing a global caliphate stands squarely within the orthodox Islamic tradition. But we live in a world of nation-states. Any attempt to create a unified Islamic state in the 21st century can only lead to chaos and violence ... Many Muslims assume there is an established and immutable set of Islamic laws, which are often described as shariah. This assumption is in line with Islamic tradition, but it of course leads to serious conflict with the legal system that exists in secular nation-states.

Any [fundamentalist] view of Islam positing the traditional norms of Islamic jurisprudence as absolute [should] be rejected out of hand as false. State laws [should] have precedence.

How can that be accomplished?

Generations ago, we achieved a de facto consensus in Indonesia that Islamic teachings must be contextualized to reflect the ever-changing circumstances of time and place. The majority of Indonesian Muslims were — and I think still are — of the opinion that the various assumptions embedded within Islamic tradition must be viewed within the historical, political and social context of their emergence in the Middle Ages [in the Middle East] and not as absolute injunctions that must dictate Muslims’ behavior in the present … Which ideological opinions are “correct” is not determined solely by reflection and debate. These are struggles [about who and what is recognized as religiously authoritative]. Political elites in Indonesia routinely employ Islam as a weapon to achieve their worldly objectives.

Is it so elsewhere too?

Too many Muslims view civilization, and the peaceful co-existence of people of different faiths, as something they must combat. Many Europeans can sense this attitude among Muslims.

There’s a growing dissatisfaction in the West with respect to Muslim minorities, a growing fear of Islam. In this sense, some Western friends of mine are “Islamophobic.” They’re afraid of Islam. To be honest, I understand their fear … The West cannot force Muslims to adopt a moderate interpretation of Islam. But Western politicians should stop telling us that fundamentalism and violence have nothing to do with traditional Islam. That is simply wrong.

They don’t want to foster division in their societies between Muslims and non-Muslims, nor contribute to intolerance against Muslims.

I share this desire — that’s a primary reason I’m speaking so frankly. But the approach you describe won’t work. If you refuse to acknowledge the existence of a problem, you can’t begin to solve it. One must identify the problem and explicitly state who and what are responsible for it.

Who and what are responsible?

Over the past 50 years, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have spent massively to promote their ultra-conservative version of Islam worldwide. After allowing this to go unchallenged for so many decades, the West must finally exert decisive pressure upon the Saudis to cease this behavior ... I admire Western, especially European, politicians. Their thoughts are so wonderfully humanitarian. But we live in a time when you have to think and act realistically.

The last time I was in Brussels I witnessed some Arab, perhaps North African, youth insult and harass a group of policemen. My Belgian friends remarked that such behavior has become an almost everyday occurrence in their country. Why do you allow such behavior? What kind if impression does that make? Europe, and Germany in particular, are accepting massive numbers of refugees. Don’t misunderstand me: of course you cannot close your eyes to those in need. But the fact remains that you’re taking in millions of refugees about whom you know virtually nothing, except that they come from extremely problematic regions of the world.

I would guess that you and I agree that there is a far right wing in Western societies that would reject even a moderate, contextualized Islam.

And there's an extreme left wing whose adherents reflexively denounce any and all talk about the connections between traditional Islam, fundamentalism and violence as de facto proof of Islamophobia. This must end. A problem that is not acknowledged cannot be solved.

This is what many of us have been saying for years but left-leaning politicians are convinced that ostrich syndrome is a superior way of dealing with problems - close your eyes and hope they go away.

“Police Warn of Muslim No-Go Zones in Germany”

by Soeren Kern
Gatestone Institute

“There are districts where immigrant gangs are taking over entire metro trains for themselves. Native residents and business people are being intimidated and silenced… The reasons for this: the high rate of unemployment, the lack of job prospects for immigrants without qualifications for the German labor market and ethnic tensions among migrants.” — Der Spiegel.

“Every police commissioner and interior minister will deny it. But of course we know where we can go with the police car….[O]ur colleagues can no longer feel safe there in twos, and have to fear becoming the victim of a crime themselves. We know that these areas exist. Even worse: in these areas, crimes no longer result in charges. They are left to themselves. Only in the worst cases do we in the police learn anything about it. The power of the state is completely out of the picture.” — Bernhard Witthaut, Chief Police Commissioner of Germany.

“The gangs traffic in heroin and cocaine, run brothels or are active in the contraband smuggling business. The brutality with which they carry out their activities has made them very powerful, the police are afraid of them. The state is passive with respect to these clans, the politicians ignore the phenomenon… This negligence has, over the years, enabled the emergence of a criminal parallel society. This would not have happened if the authorities had acted early and decisively.” — Der Spiegel.

“When I say that steps must be taken to ensure immigrants comply with rules and regulations, I’m immediately branded as a far right extremist. But order is exactly what is needed.” — Volker Mosblech, Duisburg City Councilman.

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Spiraling levels of violent crime perpetrated by immigrants from the Middle East and the Balkans are turning parts of Duisburg, a key German industrial city, into “areas of lawlessness” — areas that are becoming de facto “no-go” zones for police, according to a confidential police report that was leaked to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

The report, produced by the police headquarters of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany (and also the state with the largest Muslim population in Germany), warns that the government is losing control over problem neighborhoods and that the ability of police to maintain public order “cannot be guaranteed over the long term.”

Duisburg, which has a total population of around 500,000, is home to an estimated 60,000 mostly Turkish Muslims, making it one of the most Islamized cities in Germany. In recent years, however, thousands of Bulgarians and Romanians (including Sinti and Roma “gypsies”) have flocked to Duisburg, creating a volatile ethno-religious cauldron.

According to Der Spiegel:

“There are districts where immigrant gangs are taking over entire metro trains for themselves. Native residents and business people are being intimidated and silenced. People taking trams during the evening and nighttime describe their experiences as ‘living nightmares.’ Policemen, and especially policewomen, are subject to ‘high levels of aggressiveness and disrespect.’

“In the medium term, nothing will change, according to the report. The reasons for this: the high rate of unemployment, the lack of job prospects for immigrants without qualifications for the German labor market and ethnic tensions among migrants. The Duisburg police department now wants to reinforce its presence on the streets and track offenders more consistently.

“Experts have warned for some time that problem neighborhoods could become no-go areas. The president of the German Police Union, Rainer Wendt, told Spiegel Online years ago: ‘In Berlin or in the north of Duisburg there are neighborhoods where colleagues hardly dare to stop a car — because they know that they’ll be surrounded by 40 or 50 men.’ These attacks amount to a ‘deliberate challenge to the authority of the state — attacks in which the perpetrators are expressing their contempt for our society.'”

The leak of the document comes amid a spike in attacks on police by mobs of immigrants, not only in Duisburg, but across the country.

In the Duisburg neighborhood of Marxloh, for example, a horde of Lebanese immigrants on June 29 attacked two police officers who were attempting to arrest two men for smoking cannabis on a public sidewalk. Within minutes, the officers were surrounded by more than 100 men who tried to prevent the arrests from taking place. Ten squad cars and dozens of police reinforcements were required to rescue the two officers.

Also in Marxloh, two men who got into a fight on June 24 used their cellphones to call their friends for backup support. Within minutes, more than 300 people had gathered at the scene. At least 100 police officers attempted to separate the two groups, but the mob quickly turned on the police. According to Duisburg police spokesperson Ramon van der Maat, “It happens time and time again, we are called to an incident that at first does not seem so bad. But then we need nine, ten or eleven police cars to restore order.”

In Gelsenkirchen, another city in North Rhine-Westphalia, two police officers on July 24 tried to pull over a driver who ran a stoplight. The driver got out of the car and attempted to flee on foot. When police caught up with him, more than 50 people appeared from virtually nowhere to prevent the suspect’s arrest. A 15-year-old attacked a policeman from behind and began strangling him, rendering him unconscious. Massive amounts of police reinforcements and pepper spray were needed to bring the situation under control.

In Berlin, some 30 members of rival immigrant gangs got into a fight on June 24 outside a nightclub in the Neukölln district of Berlin. After police arrived, the mob began attacking the officers. More than 60 police officers were needed to restore order.

Also in Berlin, dozens of police officers were deployed to break up a brawl between 50 members of two rival immigrant families at a public playground in Neukölln on June 4. The melee began when two young boys got into a fight, which quickly spiraled out of control after adult family members got involved on behalf of each of the boys.

One day earlier, more than 90 police officers were deployed to break up a fight between 70 members of rival immigrant clans at a public playground in Moabit, an inner city neighborhood in Berlin. The fight began when two women got into an argument over a man, and turned violent after more and more family members got involved. Two police officers were injured.

On June 8, more than 50 police officers were deployedto break up a brawl at a wedding reception for Bosnian immigrants in the Tempelhof district of Berlin. The melee began when two wedding guests got into an argument that led to fisticuffs. Within moments, more than a dozen other people joined in. As soon as the police arrived, however, the rival clans stopped fighting each other and began attacking the officers. One of the wedding guests hit a police officer over the head with a chair; the officer was critically wounded. Other officers were attacked with bottles, while still others were spit upon and verbally abused.

In an interview with the German newsmagazine Focus, the head of the police union in North Rhine-Westphalia, Arnold Plickert, warned of the emergence of no-go zones in the cities of Cologne, Dortmund, Duisburg and Essen. “Several rival rocker groups as well as Lebanese, Turkish, Romanian and Bulgarian clans are fighting for supremacy of the streets,” he said. “They make their own rules; here the police have nothing more to say.”

In an August 2011 interview with the newspaper Der Westen, Bernhard Witthaut, Chief Police Commissioner of Germany, revealed that immigrants have been imposing “no-go” zones in German cities at an alarming rate.

The interviewer asked Witthaut: “Are there urban areas — for example in the Ruhr — districts and housing blocks that are ‘no-go areas,’ meaning that they can no longer be secured by the police?” Witthaut replied:

“Every police commissioner and interior minister will deny it. But of course we know where we can go with the police car and where, even initially, only with the personnel carrier. The reason is that our colleagues can no longer feel safe there in twos, and have to fear becoming the victim of a crime themselves. We know that these areas exist. Even worse: in these areas, crimes no longer result in charges. They are left to themselves. Only in the worst cases do we in the police learn anything about it. The power of the state is completely out of the picture.”

The threat posed by immigrant clans has been growing for many years. In October 2010, Der Spiegel published an article — “Large Arab Families: The State Cowers in Fear of Criminal Clans” — which warned of the emergence in Germany of a “parallel society of criminality” run by “immigrant mafia clans with thousands of members” who are “taking advantage of legal loopholes, social welfare services and international contacts with dominant organized crime groups.” The article said the state was helpless to confront the problem because German authorities were “pussyfooting around.”

According to Der Spiegel:

“The gangs traffic in heroin and cocaine, run brothels or are active in the contraband smuggling business. The brutality with which they carry out their activities has made them very powerful, the police are afraid of them. The state is passive with respect to these clans, the politicians ignore the phenomenon.

“This negligence has, over the years, enabled the emergence of a criminal parallel society. This would not have happened if the authorities had acted early and decisively: As early as 2004, a Commission of the Federal Criminal Police (BKA) warned that the ethnic groups were out of control and also warned about the so-called Mhallamiye-Kurds [an Arab-speaking ethnic group with roots in southern Anatolia], including the Bremen-based clan known as Family M.

“At the time, special investigators from federal and state governments criticized the lack of any efforts at integration and attacked the German judiciary. It was said that due to misconceived tolerance, the courts exacerbated the problems with their persistent lenience.

“The report warned of ‘insular ethnic subcultures that were already firmly established under considerable abuse of the existing weaknesses of the federal government’s immigration and asylum law.’

“Today these criminal structures are so entrenched that they ‘could only be partially dismantled,’ and this only with the support and cooperation of ‘all relevant authorities, judicial assistance and the expansion of criminal tactical investigative measures.’ In other words: actually never.”

The article reveals that some delinquents possess more than a dozen different identities, and that it is common for them to continue collecting social welfare benefits because German privacy laws prevent police from being informed of a suspect’s whereabouts.

According to a police investigator interviewed by Der Spiegel, the immigrant clans “view German society as one to be plundered; they see us as born losers.” This is unlikely to change anytime soon, he added, because there are nearly 1,000 children in the clans in Bremen alone.

In her book titled “The End of Patience,” the late German juvenile court judge Kirsten Heisig warned about the growing danger posed by the so-called ethno-clans:

“A family, father, mother, 10 to 15 children, in some cases up to 19 children, emigrated from Lebanon. Some children were born in the ‘homeland,’ others in Germany. Before the mothers give birth to their last child, they already have grandchildren. Therefore, a clan increases at breathtaking speed. In official documents, the nationality of the families is given as ‘stateless,’ ‘unknown,’ ‘Lebanese’ or increasingly ‘German.’ It refers to government social welfare transfers and child benefits.

“An extended family easily generates hundreds of police investigations. If drug trafficking or other illegal transactions intrude on the turf of a rival clan or even of gangs from different ethnic backgrounds, the problem is solved by killing each other, or at least attempting to do so.

“The female family members are focused predominantly on theft while the males commit crimes from all sectors of the Penal Code: drug and property crimes, threats, robbery, extortion, bodily harm, sexual offenses and pimping to murder. The children grow up largely unchecked in these criminal structures.”

According to Roman Reusch, a former top public prosecutor in Berlin, young people born into the immigrant clans “are consistently trained to become professional criminals.” He said the youths were growing up in an environment in which “the most serious crimes are completely normal.” He added: “They have developed a self-service mentality. They are determined to take whatever they want, whenever they want, and as often as they want.” This makes them an “ideal reservoir for the foot soldiers of organized crime.”

After Reusch attempted to initiate a crackdown on the clans, he was summarily removed from his post. His politically correct successor had a clear message for how he would henceforth deal with the criminals: “I do not like the word ‘toughness.'”

Back in Duisburg, the newspaper Rheinische Post offered a glimpse into the reality of German multiculturalism by means of an interview with a streetcar driver. “I wish I would not have to drive the train through this neighborhood [Marxloh],” he said, adding that he often has to apply the brakes because immigrant children are playing on the tracks. “If they are chased away by the police, they are immediately back again as soon as the officers are gone.”

As for those riding the trains, there are far more fare evaders than paying passengers, because conductors are afraid they will be assaulted if they ask immigrants to present their tickets.

Duisburg city councilman Volker Mosblech expressed his frustration with the intractability of the situation in Marxloh: “When I say that steps must be taken to ensure immigrants comply with rules and regulations, I’m immediately branded as a far right extremist. But order is exactly what is needed.”

Nearly a half-decade ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted that German multiculturalism has “utterly failed.” Speaking to a meeting of her center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Potsdam in October 2010, Merkel said:

“We are a country which at the beginning of the 1960s actually brought [Muslim] guest workers to Germany. Now they live with us and we lied to ourselves for a while, saying that they will not stay and that they will have disappeared again one day. That is not the reality. This multicultural approach — saying that we simply live side by side and are happy about each other — this approach has failed, utterly failed.”

At the time, many voters had hoped that Merkel’s comments would transform the debate over mass immigration to Germany. Since then, however, immigration, especially from the Muslim world, has continued unabated.

Germany is now home to the largest number of immigrants (8.2 million) of any member state of the European Union. Germany also has the second-largest Muslim population (5 million) in the EU.

German police in riot gear, accompanied by armored vehicles & water cannons,
charge into a street battle between Kurds and radical Islamists in Hamburg,
Oct. 8, 2014. (Image source: N24 video screenshot)

Germany continues to be the recipient of the largest number of asylum applications in the EU. Germany received more than 200,000 asylum-seekers in 2014, and that number is expected to more than double by the end of 2015.

According to the latest statistics, more than 179,000 people applied for asylum in Germany during the first six months of 2015. Most were from Afghanistan, Albania, Iraq, Kosovo, Serbia and Syria.

German society will never recover from this. It can only get worse until Germany becomes like a Central American country - utterly lawless, run by criminal gangs. This will happen because it is almost too late to stop it, and political ostriches will make sure nothing happens in time to stop it. 

It's amazing; Chancellor Merkel knows what is happening and does nothing about it. Her legacy is going to be,'The woman who destroyed Germany'!

These young criminals will make excellent recruits for ISIS not very far down the road, and Germany, like France, will quickly become a Muslim country. Alvederzane Germany.

Three British Sisters and Their Nine Children Cross the Border into IS Syria

"It's a one-way ticket; there's no coming back!"

Bradford (above) is a city in west Yorkshire, northern England. It is located about 14 km west of Leeds. Known as the curry capitol of Britain, Bradford has about 25% Muslim people mainly from Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India. 

Three Bradford sisters and their nine children split into two groups to cross the border into Syria, an IS smuggler has told the BBC.

The smuggler in charge of some of IS's border operations said the first group went early on Wednesday and the second on Thursday.

Sisters Khadija, Sugra and Zohra Dawood and their children went missing after travelling to Saudi Arabia.

On Tuesday, two of their husbands made an emotional appeal for them to return. Akhtar Iqbal and Mohammed Shoaib said they "could not live" without their families and begged them to come home.

The Sugra family

BBC Middle East correspondent Paul Wood, who is on the Turkish-Syrian border, said he had spoken to the smuggler who confirmed the crossing.

"If what he says is true, it clears up the main ambiguity of this story - whether the sisters were really heading for the so-called Islamic State, or some other part of Syria, controlled by some other armed group," said our correspondent.

He said the information came up during a casual conversation with the smuggler, who is known to be an IS member, but when asked for an interview about the incident he asked for money which the BBC refused.

The information also fits with the news that one of the sisters, Zohra, sent a message to her family that she was inside Syria - but she did not say exactly where.

The North East Counter Terrorism Unit said it was "continuing to make extensive enquiries" in order to try and bring the women and children home.

The Zohra family

By Paul Wood, BBC Middle East correspondent

Every armed group in Syria has its own network of smugglers - and the so-called Islamic State is no different.

They move people - and sometimes cash and weapons - across the border for profit and for the cause.

Like all smugglers, IS uses a network of safe houses along the border, though the area of border open to them has been shrinking as they lose territory to a Kurdish military advance, backed by US airstrikes.

The Turkish security forces occasionally shoot, and kill, people crossing the border illegally, but most crossings are uneventful with many smugglers coming to "an arrangement" with the Turkish border guards.

The Khadiya family

Once inside Islamic State territory, however, the women and their children will not be allowed to leave.

I spoke to an activist who runs a secret network trying to get disenchanted jihadis out of the so-called caliphate.

He told me some 400 had been killed trying to leave - and that 200 women were under house arrest.

The group went missing following a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.

Mohammed Shoaib (right) appeared in tears at the press conference alongside
Akhtar Iqbal (centre) and family lawyer Balaal Khan

They travelled to the Saudi city of Medina on 28 May and were last seen in a hotel in the city.

The family was supposed to fly to Manchester following their pilgrimage, but their husbands reported them missing when they did not return. They had last spoken to their children on 8 June.

The women's brother is understood to be fighting with extremists in Syria and it is believed the group missed a previous flight to Saudi Arabia in March after being questioned by security officials.

Bradford Council said they had not been made aware of any issues surrounding the family or the safety of their children ahead of the disappearance.

At a press conference on Tuesday Mr Iqbal made an emotional appeal to his wife Sugra, saying: "I'm shaking and I miss you. It's been too many days."

Mr Shoaib, husband of Khadija, dismissed any suggestions the sisters were in unhappy relationships saying he and his wife of 11 years had a "perfect relationship".

Syed Zubair Ahmed, the estranged husband of Zohra Dawood did not attend as he is currently in Pakistan, where he has been living for the past seven months.

'Quietly condoning IS'

David Cameron says IS is one of the biggest threats the world has faced

Dr Mohammed Iqbal, president of Bradford's Ahmadiyya Muslim Association, insisted that propaganda was reaching Muslims over the internet, not through mosques.

But Manzoor Moghal, chairman of the Muslim Forum, accused families of those travelling to Syria and Iraq of "endlessly pointing the finger at others" and said communities should take responsibility.

It comes as Prime Minister David Cameron has warned of the dangers posed by those who "quietly condone" Islamic State militants' extremist ideology.

Speaking at a security conference in the Slovakian capital Bratislava, he stressed the importance of tackling radicalisation at its source.

Radicalization, is the process of demonizing otherwise devout people. I'm not talking figuratively, but literally. It is literally demonic for women like these 3, to jointly go insane and take their children into a place where the sons will most likely die at an early age, and where the girls will become brides, willing or unwilling, shortly after puberty.

Nowhere, in a sane world, is such an action justified. Islam is horrifically evil! Those 'peaceful' Muslims are not the majority, they are those who have been partially assimilated into western culture, a culture that younger Muslims are rejecting in favour of more 'devout', ie radical Islam.

The west is in serious trouble and most governments are suffering from 'Ostrich Syndrome'. It may already be too late to stop them from turning Europe into an Islamic continent.

Denmark Awakes; Government Loses on Immigration and Welfare

Denmark's opposition parties have beaten the ruling coalition after a close general election.

PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt and former PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen

With all mainland votes counted, the centre-right group led by ex-PM Lars Lokke Rasmussen beat PM Helle Thorning-Schmidt's centre-left coalition, although her party is the largest.

The right-wing, anti-immigration Danish People's Party will become the second-largest in parliament.

The DPP is now expected to join Mr Rasmussen's ruling coalition.

The DPP's leader Kristian Thulesen Dahl had previously (in Danish) poured cold water on the idea of going into government.

He told Denmark's Politiken he preferred "the little free bird role, which can make the Danish People's Party come closer to getting our policy through in the real world than you think".

But Mr Dahl could yet be in a position to make a bid to become prime minister.

By midnight local time (22:00 GMT) 99% of votes had been counted. Results from four seats in Greenland and the Faroe Islands have yet to be included.

Ms Thorning-Schmidt's governing Social Democratic Party was the biggest party, winning at least 26.3% of the vote, according to Danish broadcaster DR.

But her allies failed to gain as much of the vote as those of the opposition.

According to DR, the DPP won 21.1% of the vote, and Mr Rasmussen's Denmark Liberal Party came third on 19.5%.

Welfare and immigration exercised Danish voters more than the economy.

Anger at perceived benefit tourism led the traditionally pro-immigration Social Democratic Party to launch an advertising campaign with the slogan: "If you come to Denmark you should work."

Mr Rasmussen, who led the country between 2009 and 2011, suggested that benefits are so high that there is barely any incentive for Danes or immigrants to work.

Way back in 2009, Telegraph reporter Adrian Michaels warned that Europe was in trouble because they were ignoring the mass immigration, particularly of Muslims. It took Denmark another 6 years to recognize that problem; 6 more years of the problem multiplying. But, at last, the people have responded, and are now far ahead of their EU neighbours who have buried their stupid heads in the sand.

The report, which follows, makes for fascinating reading, especially when you consider that his stats are quite dated, and that so little has changed, so few governments are willing to address the problem.

By Adrian Michaels 08 Aug 2009

Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb: a recent rush into the EU by migrants, including millions of Muslims, will change the continent beyond recognition over the next two decades, and almost no policy-makers are talking about it.

The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent of Spain's population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe's Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys' names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.

Europe's low white birth rate, coupled with faster multiplying migrants, will change fundamentally what we take to mean by European culture and society. The altered population mix has far-reaching implications for education, housing, welfare, labour, the arts and everything in between. It could have a critical impact on foreign policy: a study was submitted to the US Air Force on how America's relationship with Europe might evolve. Yet EU officials admit that these issues are not receiving the attention they deserve.

Jerome Vignon, the director for employment and social affairs at the European Commission, said that the focus of those running the EU had been on asylum seekers and the control of migration rather than the integration of those already in the bloc. "It has certainly been underestimated - there is a general rhetoric that social integration of migrants should be given as much importance as monitoring the inflow of migrants." But, he said, the rhetoric had rarely led to policy.

The countries of the EU have long histories of welcoming migrants, but in recent years two significant trends have emerged. Migrants have come increasingly from outside developed economies, and they have come in accelerating numbers.

The growing Muslim population is of particular interest. This is not because Muslims are the only immigrants coming into the EU in large numbers; there are plenty of entrants from all points of the compass. But Muslims represent a particular set of issues beyond the fact that atrocities have been committed in the West in the name of Islam.

America's Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, part of the non-partisan Pew Research Center, said in a report: "These [EU] countries possess deep historical, cultural, religious and linguistic traditions. Injecting hundreds of thousands, and in some cases millions, of people who look, speak and act differently into these settings often makes for a difficult social fit."

How dramatic are the population changes? Everyone is aware that certain neighbourhoods of certain cities in Europe are becoming more Muslim, and that the change is gathering pace. But raw details are hard to come by as the data is sensitive: many countries in the EU do not collect population statistics by religion.

EU numbers on general immigration tell a story on their own. In the latter years of the 20th century, the 27 countries of the EU attracted half a million more people a year than left. "Since 2002, however," the latest EU report says, "net migration into the EU has roughly tripled to between 1.6 million and two million people per year."

The increased pace has made a nonsense of previous forecasts. In 2004 the EU thought its population would decline by 16 million by 2050. Now it thinks it will increase by 10 million by 2060. Britain is expected to become the most populous EU country by 2060, with 77 million inhabitants. Right now it has 20 million fewer people than Germany. Italy's population was expected to fall precipitously; now it is predicted to stay flat.

The study for the US Air Force by Leon Perkowski in 2006 found that there were at least 15 million Muslims in the EU, and possibly as many as 23 million. They are not uniformly distributed, of course. According to the US's Migration Policy Institute, residents of Muslim faith will account for more than 20 per cent of the EU population by 2050 but already do so in a number of cities. Whites will be in a minority in Birmingham by 2026, says Christopher Caldwell, an American journalist, and even sooner in Leicester. Another forecast holds that Muslims could outnumber non-Muslims in France and perhaps in all of western Europe by mid-century. Austria was 90 per cent Catholic in the 20th century but Islam could be the majority religion among Austrians aged under 15 by 2050, says Mr Caldwell.

Projected growth rates are a disputed area. Birth rates can be difficult to predict and migrant numbers can ebb and flow. But Karoly Lorant, a Hungarian economist who wrote a paper for the European Parliament, calculates that Muslims already make up 25 per cent of the population in Marseilles and Rotterdam, 20 per cent in Malmo, 15 per cent in Brussels and Birmingham and 10 per cent in London, Paris and Copenhagen.

Recent polls have tended to show that the feared radicalisation of Europe's Muslims has not occurred. That gives hope that the newcomers will integrate successfully. Nonetheless, second and third generations of Muslims show signs of being harder to integrate than their parents. Policy Exchange, a British study group, found that more than 70 per cent of Muslims over 55 felt that they had as much in common with non-Muslims as Muslims. But this fell to 62 per cent of 16-24 year-olds.

The population changes are stirring unease on the ground. Europeans often tell pollsters that they have had enough immigration, but politicians largely avoid debate.

France banned the wearing of the hijab veil in schools and stopped the wearing of large crosses and the yarmulke too, so making it harder to argue that the law was aimed solely at Muslims. Britain has strengthened its laws on religious hatred. But these are generally isolated pieces of legislation.

Into the void has stepped a resurgent group of extreme-Right political parties, among them the British National Party, which gained two seats at recent elections to the European Parliament. Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who speaks against Islam and was banned this year from entering Britain, has led opinion polls in Holland.

The Pew Forum identified the mainstream silence in 2005: "The fact that [extreme parties] have risen to prominence at all speaks poorly about the state and quality of the immigration debate. [Scholars] have argued that European elites have yet to fully grapple with the broader issues of race and identity surrounding Muslims and other groups for fear of being seen as politically incorrect."

The starting point should be greater discussion of integration. Does it matter at all? Yes, claims Mr Vignon at the European Commission. Without it, polarisation and ghettoes can result. "It's bad because it creates antagonism. It antagonises poor people against other poor people: people with low educational attainment feel threatened," he says.

The EU says employment rates for non-EU nationals are lower than for nationals, which holds back economic advancement and integration. One important reason for this is a lack of language skills.

The Migration Policy Institute says that, in 2007, 28 per cent of children born in England and Wales had at least one foreign-born parent. That rose to 54 per cent in London. Overall in 2008, 14.4 per cent of children in primary schools had a language other than English as their first language.

Muslims, who are a hugely diverse group, have so far shown little inclination to organise politically on lines of race or religion. But that does not mean their voices are being ignored. Germany started to reform its voting laws 10 years ago, granting certain franchise rights to the large Turkish population.

It would be odd if that did not alter the country's stance on Turkey's application to join the EU. Mr Perkowski's study says: "Faced with rapidly growing, disenfranchised and increasingly politically empowered Muslim populations within the borders of some of its oldest and strongest allies, the US could be faced with ever stronger challenges to its Middle East foreign policies."

Demography will force politicians to confront these issues sooner rather than later. Recently, some have started to nudge the debate along. Angel Gurría, the OECD secretary-general, said in June: "Migration is not a tap that can be turned on and off at will. We need fair and effective migration and integration policies; policies that work and adjust to both good economic times and bad ones."