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April 8, 2006
Danish Muslims Get First Cemetery
COPENHAGEN, April 8, 2006– Danish Muslims will be able, for the first time, to burry their dead in an Islamic cemetery after a government decision, some linked to the recent furor over caricatures mocking Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him).
"We are pleased, happy," Kasem Said Ahmad, chairman of the Danish Islamic Burial Foundation, told Reuters.
The Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs has approved the construction of the burial site on 50,000 square meters of land bought by the foundation in southern Copenhagen several years ago.
The decision closes a legal struggle that lasted for more than seven years.
"It is an expression that Islam and Muslims are a part of Danish society," said Ahmed.
Muslims make up around three percent of Denmark’s 5.3 population, making Islam the second largest religion after the Lutheran Protestant Church.
The center-right government of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen has been accused of religious intolerance, partly because of a crackdown on immigration, according to Reuters.
One of the main areas of contention with the Muslim minority has been the lack of an Islamic cemetery.
"Against the unfortunate background of the publishing of the cartoons, I see this as an expression of accommodation and tolerance that I believe, fundamentally, characterizes the Danish government -- also in regard to Muslims," said Ahmad.
The Scandinavian country has been at the center of Muslim anger since the publication of twelve offensive cartoons by its mass-circulation daily Jyallands Posten late last year.
The anti-Prophet drawings, considered blasphemous under Islam, triggered global and sometimes violent protests as well as a boycott of Danish goods.
The go-ahead for the cemetery is not the first positive sign to emerge from the cartoons controversy.
Late in March, the first hijab-clad talk show presenter make her debut on Denmark's DR2 television network.
Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a 24-year-old Danish Muslim of Palestinian origin, is hosting an eight-part program on the fallout of the Danish cartoons on the DR2 network. (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies)
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