One of the most confusing things in public debate is how often the question of Islam gets reduced to a question of immigration.
It's understandable.
But it's wrong.
And I know it's not necessarily easy to see right away - so try for a moment with me.
Immigration is not the cause of the problem.
Immigration is merely the way the problem arrives.
Because Islam is not a geographic phenomenon - and it is not bound to skin colour, ethnicity, or country of origin.
Islam is an inner orientation.
A mindset.
A coherent pattern for living one's life.
A set of fundamental beliefs about where authority comes from, what law is, what truth is, what man owes to God - and what man owes to society.
These beliefs are not carried in passports or residence permits.
They are carried in people's interior.
Therefore it is ultimately irrelevant who carries Islam into a society. Whether it's newcomers from outside, second- or third-generation citizens, or ethnic Danish converts.
What matters is not the movement across borders. It is the inner structure that moves with it.
And when this structure does not recognise the separation between faith and law, between conscience and authority, between individual and system, then it will - regardless of who carries it - seek to shape society in its own image.
Therefore immigration is a visible symptom.
But not the cause.
You can imagine the scenario yourself.
If a large number of ethnic Danish citizens tomorrow - let's say 300,000, 400,000, or 500,000 ethnically Nordic Danes - converted to Islam, and wanted to live in full accordance with their faith - then the fundamental challenge would be the same, unless society had established in advance what cannot be negotiated.
Because what we're actually facing is not a question of people.
It is a question of order.
Western civilisation rests on a few, but decisive assumptions -
- that law stands above power
- that conscience is free
- that the individual does not own truth, but stands accountable before it
- and that faith cannot be forced without becoming tyranny
Islam represents - understood this way - something other than the Western social model.
A binding together of faith, law and authority, where submission is not a personal choice, but a societal ideal.
This is where the incompatibility arises.
Where it begins.
But not where it ends.
No Muslim is responsible for Islam. Because no Muslim can position themselves outside it, place themselves above it, or critique it from within.
It simply does not exist as a possibility.
Just as apostasy requires organisations like Foreningen Frafalden throughout Europe, which help people out of Islam, in ways reminiscent of exit programmes for gangs and cults. Not for ideological reasons. But for security reasons. For many, apostasy means loss of family, network, identity and economic foundation. In serious cases also loss of physical security, need for secret address or flight from the local area.
If Western society accepted this logic as a societal premise, it would no longer be a Western society.
Then it would be something else.
And that is precisely what we're gambling with, if we don't address the incompatibility.
Therefore it makes no sense to direct criticism at individuals.
And therefore - just as importantly - individuals should not take it personally either.
It is not people being criticised.
It is a social order that cannot coexist with another without one having to yield.
One can naturally reject this analysis.
But one cannot reject it and simultaneously preserve the Western social order unchanged.
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This is not a critique of Muslims as people, their intentions or their character.
It is an analysis of Islam as a society-bearing order - and of the difference between individual faith and political-juridical structure.
When I therefore write about Islam, I am not speaking about private piety or personal religious practice.
I am speaking about Islam in its full normative form - as a civilisational pattern, where religious authority, law and social order are inextricably interwoven.
It is this pattern that has historically shaped large parts of the Middle East.
And it is this pattern we have again and again seen unfold with the same consequences, every time it gains societal foothold in numbers - and without clearly defined, non-negotiable boundaries.
So let us make them.
Together.
