Debater and all-around straight talker Mohamed Abdi Kahn has sent Denmark an invoice.
3.5 million kroner.
Then he and his family of eight are moving permanently to Djibouti. New house with five rooms in one of the three areas where foreigners are allowed to buy and build. He has himself accounted for it all, publicly and with transparent pricing.
And the terms are simple, in his own words -
Either you pay, or else "you must accept our permanent presence in Denmark".
I have a weakness for him, I might as well admit it. He's hard not to like. 😁
But still. Can someone help me out again here. Because I need to follow along.
The ordinary repatriation scheme - the one the state offers people who travel home to rebuild their country - gives up to 250,000 kroner per adult and roughly 50,000 per child. Even a family of eight gets away for under a million.
Mohamed wants 3.5.
Apparently you get the standard rate for wanting to go home.
And Premium for wanting to leave!?
Or how should that be understood?
Yesterday we learned that a human life costs ten months, and a burned book costs two years.
And the explanation for the latter is worth getting. The Quran law doesn't exist because the book is holy in Denmark. It exists because the reactions to desecrating it are so violent that the state found it easier to protect the book than to protect freedom.
If you want that sentence translated into the dialect of Danish most of us speak in the provinces - it means we're not punishing the burning as such. We're paying protection money to the feelings it awakens.
And today the next invoice lies ready in the same kind of business model, from the enterprising man.
Pay - otherwise we stay, and then "we'll use our rights to the fullest", as he phrases it.
It's not an application.
It's an offer you can't refuse.
If you've seen that film.
But I still like him - because the man is actually more honest than the politicians who for forty years have tried to make Danes believe that they, as the first in Islam's 1,400-year history, could negotiate their way to a special Danish "Islam-light", where you got to leave out the parts that don't work so well here.
But Mohamed is kind here too. Because he has already published the answer that has eluded all of Parliament's dispatched negotiators through forty years -
"I think the Quran is more important than all human laws, including Danish law."
It can't be said more clearly. He's done the politicians' homework for them. There's actually a long list before him who have also done that. But either they don't read - or they won't understand it.
And even if they did, the media wouldn't write it. Because the sentence has a strange property - when Mohamed says it, it's freedom of speech. When a Dane quotes it as a concern, it's racism.
Same words. It's only the sender that determines the verdict. 🤷🏼♂️
And before anyone gets to say that he's just one single extremist voice, let me just interrupt - in Jyllands-Posten's large survey from 2015, 77 percent of resident Muslims answered that the Quran's instructions should be followed completely. In the newest survey from 2024, the number has fallen to 37 percent - but only 23 percent actively answer no. The rest answer neither/nor. What that means, everyone can guess for themselves. 🙂
So Mohamed isn't saying anything exotic. He's just saying loudly and without euphemism what somewhere between a third and three-quarters believe, depending on year and question - and what even the most moderate voices don't deny, but reinterpret. When a resident imam was confronted with the numbers, the answer was that Muslims must keep their covenant, and that the covenant means you follow Danish law.
Listen to the construction one extra time. You follow Danish law because the Quran commands it. Danish law is obeyed on the Quran's authority - not the Constitution's. 😁🤷🏼♂️
It's the same hierarchy as Mohamed's.
Just wrapped more nicely.
And Mohamed is indeed - it must be said - easily dismayed by how slowly things are going in getting Denmark up to Islamic standards and norms.
He has himself publicly posted the list of what he believes "friendly Muslims" should be able to demand -
prayer rooms, Quran schools, mosques, and the right to keep their Islamic values in Denmark. And when it turns out the answers aren't coming, he himself concluded, in black and white, that Denmark apparently only wants Muslims "who don't learn and follow the Quran and Sharia".
That's actually the most precise summary of the entire integration debate I've read in a long time. He's just swapped who the problem is. 😅🤷🏼♂️
None of all this incompatibility has ever been hidden, but the nice people in the nice offices with the nice opinions in the nice parties won't accept this as an answer. So you never hear it formulated cleanly.
But that's the reality everyone has to relate to - regardless of what you believe.
Mohamed's offer still stands, as I understand it - and Inger and the others are no doubt assessing and discussing whether it's not worth the money.
And this is where I have to say…
If he succeeds, I actually think I'd like to join the same scheme - provided, of course, that in the usual juridical softcore EU style, you don't sign that you can't return. And you can rent out your home until you figure it out.
When it's all become circus anyway - don't you think my scheme is also possible, even though the destination would be Ibiza and not Djibouti?
Mohamed is welcome to visit - though I'm not sure he's quite down with my playlist of modern Jesus music, the other guests drinking red wine, and Krisztina running around in the sun in a bikini dancing and swimming in the pool.
But that's up to him. It's his life. And he should - in my opinion - live it as his faith commands him.
It's just done best in surroundings where society's architecture and arrangement supports it - instead of in a struggle to radically remake the society you live in.
I wish him and his family good luck finding that - with or without Inger's checkbook.
❤️🔥🪽
