For several statements by Sherin Khankan support that she is an Islamist.
That is the opinion of lawyer Michael John Brandt, who will represent Naser Khader in the Supreme Court on Monday afternoon.
Sherin Khankan has sued him for defamation. But Naser Khader will be acquitted. His lawyer points out first and foremost that one can reasonably call Khankan an Islamist.
If she is dissatisfied with the predicate, Michael John Brandt reminds that as an active debater she must be prepared for a little of everything.
– Sherin Khankan is an active public debater who has participated for many years in the public debate on controversial cases of sharia law, whipping and so on, the lawyer says.
– When participating in such a debate, one must be able to tolerate accusations and value judgments to a greater extent than if one did not participate in the debate.
Sherin Khankan is an imam at the Mariam Mosque in Copenhagen and director of the Exit Circle, which is an organization that helps victims of psychological and honor-related violence. She is a trained sociologist of religion.
For the last twenty years she has been active in the debate on Islam.
The lawyer refers to a series of articles in which Khankan has commented on his personal views on Islam and the interplay between religion and society.
An example is an article from Avisen.dk from 2006, where she, according to Michael John Brandt, says that her ideal is a “democratic caliphate”.
In another article on religion.dk from 2011, she writes that “secularism has many faces and possibilities for interpretation. Secularism can also be defined as an interplay between religion and politics”.
Sherin Khankan has just argued that she is not an Islamist because she is in favor of secularism – that is, the separation of religion and state.
In the same article, she writes that “the rising Islamic activism is not something we can choose from”.
– All those statements can not be understood differently than that she wants a mixture of politics and religion, no matter what the purpose may be. Even so much so that she wants a caliphate.
– You can have many opinions about that, and I will not make myself a judge of that. But in terms of the definition of Islamism, this is exactly what this is about, says Michael John Brandt.
The lawyer then concludes that Sherin Khankan “speaks with two tongues”.
The case stems from an email that Khader sent to several members of parliament in September 2017 on behalf of himself and the then foreign affairs rapporteurs Marcus Knuth and Martin Henriksen from the Liberal Party and the Danish People’s Party.
Here, the three politicians tried to cancel a grant of 680,000 kroner, which was on its way to the Exit Circle. The organization was the only one that had bid on the funds that came from the rate pool.
In the email, they wrote, among other things, that Sherin Khankan has defended the whiplash for infidelity. And in a subsequent post on Facebook, Khader wrote about Khankan’s Islamist past.
The Eastern High Court decided the case last year in June. Here, Naser Khader was partially acquitted of libel, while part of the case was dismissed on the grounds of his parliamentary immunity.
The Supreme Court will rule in the case on Thursday 27 May.
Source: The Nordic Page
