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Danish mosque reports threats to police

The Local Denmark
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Danish mosque reports threats to police
The Grimhøj Mosque is receiving threats and facing a political push to be closed down. Photo: DR1

Police say that the Paris attacks and a recent documentary that went inside the controversial Grimhøj Mosque in Aarhus are likely behind the threats. Meanwhile, there is a renewed political push to close down the mosque.

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The controversial Grimhøj Mosque in Aarhus has requested police assistance after receiving various threats. 
 
A spokesman for East Jutland Police confirmed to Metroxpress that the mosque’s leadership has reached out for assistance. 
 
“They don’t feel threatened and they don’t want to press charges but they have pointed out that people are talking about them in a very, very ugly way and we are following the situation,” Commissioner Allan Aarslev told Metroxpress. 
 
Aarslev said that it is likely the combination of last week’s terror attacks in Paris and a recent documentary about the mosque that have led to the threats. 
 
In a documentary from broadcaster DR that aired last week, leaders of the Grimhøj Mosque said that they want to see an Islamic caliphate established, that they don’t believe in democracy and that a Danish convert who carried out a suicide bomb attack in Iraq is a hero. 
 
“We want the Islamic State to come out on top. We want an Islamic state in the world,” the mosque’s chairman, Oussama El-Saadi, said in the programme. 
 
 
Grimhøj Mosque has long been accused of promoting an extremist interpretation of Islam. 
 
Representatives of the mosque travelled the Middle East in 2006 stirring up discontent over Jyllands-Posten’s publication of 12 cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad. Those cartoons were later republished by French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the target of last week’s attacks in Paris. 
 
In July 2014, a video emerged of Abu Bilal Ismail, an imam at the mosque who is also featured in the documentary, calling on God to “destroy the Zionist Jews”. 
 
Two months later, the mosque made international headlines after declaring its support for the terrorist group Isis
 
East Jutland Police also estimate that of the at least 110 individuals who have left Denmark to fight in Syria, around two dozen of them come from Grimhøj Mosque. 
 
In the aftermath of the DR programme, all political parties with the exception of the Red-Green Alliance (Enhedslisten) requested that Justice Minister Mette Frederiksen investigate the possibility of shutting down the mosque. 
 
The mosque has survived previous political pushes for closure and mosque leaders say that if the Grimhøj location is shut down, they will simply open up in a new location.
 
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