Islam in Greenland

An original history of Muslims and their faith in the northern isle.

A view of Narsaq, the town to which Ahmed Akkari moved. By Algkalv on Wikimedia Commons

This article is part of a series: Religion in Greenland

The twenty-first century has seen small Muslim communities lay down roots in the far northern regions of the earth,¹ with the northernmost mosque in the world being opened in Inuvik in Canada’s Northwest Territories in 2010.² Greenland has never had a significant Muslim presence, but a few Muslims have played prominent roles in Greenlandic life, and political controversies involving Islam have intermittently held the attention of the Greenlandic press. Modern tourism culture and greater ease of travel has also created new opportunities for Muslims to experience Greenland. For instance, Mostafah Salameh from Scotland became the first Muslim to complete a crossing of the island in 2017.³

The Midnight Sun Mosque in Inuvik, Canada. By Daniel Case on Wikimedia Commons.

Encounters and controversies

In the 1950s through to the 1990s, mentions of Islam and Muslims (or the ‘Muhammedanske’) in the Greenlandic press mostly took the form of travelogues and country profiles. There were also some editorials that touched on aspects of Muslim doctrine, history, or law as an aside.⁴ Readers in Greenland were also occasionally informed about events surrounding the growing Muslim community in Denmark.⁵ One of the earliest substantial encounters between Greenlanders and Islam came in 1967, when it was reported in the Atuagagdliutit newspaper that students at the Nuuk Lutheran seminary

have familiarized themselves thoroughly with the Mohammedan faith. It was a historical-pedagogical task that their history teacher, assistant professor Hans Brunsø, had set for them. As a fitting end, the students organised an exhibition about Islam in the seminary hall and passed on their knowledge to the students at the seminary school. Here, pupils from the 7th grade are shown around the exhibition after hearing lectures about Islam and the Arab peoples.⁶

A student at the Nuuk seminary teaching other students about Islam. From Atuagagdliutit, 11 May 1967.

In the twenty-first century, Greenlandic discourses on Islam were heavily influenced by the political context of Muslim immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments in Denmark, particularly after the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper published cartoons by Kurt Westergaard depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad in 2005. Because Islamic doctrine generally forbids artistic representations of the Prophet, many Muslims in Denmark and across the world demanded Danish government action against the newspaper and boycotted Danish goods and ambassadors for several years.⁷

Juliane Henningsen, a Greenlandic member of the Danish Parliament/Folketing, was initially scheduled to join a Danish ambassadorial trip to Iran in 2008, but the trip was cancelled amid the Iranian government’s protests over the cartoons. Henningsen was ‘relieved’ at this outcome and told the Greenlandic Sermitsiaq newspaper that while she could ‘understand’ the offense caused by the drawings, there was ‘a lot to address about democracy and freedom of expression in the Muslim countries’.⁸

Later in 2008, Sermitsiaq reported extensively on a spate of unrest between Greenlandic and Muslim residents in Gellerup, a district in the Aarhus metropolitan area of Denmark. The small Greenlandic community living there complained that they were being systematically targeted by other residents whom they asserted to be mostly Muslims. The assailants subjected them to regular physical assaults and verbal harassment, such that the Greenlanders were ‘afraid to go out’. One alleged chant used against them was: ‘Fuck off home to Greenland, it’s our Gellerup.’

The director of the company that managed the relevant housing blocks condemned the attacks but assigned blame to the cultural differences between Greenlanders and Muslims regarding alcohol: ‘If Greenlanders who drink a lot live in a place where mainly Muslims live who do not accept alcohol, then conflicts will arise.’ City authorities decided to have the Greenlanders moved out of the area for their own safety,⁹ and ten families were ultimately moved.¹⁰

Anti-Muslim organisations led by Stop Islamisation of Denmark (SIAD) held a rally in Aarhus on 23 August 2008 to protest this outcome, which they dubbed an ‘ethnic cleansing’ against Greenlanders in favour of ‘racist Islamists’.¹¹ Mayor Nicolai Wammen told the leading Greenlandic politician Lars-Emil Johansen that the harassment of the Gellerup residents had mostly settled down by this point,¹² while Peter Sommerfelt, leader of the Danish anti-racist group Demos, argued that SIAD and its associates did not care about the Greenlanders but was simply using them to ‘put Muslims in a bad light’.¹³

Poster for an anti-Muslim rally in Aarhus, Denmark, in August 2008. The text refers to Islam as ‘Nazi-islam’, claims that the afflicted Greenlanders are Danes, and condemns the Muslim holy book, the Quran, as ‘anti-democratic’. Reproduced in Sermitsiaq, 11 August 2008.

The next flurry of interest in Islam in the Greenlandic press came in 2015 during the fallout from the Charlie Hebdo shooting. Just like the Jyllands-Posten in 2005, the French Charlie Hebdo magazine had published cartoons of Muhammad, after which two radicalised Islamist brothers shot and killed staff at the magazine’s offices. Further Islamist-related terrorist attacks followed — in all, 17 people died. A wide range of Western media outlets published the Charlie Hebdo cartoons as a show of solidarity for freedom of expression.¹⁴

Both the Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten and Sermitsiaq newspapers decided to join this list of publications.¹⁵ This decision caused Mariia Simonsen, chair of the Greenlandic Media Association, to express ‘fear for the journalists’ safety’. Leif Saandvig Immanuelsen of the EPI creative arts association also expressed concern that Greenland might be hit by terrorism, suggesting that journalists should ‘respect other religions and know the limit when we make fun of some who may react violently’.¹⁶ Several Danish speakers were invited over the following years to come to Greenland and discuss issues surrounding Islam and freedom of expression, including Flemming Rose, who was culture editor at the Jyllands-Posten in 2005,¹⁷ and the Socialist People’s Party parliamentarian Özlem Cekic.¹⁸

When the Danish Government introduced legislation in 2020 that would have required religious leaders to translate all of their sermons into Danish to avoid cultural insularity and radicalisation, clergy in the Faroe Islands and Greenland argued that it would be absurd to require Faroese and Greenlandic sermons to be translated.¹⁹ The law was eventually dropped in 2023.²⁰

Muslim residents in Greenland

Wassam Azaqeer is a Lebanese Muslim who moved to Greenland in the 2000s and opened a popular restaurant in Nuuk. His story as the ‘only Muslim in this state’ was brought to international attention in 2011 by an Arab TV report which stated that Azaqeer’s restaurant was visited by around 200 customers per day.²¹ The main cause for intrigue was the fact that, because Ramadan (a holy month in which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset) occurs during the summer when the darkness falls for only a short time in Nuuk, Azaqeer had to fast for up to 21 hours out of every day.²² Though he sometimes considered returning to Lebanon for Ramadan, Azaqeer usually decided to stay, noting that if he left there would be nobody in the whole of Greenland keeping the fast.²³

Other Muslims in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions opt not to observe a strict sunrise-to-sunset fast. As reported with interest by Sermitsiaq, Abdifatah Hassan of the Islamic Center for Northern Norway in Tromsø, where there is no sunset at all in the height of summer, instructs believers that they have three options: They can split the day into two 12-hour slots and observe the fast in one of those slots; they can fast according to the sunrise and sunset in the holy cities of Mecca or Medina; or they can time their fast in accordance with sunrise and sunset in the nearest place where this takes place.²⁴ Islam is as capable of adapting to different environments as any other mainstream religion, and there is no reason to believe that it could not cope with conditions in Greenland were a mosque to be erected there.

Houses in Narsaq. Wikimedia Commons.

Another Lebanese Muslim, Ahmed Akkari, also made his home in Greenland. Akkari was a leading member of the group of Muslim religious leaders in Denmark who demanded government censorship and sometimes resorted to violent rhetoric following the publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons in Jyllands-Posten in 2005. After a return trip to Lebanon in 2007, Akkari moved to Greenland in 2008 to work for two years as a school teacher in the southern town of Narsaq, where he says he had ‘plenty of time to read and write. And think.’²⁵ He chose Greenland as a place where he could ‘get away from what he calls hypocritical Islamists who are using the Muhammad crisis to gain status’, and indeed this experience helped him move away from his more extreme religious and political views.²⁶

Akkari returned to Narsaq in 2014, again as a school teacher, and that same year he published his memoir, Min Afsked med Islamismen (My Farewell to Islamism), in which he wholly rejected violent Islamism, though he is still a faithful Muslim. In an article published in Sermitsiaq, Akkari said that he now realised his actions in 2005 were ‘clearly wrong’.²⁷

Notes

1. J. Duin, ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses, Sikhs, Muslims: New religious groups race to Arctic’, Newsweek, 20 November 2022. https://www.newsweek.com/2022/11/25/jehovahs-witnesses-sikhs-muslims-new-religious-groups-race-arctic-1759921.html
2. L. Abozaid, ‘Mosque’s epic move from Winnipeg to Inuvik a story of communities coming together, says picture book author’, CBC, 24 April 2022. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/mosque-move-inuvik-winnipeg-2010-shazia-afzal-1.6428074
3. J. Harrison, ‘Scottish Muslim adventurer completes gruelling Greenland trek’, The Herald, 15 May 2017. https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15285652.scottish-muslim-adventurer-completes-gruelling-greenland-trek/
4. ‘I de fleste lande har en Far rettigheder men ikke pligter overfor sine børn…’, Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, vol. 95, no. 1, 19 May 1955, p. 18. https://timarit.is/page/3777946
5. ‘Fra hele verden’, Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, vol. 107, no. 16, 3 August 1967, p. 32. https://timarit.is/page/3787323 ; ‘Den store reform for ægteskabet må vente’, Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, vol. 109, no. 13, 26 June 1969, p. 18. https://timarit.is/page/3788942
6. ‘Islam på seminariet’, Atuagagdliutit/Grønlandsposten, vol. 107, no 10, 11 May 1967, p. 11. https://timarit.is/page/3787106
7. H. M. Fattah, ‘Possible crack in the boycott of Danish goods’, The New York Times, 5 April 2006. https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/05/world/middleeast/possible-crack-in-the-boycott-of-danish-goods.html
8. ‘Iran-tur aflyst’, Sermitsiaq, 17 February 2008. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/iran-tur-aflyst/487486
9. ‘Grønlændere stenet ud af Gellerup’, Sermitsiaq, 5 July 2008. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/gronlaendere-stenet-ud-af-gellerup/288190
10. ‘Kritik af angreb på grønlændere’, Sermitsiaq, 14 August 2008. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/kritik-af-angreb-pa-gronlaendere/537800
11. ‘Anti-islamister demonstrerer til fordel for grønlændere’, Sermitsiaq, 11 August 2008. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/anti-islamister-demonstrerer-til-fordel-for-gronlaendere/155916
12. ‘Fred i Gellerup’, Sermitsiaq, 13 August 2008. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/fred-i-gellerup/618469
13. ‘Grønlændere er gidsler mod islam’, Sermitsiaq, 13 August 2008. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/gronlaendere-er-gidsler-mod-islam/369393
14. T. Kludt, ‘Journalists race to show solidarity with “Charlie Hebdo” after terror attack’, CNN Business, 7 January 2015. https://money.cnn.com/2015/01/07/media/charlie-hebdo-attack-journalists-solidarity/
15. ‘AG og Sermitsiaq overvejer at bringe Charlie Hebdo-tegninger’, Sermitsiaq, 8 January 2015. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/ag-og-sermitsiaq-overvejer-at-bringe-charlie-hebdo-tegninger/386072 ; S. D. Duus and Ritzau, ‘Mediehuset Sermitsiaq.AG bringer Charlie Hebdo-forsider’, Sermitsiaq, 13 January 2015. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/erhverv/mediehuset-sermitsiaqag-bringer-charlie-hebdo-forsider/315152
16. ‘Journalistformand frygter for journalisters sikkerhed’, Sermitsiaq, 15 January 2015. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/erhverv/journalistformand-frygter-for-journalisters-sikkerhed/369177
17. J. Schultz-Nielsen, ‘Debataften: Tør jeg ytre mig offentligt?’, Sermitsiaq, 22 November 2018. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/debataften-tor-jeg-ytre-mig-offentligt/213804
18. W. Turnowsky, ‘Transparency: Vi skal snakke med dem vi er mest uenige med’, Sermitsiaq, 28 August 2019. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/transparency-vi-skal-snakke-med-dem-vi-er-mest-uenige-med/176846
19. K. Joensen, ‘Færøske og grønlandske prædikener skal oversættes til dansk’, Sermitsiaq, 12 November 2020. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/faeroske-og-gronlandske-praedikener-skal-oversaettes-til-dansk/273044 ; ‘Råd: Nej til oversættelse af prædikener’, Sermitsiaq, 20 December 2020. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/rad-nej-til-oversaettelse-af-praedikener/239277
20. ‘Danish law on mandatory translation for religious services scrapped’, CNE, 28 April 2023. https://cne.news/article/2997-danish-law-on-mandatory-translation-for-religious-services-scrapped
21. ‘The only Muslim in Greenland who fasts for 21 hours’, Jazbablog, 8 August 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20130719111848/https://jazbablog.com/2011/08/08/the-only-muslim-in-greenland-who-fasts-for-21-hours/ (archived from the original).
22. N. A. Reda, ‘Greenland’s Only Muslim Resident is Lebanese’, The 961, 12 December 2019. https://www.the961.com/greenlands-only-muslim-resident-is-lebanese/#google_vignette
23. ‘Greenland’s sole Muslim resident fasts 21 hours’, ICE News, 11 August 2013. https://www.icenews.is/2013/08/11/greenlands-sole-muslim-resident-fasts-21-hours/
24. N. K. Søndergaard, ‘Hvad gør muslimer i Grønland under ramadanen?’, Sermitsiaq, 15 June 2016. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/kultur/hvad-gor-muslimer-i-gronland-under-ramadanen/189527
25. ‘Ahmad Akkari, Danish Muslim: I was wrong to damn Muhammad cartoons’, The Guardian, 9 August 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/09/ahmad-akkari-islam-danish-cartoons-muhammad
26. ‘Akkari retter skarp kritik mod imamer’, Sermitsiaq, 3 October 2008. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/akkari-retter-skarp-kritik-mod-imamer/611816
27. S. D. Duus, ‘Akkari støtter Sermitsiaq.AG’s Charlie Hebdo-valg’, Sermitsiaq, 25 January 2015. https://www.sermitsiaq.ag/samfund/akkari-stotter-sermitsiaqags-charlie-hebdo-valg/470954