On Thursday one of the customer at Danish Super Market Føtex refused to get help from a female employee who was wearing head scarf. The customer was asked to leave the shop but it started lots of debate in the news and over the social media. There has been already lots of outrage as Denmark passes the law making the handshake as a mandatory process for naturalization. Not only this but danish government has also come up with the full recipe on how to “shake the hand”.

The whole drama started when the Swedish woman had won compensation after her job interview was ended when she refused a handshake. Instead of taking this case as a good example to follow from their Neighboring country and to discourage the discrimination based on religion and ensuring the minorities of their freedom to practice the religion the Danish Conservatives come up with the counterargument :

The Conservative and Danish People’s parties say that people awarded citizenship in the Scandinavian country must be required to shake hands.

The argument was justified by Danish peoples party representative that the residents who are awarded citizenship of Denmark sign the document during their naturalization ceremonies promising to respect Danish values and if people don’t respect such straightforward law they should not aim for danish citizenship.

The law is clearly aimed at Muslims, whose religion forbids touching members of the opposite sex. In my personal humble opinion danish conservatives and danish peoples party must understand that there is a difference between cultural values and religious values and they should avoid mixing two unless they aim to do so. One can encourage people to integrate culturally but can not force someone to leave behind their religious values as it is not just against the freedom to practice the religion but this feeling of powerlessness and suppression causes also hate and disrespect. Moreover no one should have the right to dictate someone to initiate the body contact with someone else especially against their will.

These extremist politicians while making such policies and laws forget the fact that “Cultural integration is a form of cultural exchange in which one group assumes the beliefs, practices and rituals of another group without sacrificing the characteristics of its own culture”. If you won’t respect the cultural values of the other people, be open and understanding towards them, I must say whether how hard you try you won’t be able to win the respect for your own culture.