‘They see me as non-Western’: Top court to rule on Denmark’s housing law

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Residents say Denmark’s ‘ghetto law’ is breaking up strong communities, as the Supreme Court prepares to rule.

Copenhagen, Denmark – Under a graffiti-covered bridge in Norrebro, a multicultural, trendy district of the Danish capital, Sara touches her hijab.

“I am Muslim. The way the government and the media speak, they see me as not Western,” says the 46-year-old, born and raised in Denmark, who has asked not to use her real name.

She believes the country’s so-called “ghetto law” is a way of cracking down on Muslims, who account for little more than 4 percent of the population.

On November 23, Denmark’s Supreme Court is due to rule on a case that could shape the future of that law, which can force the sale, demolition or conversion of nonprofit homes in areas where more than half of residents are classed as “non-Western”.

In Denmark, nonprofit housing accommodates more than one million people and is open to all.

Seven families from the Nojsomhed estate in Helsingor, north of Copenhagen, are challenging their former landlord, Boliggarden, after the estate was put on the “ghetto list” in January 2020.

They argue that they were forced out because of where they or their parents come from.

In his warmly lit, cosy office space in central Copenhagen, Eddie Khawaja, the families’ lawyer, told Al Jazeera that the case boils down to whether the evaluation is “neutral” and “detached from ethnicity elements or not”.

It is the first case to reach the Supreme Court since the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruled last December, in cases from Mjolnerparken, an estate in Norrebro, and another estate, that the “non-Western” categorisation could amount to ethnic discrimination, and left Danish judges to decide.

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