The Queen of Denmark has urged Muslims arriving in Europe to adopt Western values in an extraordinary intervention in the migration debate. Queen Margarethe II said it was “not a law of nature” that asylum seekers automatically integrated into society and called on Muslim groups to do more to help new arrivals understand Danish society.

The Queen, who is one of Europe’s most respected and long-serving royals, said politicians needed to “put their foot down” and strictly uphold the country’s principles of democracy and gender equality in her unprecedented rallying cry. Denmark has taken in just under 15,000 asylum seekers in the last nine months, according to Government statistics, and has reintroduced border controls to stem the flow heading northwards towards neighboring Sweden.

The arrival of predominantly Muslim refugees has sparked a heated debate about migration in the country, which earlier this year saw a new law passed allowing the authorities to seize migrants’ assets to pay for housing and benefits. Some right-wing politicians have linked asylum seekers to the growing threat of Islamic State (ISIS) with one, the deputy leader of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, Soeren Espersen, issuing a Donald Trump-style call for a six-year ban on Muslim migrants entering the country.

And now the Nordic country’s Queen has intervened in the national debate with an outspoken rallying call to Muslim migrants to integrate into the country’s free, tolerant society. She said: “It’s not a law of nature that one becomes Danish by living in Denmark. It doesn’t necessarily happen…We thought that these things would take care of themselves. That if you walked through the streets of Copenhagen and drank the municipal water and rode the municipal bus, you’d soon become a Dane. It was so obvious to us, and therefore we thought that it must also be obvious for those who settled and lived here. It wasn’t.

Source: The Daily Express