Karen Jespersen is so new to her job as Denmark’s minister of social affairs that she felt compelled to apologize to a visitor that she could not identify the painter of the canvases hanging in her offices, because she still has her predecessor’s furnishings. It was a rare admission, for Ms. Jespersen does not often apologize. Since her appointment to the post in September, she has emerged as a stalwart defender of a country’s right to require immigrants to accept its basic values and, inevitably, a lightning rod in Europe’s continuing debate over immigration. And for a onetime student leftist, prominent journalist and former official with the Social Democratic Party, her new role in the conservative government of Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen represents the latest step in a remarkable personal odyssey.Ms. Jespersen’s defenders say that, sooner than most here, she had read Scandinavia’s discomfort with immigration laws that overburdened schools and social programs, and even threatened law and order. But her opponents cast her as an opportunist. “I think that Karen Jespersen chose to leave the Social Democrats when she eyed a chance to gain influence and become a minister in the right-wing government by speaking against the party and the government she was part of,” said Henrik Dam Kristensen, a spokesman for the Social Democrats.
Ms. Jespersen disagrees, of course, arguing that her migration from left to right grew primarily out of her concern about the impact of immigration on Denmark. “I think immigration is a benefit for society,” she said. “But you have to be very cautious in dealing with it, to keep your basic values.”
Ms. Jespersen is hard to label. At 60, she is a veteran of 1960s counterculture struggles, a womenÂ’s rights advocate, a skilled politician who has sat in DenmarkÂ’s Parliament and has been a minister in Social Democratic governments. The conservatives, who are expected to retain power in parliamentary elections on Nov. 13, regard her as someone who lends validity to their restrictive immigration laws. The Social Democrats, while denouncing her, realize that her Saul-to-Paul shift reflects in some way the state of the Danish soul, torn between traditional values of tolerance and fear that unrestrained immigration will somehow tear apart the national fabric.
In 2005, Jyllands-Posten, which by then had hired Mr. Pittelkow as a columnist, published the Muhammad cartoons. In response to the reaction in the Islamic world, Mr. Pittelkow and Ms. Jespersen published a book, titled “Islamists and the Naïve,” in which they went so far as to assert that some qualities of Islam could also be found in Nazism and Communism. It became a best seller. The book did not equate the movements, she said, “but they had in common that one truth was in the world, and that one truth goes deeply into your private life.” She added, “Not all Muslims are reading the Koran in that sense, but those who interpret it this way are growing fast, in organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah, though I am convinced we can isolate them.” She said, “I think we are letting down freedom-loving Muslims if we are not fighting the radical Islamists.”
In addition to sharply limiting immigration, the current government has enacted laws to prevent honor killings, which still occur in Muslim families. If a teenager is ordered to perform such a killing to avenge the honor of a female relative, she said, parents and even uncles and aunts are held liable. Ms. Jespersen denies that her transformation represents a betrayal of principle. “My core values are the same,” she said. “I thought there was room for my core values in Social Democracy, but I find there is more room among the conservatives.”
Fully half of the students of immigrant background in Denmark leave school without a diploma, she said. “I was called a right-winger, but I said we are letting children down who have a weak background.”