PARIS has its grand mosque, and so does Rome, the city of the Pope.Yet despite a sizeable Muslim population, this Danish capital has nothing but the occasional tiny storefront Muslim place of worship.
The city is now inching towards construction of not one, but two grand mosques.
In August, the city council approved the construction of a Shiite Muslim mosque, replete with two 32-metre-high minarets, in an industrial quarter on the site of a former factory.
Plans are also afoot for a Sunni mosque.
But it has been a long and complicated process, tangled up in local politics and the publication four years ago of cartoons mocking Islam.
The difficulties reflect the tortuous path Denmark has taken in dealing with its immigrants, most of whom are Muslim.
Copenhagen in particular has been racked by gang wars, with shoot-outs and killings in recent months between groups of Hells Angels and immigrant bands.
The turmoil has fed the popularity of an anti-immigrant conservative party, the Danish People's Party. In city elections tomorrow , the People's Party, by some estimates, could double the roughly 6 per cent of the vote it took in the last municipal poll.
Denmark is not alone in grappling with the question. In Italy, the rightist Northern League opposes mosques in Italian cities; in Switzerland, voters will go to the polls on November 29 in a referendum to decide whether to ban the construction of minarets.
In Denmark, it was the cartoons, one of which depicted Muhammad with a bomb in his turban, that gave the initial impetus to a movement for a mosque.
''I wrote a front-page story saying we somehow had to reconnect to the Muslims, to collect money to build a mosque as a sign of solidarity,'' said Herbert Pundik, 82, the former editor of the Danish daily Politiken.
Pundik, speaking by phone from Israel, where he now lives, said that within 24 hours there had been more than 1000 positive responses. But then the Muslim reaction to the cartoons turned violent.
Yet the project didn't die. Bijan Eskandani, the architect of the Shiite mosque, said he found inspiration for his design in the ''Persian element in Islamic art,'' which he said consisted of a ''special lyric, poetic attitude''.
The very word ''Persian'' sends chills down Martin Henriksen's spine. ''We are against the mosque,'' said Mr Henriksen, 29, one of the People's Party's five-member directorate.
''It's obvious to everyone that the Iranian regime has something to do with it. The Iranian regime is based on a fascist identity that we don't want to set foot in Denmark.''
Since joining the national Government coalition in 2001, the People's Party has helped enact legislation to stem the flow of immigrants and raise the bar for obtaining citizenship.
Immigrants, Mr Henriksen insists, ''need to show an ability and a will to become Danes''. He cites the Jews as an example. ''Many Jews have come to Denmark since the 16th century,'' he said. ''We don't have discussions about whether to build synagogues.'' There are at least four synagogues in the city.
The city's deputy mayor, Klaus Bondam, 45, defends the mosques. The minarets, he said, would be ''quite slim towers; we're not going to be Damascus or Cairo''. The city had also made clear there would be no calling to prayers from the mosques' minarets.
As to the charge of foreign underwriting, Mr Bondam said it did not concern him as long as the sources were listed openly.
But he fears that the debate over the mosques could help the People's Party double its share of the vote in this month's local elections to as much as 12 per cent. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Disclaimer
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