by Liz Bury, The Guardian, May 04, 2016.

The 18-year-old has been attacked,
and Denmark plunged into a free speech row over his poems fiercely
targeting what he sees as hypocrisy among fellow Muslims.


A young Danish Palestinian rapper and
poet, whose debut collection criticising the Danish Muslim immigrant
community provoked death threats and a physical assault, appeared in
court this week to see his attacker sentenced to five months in
prison.


But 18-year-old Yahya Hassan still
faces a charge of racism in a second case brought in the same week by
a local politician, who claimed that non-Muslims who spoke and wrote
as he did would be open to prosecution.

Hassan burst onto the scene with an
interview in Politiken newspaper in October entitled “I
F***ing Hate My Parents’ Generation“.

His collection, titled Yahya Hassan,
has sold 80,000 copies since October and is expected to have topped
100,000, according to publisher Gyldendal. 
He has won fans among the Danish middle-class for his work, which
slams what he sees as hypocrisy among the immigrant Muslim community
in Denmark, and accuses them of a raft of negative behaviours,
including bad parenting and social security fraud.


His poetry has tapped into a rumbling
public debate about Islam in Denmark, which erupted in 2005 when the
daily newspaper Jyllands-Posten published a depiction of the prophet
Muhammad with a bomb as his turban. 
The paper later
apologised for publishing the cartoons, saying that they had
caused “serious misunderstandings”. The country has a
strong pro-free speech lobby, which is open to hijacking by racists.


Hassan was brought up in the deprived
area of Gellerup in Aarhus, with a disciplinarian father. He is
vociferous in his criticism of his parents’ generation of Muslims,
and slams the attitudes of his peer group. He has been subject to
death threats, and was assaulted in November at Copenhagen Central
Station, by 24-year-old Isaac Meyer, also of Palestinian descent, who
has previously served a jail term for his part in a failed terrorist
plot.


The racism charge was brought this
week by local politician Mohamed Suleban, who
told Politiken newspaper: “He says that everybody in the
ghettos like Vollsmose and Gellerup steal, don’t pay taxes and cheat
themselves to pensions. Those are highly generalising statements and
they offend me and many other people.”


Novelist Liz
Jensen, who lives in Denmark, said: “Denmark is obsessed
with him. He’s a bright, angry young man, talented and very
charismatic. He deserves attention because his poetry, born of rap,
is raw and urgent and has huge flair. 
Its observational qualities,
along with its mix of Danish street-slang and sophisticated word-play
has real literary merit. But would he get so much coverage if he
weren’t criticizing the Muslim ghetto community he comes from? I
suspect not.” 
 


She added: “Most of the people
who come to his readings aren’t his target audience. They are white
middle-aged Danes. He’s providing music for their ears. And many of
those who laud him in the media aren’t typical poetry-lovers: they’re
right-wing populists and those he calls “freedom-of-expression
junkies”. He is providing music for their ears, too. In the
midst of all these he has really kept his integrity. He’s the kid
from the ghetto, giving the world the finger.”


Hassan’a collection, written entirely
in capital letters, is not yet available in English.