Inside the fight against Denmark’s ‘straight up racist’ housing law

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. 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. 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”.

Khawaja, who presented his closing arguments to the court on Monday, said the EU ruling opened the way for judges to look beyond the law’s wording to how politicians talked about it.