Daily Times

A man who refused to shake hands during a Danish citizenship ceremony was denied the status of citizen, a Copenhagen official said Thursday.

The incident comes as the result of a December 2018 Danish law requiring, as part of the naturalization process, new citizens to shake hands with the opposite sex in a ceremony.

Badar Shah, a Pakistan-origin member of the Copenhagen City Council, said in a statement that the man could not get a Danish citizenship certificate because he refused to shake hands at the ceremony at Copenhagen City Hall.

The man who refused to shake hands will be able to get citizenship if he changes his mind within two years and shake hands with the authorities at the mandatory handshaking ceremony.

Thomas Andresen, mayor of the southern town of Aabenraa, has criticized the handshaking ceremonies, saying they remind him of the Nazi era.

Earlier, the law has been criticized for breaching freedom of religion, as some observant Muslims and Jews avoid touching unrelated members of the opposite sex.

The government says the handshake is an important part of Danish culture and values, and no one who refuses can be Danish.

“If you don’t shake hands, you don’t understand what it means to be Danish, because in Denmark we have equality and that is something generations before us fought to achieve,” said Immigration Minister Inger Stojberg, who led the first ceremony.