One of Denmark's first female Muslim MPs meets the person behind vitriolic hate mail for coffee

'It’s crazy you think you have the right to talk like that just because I’m Muslim,' says Özlem Cekic

One of Denmark’s first female Muslim MP’s has come face to face with a man who subjected her to vitriolic xenophobic hate mail.

Özlem Cekic, who was formerly an MP for the Socialist People’s Party (SF), documented the entirety of the tense meeting with her troll on camera. The clip, which is a trailer for a new BBC programme that will be aired on Tuesday, already has 2.5 million views.

Ms Cekic, who is Kurdish but moved from Turkey to Denmark as a young child, has invited hundreds of people who sent her abusive messages to engage in an open civil dialogue. A keen proponent of bridge-building, the politician has also met with everyone from radical Muslims to neo-Nazis.

Ms Cekic sat down with Stefan, who sent her an abusive message on Facebook, for a coffee and slice of cake in his home.

But while the set-up might have been cordial and civilised, the atmosphere grew fraught in the one and a half hours they were together. At one moment, the politician became so overwhelmed with emotion, she is seen leaving the room and breaking down into tears.

According to Politiken, a leading Danish daily broadsheet, the man called her “disgusting Isis vermin and disgusting carrion [decaying flesh of dead animals or rottenness]”. He also wrote: “I hate you and everything your kind stands for”.

Ms Cekic said she has also been branded a “monkey” in the offensive emails.

In the viral clip, the politician, who was born in Ankara in Turkey, reads out messages he wrote to her, such as him saying: “We want a world without Muslims. A peaceful world without you pigs destroying our values”.

Looking unperturbed and calm, he tells her it was intended as an “eye opener”.

She responds by questioning how the insult “nasty vermin” could be perceived as an eye opener.

Stefan, whose first name is only given, adds: “I believe that you are resistant to the facts and don’t respond to what is actually about to happen. I’m really just a concerned citizen who can see the changes happening in our society.”

The politician points out the danger of only focusing and obsessing over people’s differences instead of embracing the similarities which tie different races together.

“How can we sit here one metre apart and still be so far apart from each other?” she asks. “I’m sitting here thinking it’s crazy you think you have the right to talk like that just because I’m Muslim.”

The clip ends with Ms Cekic thanking him for opening his door but admitting the conversation was in no way easy. After the pair part ways, he reflects that she was “controlled by her emotions”, saying he does not think they will meet again. On the contrary, she says she hopes that they can meet again.

Ms Cekic, who receives hate mail from trolls weekly, left SF in March this year due to the party’s decision to support preventing unaccompanied refugee minors from entering Denmark. This is a position the party later performed a U-turn on.

The former MP has in the past argued that religion and state should remain separate. She has also expressed concerns her critical stance against the Turkish government could result in her being arrested by Ankara.

The mother-of-three first became an MP in the 2007 elections but lost her seat in 2015 after SF lost nine of its 16 seats in parliament.

She published an autobiographical book From Føtex to Parliament in 2009 in which she recounted her experiences of discrimination in Danish society. She recalled how her teacher told children with immigrant backgrounds that "it is incredible to see how much you struggle, while knowing that you'll never achieve anything", and how a Danish midwife refused to address her by name even once during her 23-hour labor because it was "too hard to pronounce".

Far-right support and sentiment in Denmark, where 10 per cent of people in the country have an immigrant background, has grown in recent years.

In the 2015 general election, the nativist Danish People’s Party became the second-largest party in Denmark, winning 21 per cent of the vote, up from 12 per cent in 2011.

Instead of remaining in opposition, it provides parliamentary support to the plurality of leading centre-right parties. While the party supports a strong welfare state, the DPP’s leader, Kristian Thulesen Dahl, has demanded cuts to immigration from Muslim countries and withdrawal from the EU’s Schengen free-movement area.