Three Danish lawmakers who made remarks critical of Islamic headscarves have been reported to the police for violating “racism” laws.

April 20 (Bloomberg) — Three Danish lawmakers, all members of the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party, have been reported to police for making remarks comparing Muslim women’s headscarves with swastikas.

The three were reported by the Documentation and Advisory Center on Racial Discrimination, Line Boegsted, spokeswoman of the Copenhagen-based non-governmental organization, said today in a telephone interview. “The comments they’ve made were deeply unpleasant,” Boegsted said. “The question is now if they also were illegal.”

Parliament member Soeren Krarup was cited in daily Politiken and other Danish media on April 18 as saying that Muslim women’s headscarves, like Nazi Germany’s swastikas, symbolized totalitarian repression. Fellow lawmaker Morten Messerschmidt and a party representative in the European Parliament, Mogens Camre, repeated Krarup’s comments in Danish media today.

“We’re reporting them to police for violating racism laws on behalf of two Danes who have asked us to do so,” Boegsted said. The three can only be punished if the Danish and the European parliaments lift their immunity.

Krarup made his comments after Asmaa Abdol-Hamid, a Muslim politician from the Red-Green Alliance Party, said she would wear her headscarf if elected to Denmark’s parliament.

Krarup confirmed today on his party’s Web site that he believes there are “common features between the Muslim veiling of women and other totalitarian symbols. The Danish People’s Party would like to underline that this is not a critique of the individual woman, who may wear a headscarf, but a general critique of Islam’s veiling of women,” he said.

Camre, quoted today by newspaper Nyhedsavisen as saying Abdol-Hamid needed psychiatric help if she thought headscarves belonged in the Danish parliament, said he regretted those remarks.

“It wasn’t my intention to comment on Abdol-Hamid’s mental condition, but rather the absurdities of the Islamic view on the world, so therefore I’m sorry about those statements,” he said in a press release posted on the party’s Web site.