Minarets in Switzerland

Excellent and hilarious analysis.

The poster intentionally makes the minarets look rather like an arsenal of nukes. Interesting that there are only four actual minarets in the country. I’m aware of two smallish ones in Zurich and Geneva that are unlikely to threaten even a devotee of Mark Steyn.

I’m sure if you looked into it you would find that there are also a tiny number of Muslim women who are actually out and about in Zurich attired in burqas – the garment represented in the poster.

The move to ban minarets is really a violation of the Swiss constitution that guarantees freedom of religious expression to all. But I’m sure the People’s Party isn’t unduly influenced by that minor detail.

As it is many mosques in Switzerland have been relegated to very undesirable sites. A number are located in former warehouses and factories. In Berne the largest mosque is in a former underground parking lot, perhaps to discourage minaret aspirations.

The reactionary climate in Europe with respect to Islam tends to feed off paranoid fantasies and stereotypes. If you start dictating to one religious group what type of place of worship they are allowed and how their women are permitted to dress, maybe the crackdown should extend to Catholics and other sects also. The garb of some orders of nun for example suggests toadying to patriarchal views of female modesty and who knows what they might try to smuggle undetected under there. Can’t be too careful.

Some spires tend to dominate town squares in a rather menacing fashion, not to mention the tolling of bells that have driven some locals in Italy and Spain close to madness. There have been actual lawsuits brought by people in an effort to stop the incessant clanging at key hours of the day. The call of an imam is mercifully brief by comparison.

It would be great if religion, especially of the institutional monotheistic variety would simply take a hike. But since that seems unlikely to happen any time soon, singling out Islam for the short-end-of-the-stick certainly has the appearance of discrimination.

The minarets are never allowed to be used for prayer call in Europe..
they are merely a beautiful architectural piece, to make them different from a factory or a church.
Minarets originated immitating church towers in the middle east..the first minarets were even square exactly like church towers.
muslims in Switzerland are neither prolific builders (they are too poor to splurge on a minaret), nor religious since they are almost all native Europeans..and actually indistinguishable from the rest since they are white (Bosniaks, kosovar, Turks).

this move is simply made to show them their place and make it clear they are not welcomed..something they have always known.
otherwise its beyond me why 4 minarets amongst 10 million people would bother the Swiss that much.
and if their identity and values are really being threatened by 4 minarets then they will need a lot of referendums coz those values turned out to be that fragile.
I guess all that has been said about freedom of worship meant for christians, and all the brag about human rights means (for whites)..
it just shows you what kind of a country Switzerland is, and what kind of mountionous narrow minded Nazi/ultra catholic Swiss people are…also reminds me how lucky I am to be American.
after all here in The US we dont referendum to ask the religious majority to approve of the minority religion..otherwise there would be only 2 or 3 religions in this world.

Jaffa Cohen refers to Malaysia as a “tolerant” Islamic country:

the Malaysian government is now apparently back to enforcing the position that Christians and others cannot translate the word “god” as “allah”, on pain of confiscation of the publication, because such use might confuse Muslims who might thus inadvertently expose themselves to an apostate belief. http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/29/malaysia.bibles.seized/

A government which literally gives their favored religion a enforced legal monopoly on the use of a particular word only qualifies as “tolerant” in comparison with, say, Maldives, which has reaffirmed their ban on non-Muslims conducting any sort of public worship at all, and on any non-Muslims inviting any Maldives citizens (who must be Muslim) to participate in any sort of non-Muslim worship, private or public.
http://www.minivannews.com/news_detail.php?id=7737

r gould-saltman

@3 The move to ban minarets is really a violation of the Swiss constitution that guarantees freedom of religious expression to all. But I’m sure the People’s Party isn’t unduly influenced by that minor detail.

This is the whole point of this referendum: they got a majority of the popular vote and a majority of the cantons, and therefore it amends the constitution.

3- by all means, finally I’ll be able to sleep late on Sundays without the damned church bells from 10 different churches (also: in a city of close to 100K muslims, I have yet to see a minaret; let alone hear somebody do religious business from it; is anybody really interested in anything non-symbolic in this debate?)

Tariq Ramadan has a piece on this here : http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/29/swiss-vote-ban-minarets-fear?showallcomments=true#e . Unfortunately the argument he makes against the vote is a disaster and I am sure there are better ones. He argues that the decision is untenable because its based on fear. But this is just silly and its amazing that the guy doesn’t see it . I mean from the fact that I decide , say , to run away from a large, what to me appears to be a dangerous dog, because I am afraid of it, it doesn’t follow that my decision to run away had to be a bad one. I run away because I am afraid but my fear in this case is perfectly sensible because its based on true beliefs about the dog and so is my decision based on it is sensible . Same thing applies to Ramadan’s argument : the Swiss may have voted out of fear but it doesn’t follow on its own that their fear was irrational.

I run away because I am afraid but my fear in this case is perfectly sensible because its based on true beliefs about the dog and so is my decision based on it is sensible.

Your belief that you can outrun a large dog is about as likely to be true as the belief that the oppressors of Muslim women will be intimidated by a ban on minarets.

A bit of xenophobia, a bit of racism, a bit of fear, bit of rule-based planning restrictions, all good stuff, but of course the ingredients vary quite a lot according to local taste. The organising principle and primal drive at work is War – war cut down to its bare essentials of a drumbeat and a picture of the enemy. Oceania is, in case you effete eggheads have forgotten, at war with Eastasia.

Obama’s finge may keep straying toward the chicken-switch, but the good burghers of Switzerland have learnt the lessons of the past 8 years of the Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Political complex’s martial mythologising, and are happy to do their bit, even if regrettably it can only be in little symbolic ways.

And here in the Shire, the breast swells with pride to hear Gordon Brown say he want Pakistan to do more to ‘take out’ Bin Ladin (yes, he’s back! and he’s almost certainly still alive, and hanging around within the AfPak ‘theatre’. Of course!) Why, I was so excited I picked up a goat’s legbone and smashed Ug (who incidentally I suspect of wanting my woman) round the head with it in celebration before I realised what I was doing.

The longer this war goes on, the more I tend to think that what’s really needed is a fearless, enterprising group of privateer assassins, if you ask me. Big, strong men who don’t take any shit. Like me, really, only obviously I couldn’t move that far away from mum, could I, what with her back and everything.

Oceania!

“Your belief that you can outrun a large dog is about as likely to be true as the belief that the oppressors of Muslim women will be intimidated by a ban on minarets. ”

Sure, but that is beside the point . The point is that my fear is justified because its based on the true believe that I am about to be attacked by a dangerous dog. As I said Ramadan is assuming that the voting has to be illegitimate just because its based on fear but since some fears are reasonable / rational ( if they are caused in the right way ) that doesn’t follow. Anyway, if you don’t like my example I have others : suppose that I decide not to take a short cut across the frozen river because I believe that the ice is too thin and I might fall into the river . And assume that the believe in question is true and that it causes my fear that I might fall in and that on basis of this fear I take the long route instead of the short cut . My action is caused by fear but its the right thing to do and same might apply to the Swiss vote.

There are days when I positively hope that climate change will lead to the rapid extinction of our ridiculous species. Stories like this tend to bring on that mood.

Some spires tend to dominate town squares in a rather menacing fashion,

???

In Berne the largest mosque is in a former underground parking lot, perhaps to discourage minaret aspirations.

Ha. Presumably underground minarets are also covered. Or they could rent out a lift shaft in the building above and build a very narrow minaret up the inside.

[aeiou]go to hell!!! ur all muslim haters!!!! ur lost in a world of masonic decption~~~

The point is that my fear is justified because its based on the true believe that I am about to be attacked by a dangerous dog.

The thing about irrational fears is, even if they happen by some fortune to be exactly proportional to some real threat, they get the details wrong. An arachnophobe will freak out over something that has the ‘essence of spider’ (say a 4 inch woolly tarantula), and ignore the much more poisonous funnel web.

Politics + religion can be a dangerous mix. Architecture + religion not so much.

Soru @27,

Politics + religion can be a dangerous mix. Architecture + religion not so much.

If your latter assertion were true, Voltaire would have written one book fewer, and we’d all be the poorer for it. Well; all of us, save those worshippers in the Lisbon cathedral.

Who are these “prominent feminists” alluded to — but not named — in the Guardian article? It’s hard for me to believe that many serious feminists wouldn’t immediately point out what has already been indicated here: sure, minarets might well be “symbols of male power”; so might church steeples — if we’re genuinely concerned about the one we’ve gotta go after the other, too.

I don’t mind so much when the right tries to invoke feminism to advance their agenda — lying and obfuscating is what they do, after all. But I do mind quite a bit when the left invokes racism as an anti-feminist club: “oh, those “prominent feminists”. Feminists are all really racists, you know”.

Again, who are these “prominent feminists”? Orianna Fallacci types, I’m guessing — that is, “prominent”, yes; representative of feminism, not so much.

Mrs Ttells us “Blair is, I’m sorry to have to inform you, now a catholic as Roman as you could ask for” which reflects pretty ill on Roman Catholicism.
I recall Blair, on being chided by the saintly Cardinal Hume for taking Communion while a Proddywhack, bleating “I wonder what Jesus would think of that”, which manages to be both a nauseating example of self-serving victimhood and a position just about as Protestant as you could get.

ajay @30,

I don’t think the monarch makes any Church of Scotland appointments

Probably not. But in any event (perhaps just to be on the safe side), the Catholic Relief Act forbids RCs to advise the monarch on that front anyway.

Kathleen, it’s a Times article and so has nothing to do with ‘the left’ and its entirely possible its claims about ‘prominent feminists’ and ‘radicial feminists’ supporting the campaign are mostly BS. They do name Julia Onken, though (I have no idea who she is). According to a possibly more accurate Guardian article:

The rightwing anti-immigrant lobby has led the campaign, but it has been joined by some secularist leftists and liberals fiercely critical of Islam. Julia Onken, a prominent feminist and psychologist and bestselling author of self-help books, last week called on women to vote for the ban. “Mosques are male houses, minarets are male power symbols,” she declared. “The building of minarets is also a visible signal of the state’s acceptance of the oppression of women.”

#10 said: “Does this follow ? Does it follow that if you ban say the Nazi party ( or as Czechs are doing now seriously contemplate banning the communist party ) you must ban other political parties ? Doesnt follow really unless you assume that ( and this is a questionable ) all political parties and all religions are same. Or think of political symbols : does it follow that if you ban sculptures of Hitler you must ban sculptures of Churchill ?”

Rather far-fetched analogy zdenekv… to say the least.

You appear to be equating Islam with the Nazi party and implying that it should be differentiated from other religions based presumably on your personal prejudices. What exactly pictures of Hitler and Churchill have to do with the debate is beyond me – except that Hitler (bad)… Churchill (good)… might be a good way to get the point across to Kemosabe.

Institutionalized religion sucks, but what sucks even more are xenophobic hate mongers looking to scapegoat Muslims. A lot of the fears re Islam-in-Europe are overly hyped. Course you need to actually hang with Muslims and get a feel for their culture in the Eurozone to know that, something the minaret phobics avoid like the plague because putting a human face on a bogeyman isn’t the object of the exercise.

There is much about Islam I personally dislike, but that’s just because I’m a non-subscriber when it comes to monotheistic beliefs, not because I think Islam is inherently more objectionable than say Ratzinger and his ecclesiastical empire. Unlike the RC firm, Islam doesn’t have a history for example of institutional child abuse that crossed borders and went to the highest levels.

Minaret hate is kind of like dick-envy… Muslims presume to have a bigger one and moreover have the temerity to flash it shamelessly. Must be particularly enervating for poorly endowed right-wing kooks to have to look at a cityscape with that biggie on the horizon.

“Your belief that you can outrun a large dog is about as likely to be true as the belief that the oppressors of Muslim women will be intimidated by a ban on minarets.”

I don’t need to outrun the dog. I just need to outrun you.

zdenekv,

that big scary dog that has you soiling your kex? You’re holding the binoculars backwards again.

There simply are not many Muslims in Switzerland — certainly not compared with its French and German neighbours. The majority come not from Arab lands or South Asia or Iran but from Europe — they are Slavs, and a handful of Albanians. Most of the rest are Turks; and very few Turks are radicalised Muslims. In fact, Muslims in Switzerland are not, as a group, especially religious.

As noted upthread, the parts of Switzerland with the highest concentrations of Muslim residents rejected the referendum. (Lest you draw the wrong inference from that fact, most of those Muslims will not have had a vote). Apparently the Swiss who actually live amongst Muslims are not scared by your dog though it lives next-door; it’s Alm-Öhi up in his alpine fastness, far away from the dog — and you, wherever you are — who are breaking out in a cold sweat.

Any “reason” for banning religions that exempted Christianity would be, right on its face, clearly based on pure prejudice.

“Any “reason” for banning religions that exempted Christianity would be, right on its face, clearly based on pure prejudice.”

Not necessarily . Suppose that my reason for wanting to see some form of Islam banned is similar to the Czech argument re communism which says roughly that communism is incompatible with values entrenched in their constitution and that any political party which aims at undermining such values should be banned. If I could show that some forms of Islam are in the same boat vis a vis typical European constitution as Nazism is but that Christianity is not in the same boat then we would have a reason for banning one but not the other and interestingly prejudice does not enter the picture.

If I could show that some forms of Islam are in the same boat vis a vis typical European constitution as Nazism is but that Christianity is not in the same boat

But you can’t, since modern liberal European polities were achieved precisely by fighting the political influence of Christian obscurantism and bloody-mindedness (and since there are plenty of bloody-minded Christians still with us- just ask the family of Dr. George Tiller.)

What stands out in #s 47 & 48 is deliberate muddying of issues, between religious practice, political parties, and various things that a religious organization might do or not do. Let’s be clear that “Islam” is not an organization or a corporate body of any kind, and more than is Buddhism or Christianity.

What you have in the Swiss vote is a ban on a public sign of religious practice.

Engels: nope, it’s a Guardian article (according to Kieran anyway, unless he got it wrong), so it does have something to do with the left.

Julia Onken as a “prominent feminist” : writer of self-help books (the feminist critique of this genre is well-known) &, according to a quick Google search, speaker at a conference on “development” hosted by a pharmaceutical company’s foundation. Hmm.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say Switzerland’s feminists probably do not consider her a spokesperson.

zdenekv, all you’re doing is coming up with hypotheticals to show why it might be reasonable to have a law like this for some possible religions or fears. Yes, there are rational fears and votes based on them can be rational, but fearing minarets seems irrational in the extreme. If the problem is Muslim oppression of women, then target that, but purely symbolic and stylistic items? Ridiculous.

55 “fearing minarets seems irrational ….”

Of course one doesn’t fear the minarets themselves. The argument, rather, is that one fears the underlying religious practice of which the minarets are a public sign and one wants to ban the public display only because they have this symbolic association with the practice itself. Assuming that the practice is wrong then the public displays of symbols that represent it are also wrong ( Nazism and Hitler salute , communism and hammer & sickle etc. ).

They just don’t like it when things change

Perhaps they should have passed a broader referendum regarding things changing then.

It seems far from obvious that this has a lot to do with fear of Islam, rational or irrational. They just don’t like it when things change; they are provincial, they are conservative. If you start building 100-feet tall crucifixes there, I suspect they might want to ban that too.

In Wallis/Valais there are plenty of large, mountaintop crucifixes.

After all the philosophising and high brow debate, the opinions of Noel are most relevant to the discussion. If the people of Switzerland fear a future with a landscape dotted with minarets and the social impact that would have, then that fear, whether well-founded or ludicrous, is the reality. They are fully entitled to decide what future path their country should take. Personally, when I go to Switzerland for a holiday the last thing I would want to see are minarets. They would be incongruous with the history and culture of a beautiful country.

Growing numbers of people are learning to dislike Islam, don’t have to like it, and given the choice don’t want it in our secular countries.

Its as simple as that – its a free world, at least the non Islamic one is free – and until the worldwide anger, resentment, intolerance, hostility and violence of Islam changes, I predict more people will object to any increase of Islam in the West.

How dare these people moan and complain, when Islamic countries have nothing like the tolerance and generosity extended to them when they come to live in non Islamic countries.

Bongo says “Unlike the RC firm, Islam doesn’t have a history for example of institutional child abuse that crossed borders and went to the highest levels.”

Maybe not across borders, but I think it does in Iran.

They just don’t like it when things change; they are provincial, they are conservative.

If the world were about to end I would go to Switzerland. Everything there is 50 years behind the times. -Heine

You’re an idiot.

1) There are four mosques in Switzerland, total.
2) Only 20% of the Swiss Muslim population self-identify as practicing Muslims
3) Almost none of the Muslim women in Switzerland cover their faces.

Martin Bento

“… Czech anti-communist laws are illegitimate.”

Which ones , just the so called ‘lustracni zakon’ c 451 / 1991 or all of them including the c 198/1993 ? ( ‘ Zákon o protiprávnosti komunistického režimu a o odporu proti nÄ›mu ‘, § 2, sec. 2a of this key legislation says explicitly that the KSÄŒ and similar organization based on communist ideology were and are criminal organizations ) which is different and which was accepted by the Czech parliament in 1993 and tested by the CZ constitutional court when it rejected a challenge to it in 1993 . Note that this 1993 law was also the basis of a Prague high court judgement in 2007 outlawing KSM ( Czech analogue of komsomol ) ; in other words the law has been now tested too.

This comment from Ramadan is rather strange: “Every European country has its specific symbols or topics through which European Muslims are targeted … homosexuality in the Netherlands – and so on.” Perhaps he’s referring to this incident:

In a televised debate in 2002, “Fortuyn baited the Muslim cleric by flaunting his homosexuality. Finally the imam exploded, denouncing Fortuyn in strongly anti-homosexual terms. Fortuyn calmly turned to the camera and, addressing viewers directly, told them that this is the kind of Trojan horse of intolerance the Dutch are inviting into their society in the name of multiculturalism.”

So the Netherlands is targeting Muslims by objecting to their homophobia? That’s one hell of a grievance.

Henri, I like you when you put a positive spin; you’re right, it is good they still need the pretext but it’s not very comforting to know that this is the way hatred always grows, it always grows from pretext to pretext in small baby-steps until nobody can understand anymore why what’s going on is gross.

PS: by the way, in Belgium there are 2 minarets, apparently, both on the same mosque, & it’s not allowed to call for prayer from there (although talks are underway to allow it in for turistical purposes!) & nobody really worries about a ban because, in the end, all agree that existing legislation on building regulation will avoid any further minarets.

#63 – Decman said : “Personally, when I go to Switzerland for a holiday the last thing I would want to see are minarets. They would be incongruous with the history and culture of a beautiful country.”

Don’t mean to rock your boat Decman – but there are Hindu temples in Switzerland, Buddhist temples, ashrams, Wiccan retreats… there are also sights that might muck up your idyllic Julie Andrewesque vision such as Hells Angels club houses, McDonalds restaurants, probably a peeler bar or two. Switzerland isn’t a dimension unto itself stuck in a time warp, where Heidi continually runs up and down an Alpine meadow ringing cow bells.

The only thing jarring about a mosque in Switzerland is your perception of it. Henri gave a rather eloquent description of the poster he would like to have seen #75.

From a purely aesthetic point-of-view minarets would actually look rather mystical and magical with an Alpine backdrop. I could really dig that without necessarily digging Allah, just as I have an appreciation for Hindu temples without necessarily digging Kali or Vishnu.

From a purely architectural perspective, minarets are very beautiful. They aren’t always the pointy missile-like projectiles depicted in the poster. In Morocco and Egypt there are square and octagonal minarets – some with projecting murkanas. There is considerable variation in minaret design.

The idea that they are symbolic of the oppression of women and religious triumphalism etc is a loaded fear-based projection. There are aspects of Islamic thinking that I personally find objectionable and that need to be challenged, but banning minarets isn’t the way to do it. European citizens who happen to be Muslim should have every right to practice their religion as they see fit without being treated as second class citizens. Treating them in a blatantly discriminatory fashion is simply feeding the shadow that the minaret-banners so obviously fear.

M.Bento

“Now let’s get back to Earth. What basis is there for the position that it is dangerous to society to allow Muslims to build minarets?”

Sure. The strongest argument I think is same as the argument why symbols of human rights violations such Hitler statues and wearing SS uniforms in public or making Hitler salutes should be criminalized . Minarets too are symbols of human rights violations and hence they too should not be erected. Are minarets dangerous ? Well, is it dangerous if a highschool teacher to come to work dressed in an SS uniform and this is not done as a joke but is an expression of her firm belief that Jews should be murdered etc. ? It may not be dangerous in any obvious way but such display would still be wrong and. Same reasoning might apply to the minaret case.

Every European country has its specific symbols or topics through which European Muslims are targeted. In France it is the headscarf or burka; in Germany, mosques; in Britain, violence; cartoons in Denmark; homosexuality in the Netherlands – and so on.

Hmm. One of these things is not like the others.

“BTW, lots of things are “symbols of human rights violations”. George Washington owned slaves, should we pull down the Washington Monument…”

I dont think so . Hitler was born in Austria but he is not a symbol of Austria , Himmler was a policeman but he is not a symbol of what it is to be a policeman , Kant had a man servant but Kant is not a symbol of what it is to employ man servants and so on. Similarly Washington may have owned slaves but he is not a symbol of slavery or what it is to own slaves. The reason for this is simple : representation that we are talking about is conventional and there is no such convention which would link ( fix the reference ) Washington and slavery so that it would make sense to talk about him symbolizing slavery in the way in which Hitler salute symbolizes such abuse.

Minarets too are symbols of human rights violations and hence they too should not be erected

Funny, I’d be more interested in dealing with, y’know, actual human rights violations than, say, symbols of them. But I’m old fashioned like that, and it’s much easier to deal with a symbol, isn’t it?

Remarkably, the Wikipedia entry on “minaret” concentrates almost entirely on its architectural character and neglects its role as a symbol of human rights violations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minaret

I do hope that zdnek will head over there and correct this. Of course, he’ll have to do a bit of research so that this claim is properly sourced.

Minarets too are symbols of human rights violations and hence they too should not be erected.

I find this incomprehensible, unless you likewise advocate for the prohibition of Roman Catholic iconography on the grounds that the institution enabled and covered up a systemic problem of child abuse. Does the argument run that hard-line right-wing Islam imams advocate, for example, honor killings and acid attacks on unsubmissive women and forced marriages, and generally speaking the opposite of women’s rights, and therefore we should ban public displays of Islamic iconography?

I don’t think that’s what was on noel’s mind, for example, voting for the ban. I don’t think that’s what was on the Swiss People’s Party’s mind, when they set the referendum in motion. And insofar as speaking up for women’s rights is the goal, it strikes me that a direct approach would be more valuable and more productive: a referendum which asserts the Swiss stand in opposition to forced marriage and brutalization of women, and Switzerland will therefore reduce its trade in some specified way with countries whose governments accommodate those practices, would more directly force the issue.

However, I suspect, more or less exactly as Kieran so brilliantly quips, that any talk of women’s rights is just cover for raw xenophobia. (And Kathleen’s point seems spot on: the ‘prominent feminists’ include, and so far as I can tell are basically limited to, one Julia Onken.)

Regardless of my feelings about Daniel Pipes and others on the right, Tariq Ramadan dissembles and says silly things often enough that I wouldn’t want to be associated with him simply in order to oppose Pipes et al.

Defenders of this vote on various blogs have stated the view the voters are sending a righteous message that they disapprove of suicide bombing, honor killing, female genital mutilation, decapitation of infidels, etc., etc. I would be interested to know — not as a debating point, I would really like to know — whether there is any evidence that any Muslim in Switzerland has engaged in any of these activities. Including the etces. Anyone have knowledge?

95: no idea – but a quick search brings up the name of Ahmed Huber, an authentic, bona fide, no hyperbole Swiss Islamonazi*. So there is (or rather was) one actually out there…

*bonus right-wing paranoia points: also supporter of Ayatollah Khomeini!

ajay @97,

given that Ahmed’s surname is “Huber”, I’d venture that the problems he has caused are not those typically associated with immigration. But I’d also venture that few of Switzerland’s other Muslims bear such splendidly eidgenössische handles.

Damn. Literally an Islamonazi! And the Wikipedia article identifies three others. I can’t bring myself to follow the links.

“By far the majority of Muslims in the world live in tolerant Islamic countries like Malaysia, India, and Indonesia.(refer blog #1 jaffa cohen )
1st things first india is not an islamic country . secondly no muslim country is tolerant . thirdly treatment met out to muslims in western countries is way better den hw non muslims are treated in islamic countries . so muslims in western countries should stop whining upon dese petty matters

zdenekv, you are missing the point. I explicitly did not “accept criminalizing some parties ( my hypothetical but explicitly criminal outfits ) because they promote crime”, I said they should be prosecuted if they *commit* crime. I explicitly condemned laws in Germany against Nazi expression, and I pointed out that one of your ridiculous hypotheticals, legalization of torture, is the position, though sometimes stated euphemistically, of the American Republican Party, and another, slaughter of homosexuals, is actively promoted by a religious organization that includes prominent members, including sitting Congressmen, of both parties, but mostly the Republican. You notice I did not endorse banning the Republican Party on these bases.

I am Swiss and I am totally disgusted by this vote. The extreme-right and
Populists have taken the people for idiots and they frightened a part of the population by mixing wrong things (by example : “if we do not ban the minarets, all women should wear the burka” or “if we do not ban the minarets, Sharia will move in Switzerland”…).
It’s frightening to see that almost 60% of swiss people are ok to be taken for morons.

I guess I should point out that there is such a thing as conspiracy to commit crime, and that is where political parties advocating crime can legitimately get into trouble. Advocacy in the abstract of illegal acts is another matter.

#92 Pete: “Look at how Muslim majority countries treat the minority religious groups.”

#65 Zip: “How dare these people moan and complain, when Islamic countries have nothing like the tolerance and generosity extended to them…”

This redundant sentiment keeps surfacing in debates like this.

Obviously western democratic countries have political and cultural histories that are unique to their perspective and have ended up with a distinct set values enshrined in their constitutions that safeguard rights and freedoms. Equally obviously this is not the case in countries with theocratic governance to varying degrees.

So it’s like comparing apples and oranges.

An insistence on making this linkage and saying “well look what they do!” is a cop-out. If western democracies start voting to cut back the rights of Muslims because ‘Saudi Arabia does it to Christians’ or some such rationale, that is the same as bringing yourself down to the Saudi level of oppressive control.

The whole point is to up the ante and demonstrate that it is possible for civilized virtues to win out in multi-religious societies, without resorting to repressive tactics that diminish the rights and dignity of European Muslims. Yes it’s hard. Yes it’s challenging. But it’s the right thing to do.

Gosh, it’s so good that we have an evil enemy we can project all the worst habits on humanity onto (without any of the redeemable virtues) again!

#114 Bloix says: “Obviously the Swiss don’t share the “distinct set of values” that you think they should share. They have a different set of values that you don’t share. Their values concern maintenance of the existing order, including the visual appearance of that order. The fact that you don’t like their values doesn’t mean that their values don’t exist.”

Yes the Swiss do indeed share those values if you bother to look at their constitution, which clearly guarantees freedom of religious expression to all. One vote driven to a large degree by fear mongering doesn’t in itself allow for the conclusion that the Swiss have now decisively turned their back on those rights and freedoms. It is still early days.

It should be noted that the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Neuchatel and Basel voted against the ban.

Cedric #107, is a Swiss national who rejected the anti-minaret vote. He said “It’s frightening to see that almost 60% of Swiss people are ok to be taken for morons.”

#114 Bloix: “Seriously, what is it about freedom of religion? Most of us here would agree, I think, that Islam is a tissue of lies: the world was not created by an all-powerful supernatural being, there are no angels, Mohammad was not divinely inspired, there is no heaven, there will be no judgment day. So why is it so important that the desire of some people to erect monuments to error trump the desire of other people to preserve the appearance of their towns?”

I don’t believe in the tenets of Islam either, any more than I believe in the fantasies and delusions promoted by Vatican smoke and mirrors. But that isn’t the point. The point is that many beliefs – religious and otherwise – can be seen as “mistaken” by me, you and others. But if we propose to operate a society on the basis of what we consider to be either true or false, and then ban what we personally don’t believe in, we are no longer talking about democracy.

Let us keep in mind what we are actually talking about here.The Muslim population of Switzerland accounts for a mere 0.5% of the total population. There are only 4 mosques in the entire country with so-called ‘minarets’. The Ahmadiyya mosque in Zurich has a smallish minnie that would be unlikely to intimidate anyone except reactionary refusniks looking for the opportunity to bitch.

Amazingly this whole absurd tempest-in-a-teapot began not in reference to minarets on actual mosques. It started in Wangen bei Olten, where a row broke out over the decision of the Turkish cultural association to put a 6-meter high structure on its roof that sort of resembles a minaret – although I have seen similar type structures on ornate Victorian style buildings. However since it was somewhat pointy and lacked a weathervane the locals felt threatened apparently.

The Turkish association was discriminated against from the word go – and bear in mind we are talking about a cultural building. Local authorities blocked the building application. The Turks had to bring their case to the Justice Department before the decision was remanded. But even so the local xenophobes dug in and pushed the case all the way to the Administrative Court of the Canton of Solothurn, where they failed with their appeal. This decision was later affirmed by the Swiss Federal Supreme Court. So in the end justice and sanity prevailed.

The targeting of the Turkish cultural association by local reactionaries clearly demonstrates that this hysteria in Switzerland, isn’t in fact just related to concerns about Islam – it goes beyond that to the targeting of Muslim people and their associations – in general.

Lanny. It seems church steeples may have derived from minarets, not the other way around! http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/imperial_watch/from_minaret_to_steeple.html

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Halal slaughter is already illegal in Switzerland (as is kosher slaughter), and has been for over 100 years. Also in Sweden, Norway and Iceland.