It looks like the Swiss voters have decided to ban Islamic Minarets with 57% of voters in the referendum voting in favour of the ban, seeming to parallel a widespread insecurity over immigration in our country which led to there being BNP MEPs elected into Europe. This ban on minarets seems unashamedly discriminative towards the Islamic population within Switzerland, for me this is totally unacceptable and openly seems to want to condemn Islamic culture in their country. Just a thought…surely if they are going to ban minarets shouldn’t they ban church spires as well?
Chris Blewitt, Former Website Editor
Just to play devil’s advocate for a moment here, what’s to say the Swiss people cannot democratically decide their own building regulations? Many english cities have restrictions about what can be build where – f’instance one couldn’t whack up a ruddy great tower block in my Georgian hometown of Bath. I do hope it wouldn’t be racist of me to suppose that minerets are not entirely in keeping with the look of traditional swiss towns. Perhaps the people of Switzerland would rather their towns continued to look swiss, rather than becoming a Riyadh in the Alps. Of course this renders the church spire comparison irrelevent.
But let’s suppose this is a “discriminative” action. Well so what? Aren’t the Swiss people entirely within their rights to discriminate, indeed “condemn” if the feel that strongly, a culture completely alien to them? A culture which has never been a part of Switzerland until very recently? Unless we want to assume 57% of whichever town this referendum was held in are racists, facists, etc, the comparison with the BNP is entirely absurd. For the record; race =/= culture.
[That should liven things up, comment wise]
“Aren’t the Swiss people entirely within their rights to discriminate, indeed “condemn” if the feel that strongly, a culture completely alien to them?”
Sounds a little like another certain European country that felt very similarly half way through last century.
“Unless we want to assume 57% of whichever town this referendum was held in are racists, facists, etc, the comparison with the BNP is entirely absurd”
It’s the whole of Switzerland.
Not sounding so great is it?
Referenda are troublesome things aren’t they? It’s fortunate we never let the British people have one on the Lisbon Treaty, they might have voted the wrong way.
But I tease… also, I believe you broke Godwin’s Law, sorry. Besides which, if the comparison is indeed the one I believe you are making it is quite absurd and probably quite insulting.
Oh, and my mistake, it was nationwide. Moderately low turnout (by Swiss standards) – 52% I think. Certainly its a possibility that the question as put was badly worded, that the debate was polarised, and that there was more rhetoric than rational thought involved. That said, we dismiss the legitimate concerns of the Swiss people at our peril.
The planning laws should have already covered the building of minarets in terms of how well they fit in with the rest of Swiss architecture et al. The principle of the referendum I also question as a vote on the rights of a minority by the majority, the rights to religious freedom and freedom of expression no less. You could also, and many will have done, including a number of the voters no doubt (and maybe it was), interpreted this as a referendum on Islam, which would of course be an utterly absurb state of affairs. What’s more, there’s the issue of the wording, as you say, which will no doubt be argued up and down the courts making the whole process quite inefficent. Then there’s the fact that voting wasn’t compulsory, which it should have been if they really wanted everyone’s opinion even if an abstention. Finally, the whole reason the referendum was enacted in the first place is certainly questionable – how exactly did they come to single out minarets?
ComradeNash, it wasn’t the Swiss people I was criticizing with that statement, it was your choice of words which made you sound sympathetic to the cause of the Swiss people who voted in favour of the ban. I believe that we should all be aware of the repercussions of any deliberate discrimination at a national level towards any single race/faith as it can breed further intolerance, even hate, towards those peoples. I was not making a direct comparison in any way, sorry for any confusion caused.
I still believe that by condemning Islamic minarets in this way deliberately discriminates against their culture and beliefs and clearly is not intended to apply to the building of all structures by religions in that country. Surely a case by case approach is more justified than an outright ban?
If I sounded sympathetic to the cause of the Swiss people who voted in favour of the ban then it is because I am. The fear of radical Islam has always seemed to hight of common sense to me – though try telling that to the far left, and they just scream “racist” at you. Still, such is life.
If this were a matter I race I should obviously condemn it outright, but it ain’t. IMHO, Islam is an ideology no more worthy of protection or privaledge than Marxism, protectionism or the belief that there are faeries at the bottom of the garden. Tolerance can only work within limits – have the good muslim folk of Switzerland been completely unable to follow their faith thus far, without the now never to be build minerets? It is my understanding (though do please correct me if I’m wrong on this) that these are buildings whose function has been rendered obsolete through technology anyhow.
Referenda are, I would argue, a very silly thing. To me they’ve always seemed an abdication of responsibility by our elected politicians on issues they don’t wish to make a potentially divisive decision on. I make a possible exception for constitution issues, but even then its dodgy. We had a particularly daft example here in NZ recently, on the rights of parents to disciple their children via the administation of a smack. Again, we saw bad wording, polarised debate, disputed results and low turnout.
In fact it’s not simply a question of democradcy. There are many dimensions to it. Please visit my post on the same theme, which covers these dimensions – http://archanablogging.wordpress.com/2009/12/11/hello-world-swiss-ban-on-islamic-minarets/.
I visited your post. It was indeed quite interesting. Now I insist you return the courtesy
http://comradenash.wordpress.com/2009/12/08/of-minarets-and-men/
Chris, I think you’re full of it mate. This ban is a pathetic, petty, mean-spirited act that just happens to target a predominantly brown skinned demographic, and I find the idea that it was done out of desire for consistent urban planning to be pretty risible. I quite agree that Islam per se isn’t worthy of any more protection than any other unfalsifiable belief, but to say this ruling isn’t about race is pretty blinkered- the issue is the singling out of predominantly dark-skinned Muslims by predominantly white Christians, and not over, say, religious symbols in the public sphere, but over what shape people choose to make buildings on their own land.
If they were being consistent they’d ban all overtly religious buildings- the link between minarets and Islamic fundamentalism is completely baseless in the first place, but I somewhat doubt the Swiss government will be extending this ban to new church spires on the basis of the catholic church’s depravities.
As it is, Islamic extremism in Swiss Muslims is negligible, and the idea that banning minarets in a country that’s never had any problems with Muslim terrorists will make them safer is laughable.
Jim, thankyou for starting your argument in such a positive and constructive way. Your accusations of ingrained racism amongst the Christian population towards Islam in Switzerland are hugely simplistic and presumptuous as it implies that their views are based upon faith rather than political and wider sociodemographic changes in the country. If you would like to read the statement from the Vatican on this issue, please do so, it might ease your religious intolerance a little. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8385893.stm
To bring the ‘depravities’ of the Catholic church into this is pathetic and shameful.
@chrisblewitt – I believe the “positive and constructive” opening was aimed at me, rather than at your good self. The context of the rest of the comment would imply so, though of course I may be wrong.
@Jim – to keep things concise; of course their *can* be a race factor involved in the issue, by those who wish to play it. I won’t deny that. All I’m stating is that there doesn’t have to be, indeed their shouldn’t be. The correlation between a persons ideology and their ethnicity should be as irrelevant to the issue as any other such like. One could just as well assert that a ban will always be a direct attack on people who just happen to have beards, etc.
I maintain that not all of those sentiments which influenced the ban were ignoble ones; even if the ban itself will have a impact of zero upon any problems the Swiss face. I would oppose the ban and instead favour and promote more meaningful and productive ways to defend the secular and liberal nature of European society.
P.S. If you guys have the time, cast your eyes on Achana’s blog on the issue. There are some photographs of quite beautiful swiss minarets to be seen.