GENEVA (WJC)–Political leaders around the world, especially in Muslim countries, have condemned the decision by Swiss voters to ban the construction of minarets. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said the ban was “deeply divisive” and “clearly discriminatory”, and it was at odds with Switzerland’s international legal obligations.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who currently holds the presidency of the EU Council of Minister, wrote in his blog: “Questions could very well be raised within the UN about holding meetings and activities in Switzerland, even if the Geneva canton belonged to those which voted against the ban.” On Sunday, 57.5 percent of Swiss citizens voted in favor of a proposal that enshrines such in ban in the Swiss constitution.

Turkey’s President Abdullah Gül called it a disgrace for Switzerland. “It is an example of the increasing hostility towards Muslims in the West,” he said. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan said the referendum vote reflected an increasingly “racist and fascist stance” in Europe. Islamophobia was a “crime against humanity,” just like anti-Semitism, he said. In Cairo, Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said the ban was an attack on freedom of religion and an attempt to “hurt the feelings of the Islamic community inside and outside Switzerland.” He called on Muslims in Switzerland to take legal action to try and reverse the ban.

Swiss Foreign Minister Micheline Calmy-Rey also expressed unease about Sunday’s vote and said the Swiss government was “very concerned” about the ban. “Each limitation on the co-existence of different cultures and religions also endangers our security,” she said at an OSCE meeting in Athens, Greece, adding: “Provocation risks triggering other provocation and risks inflaming extremism.”

Meanwhile, members of the Dutch parliament rejected a motion tabled by representatives of an orthodox Christian party calling for a minaret ban in the Netherlands.

*
Preceding provided by World Jewish Congress

The Swiss population’s decision in a recent referendum to ban the construction of minarets has led predictably to some ill-considered and hysterical criticism of classical (direct, plebiscitary) democracy. Apparently, when decision-making power is removed from the brightest and the best, our elected parliamentary representatives, and bestowed upon the irresponsible and irrational public, this sort of result – racist, intolerant, disdainful of minorities – is bound to happen.

It’s difficult to see why this should logically be so. The concern with simple majority rule – that, coarsely implemented, it can override minority rights that should properly be protected – applies also to the elected assemblies filled worldwide by male lawyers and technocrats. (This is recognised in supermajoritarian rules like the US congressional filibuster.) Direct or indirect decision-making makes no difference in this regard.

The specific objection to participatory democracy, then, seems to rely on the same criticisms made by the hard right of universal adult suffrage. In various forms, each boils down to a claim that people are stupid. 

• The theory of rational ignorance suggests that, with the payoff to each individual voter (i.e. the probability that her vote will decide the election) effectively zero, and the marginal cost of making an informed choice (e.g. time spent becoming familiar with issues and policies) comparatively high, the inevitable outcome of modern electorates with broad franchises is dumb voters and, hence, bad policies.
• Straussians, meanwhile, believe that only the higher reaches of nature’s hierarchy can safely contemplate philosophical truths. The latter, broadly proclaimed to ”common people”, may endanger social cohesion. To ensure proper functioning, therefore, convenient fibs such as religion or Sarah Palin may be necessary for a mass audience.
• A broad set of libertarians, Austrian economists and followers of F.A. Hayek suggests that the aggregation of social preferences and other information can be better performed by the market than by voting. Thus Hayek’s belief that the market’s spontaneous order should be placed beyond the reaches of popular sovereignty (i.e. economic matters should not be subject to legislative control by popularly-elected assemblies) finds latter-day support in Bryan Caplan’s claim that voter errors on economic issues exhibit systematic bias (pdf), and Robin Hanson’s proposal to replace elections with betting markets (pdf).

These views can be swiftly dispatched – Strauss’s as counterfactual and absurd; Hayek’s as transparently begging the question; “rational ignorance” on the grounds that there exists a more parsimonious explanation for voter apathy (due to partisan convergence in crucial policy areas, for many people the marginal benefit of even the decisive vote is close to zero). The point, though, is that a belief in popular stupidity or irrationality is, well, popular. 

A subtly different argument sustains the preference for parliamentary election over direct democracy. The latter is held to be uniquely vulnerable to exploitation by populist demagogy. Either people are inherently credulous and suggestible, or they lack the expertise and time to give proper scrutiny to proposed laws and issues under debate. After all, even professional politicians need full-time assistants, paid research staff and departmental bureaucrats. The point may be provisionally conceded. Yet, out of the small proportion of collective decisions that can plausibly be put to a full popular vote, few require technical or domain-specific expertise (as do, for example, public health issues or military affairs): the recent Swiss vote did not. Where mere political judgement is required (over, say, government spending priorities or broad policy direction), their seems little reason to prefer the opinion of professional, career politicians over society as a whole. Indeed, even in parliamentary systems such as Australia’s, laws are not made on the floor of the elected chambers, after submitting to debate and scrutiny. They are concocted by an executive branch (the party leadership, with occasional participation from Cabinet), then shunted through parliament by party discipline or the whip.

Ultimately, then, the chief stricture against direct democracy is the one we began with: mob rule. Popular decisions must be mediated by representatives in an elected assembly, otherwise unmediated enthusiasms will see a majority swamp the rights of minorities. The locus classicus of the view is article 10 of the Federalist Papers, written by James Madison, chief author of the US Constitution. Despite the hallowed context, it’s a pretty shoddy argument. Madison’s stated objective is to prevent a majority faction sacrificing “to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.” A “republic”, he argues (and by which he means government by an elite of elected representatives), will accomplish this task better than participatory democracy. Furthermore a republic broad in scope (the federal Union) will do better than a small republic. Why? A democracy is by definition small-scale, few in number and narrow in scope, and this enables its capture by a majority with a common interest. On the other hand, a republic involves “the subsitution of representatives whose enlightened views and virtuous sentiments render them superior to local prejudices and schemes of injustice”. Larger in both territory and population, an overbearing majority is not readily formed. A step removed from popular passions, representative bodies served to “refine and enlarge the public view, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens” able to ”best discern the true interest of the country”. Refine, filter of impurities: the ”public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.”

There are several problems with this argument, but the most glaring is that Madison allows himself not to argue for parliamentary republicanism against participatory democracy. Instead, he merely argues that large-scale governments uphold minority rights better than small ones; ex hypothesi this must apply to democracy, which is assumed always to involve few people.  The possibilities presented may be visualised in the 2 x 2 matrix below – note the empty element.

It is, however, possible for us to imagine a large-scale democracy, in which Madison’s argument does not apply. First, the progress of information technology and cryptography make society-wide electronic plebiscites feasible. Second, the law of large numbers tells us that a sufficiently large random sample is representative of an underlying population. If we select members from a population at random, we should expect to get a more accurate picture of their society than via some other decision procedure – say, elections. And unsurprisingly that is what we see throughout the world. Whatever the indicator used – gender, race, wealth, education – professional politicians as a group are strikingly unrepresentative of the electorates they purport to represent. Choice of candidates based on merit (or oratorical skills, ambition, ideology, party allegiance, backers) uniformly produces assemblies filled with white, middle-aged, male lawyers. If administrators were instead chosen by lot, diversity would follow. This, rather than Madison’s republic, is the best protection against majority “faction”. 

More instructively, agendas, terms of choice and protocols for plebiscites should be set by randomly selected representative councils, rather than based on petitions. Petitions are self-selecting, and a narrow clique of interested people (in the Swiss case, of Islamophobes; in California, tax-revolt suburbanites) can force the broader public to vote on something about which it may have no strong opinion, which can produce perverse outcomes. The repeated failure of opinion polls to predict the Swiss result suggests that this did, in fact, occur. The problem, then, lies not with majority rule, direct democracy, or the putative ”mob rule” it allows. Plebiscites are a perfectly responsible form of decision-making, even compared to the alternatives. Voting paradoxes have long been known to afflict most systems. The difficulty of combining majority rule with minority rights is therefore not unique to participatory democracy. Its origin does not lie in popular stupidity or inexperience, the absence of civilised gentleman to filter the unreason of popular passions, or even some necessary institutional inadequacy. As we have seen, the mechanisms to ensure democracy is fair and representative do exist (for more, see here, here and here). The solution to outcomes like the Swiss referendum is therefore the deepening of democracy and popular power, not its attenuation.

Preventing an Islamic ‘takeover’ of Switzerland….

Image by Bendib

Click on image to enlarge

“The other regional players [read China] are busily setting the stage for exploitation of Afghanistan’s natural resources, while the US remains bogged down with the war. This should change,” (former CIA Pakistan Station Chief Milton) Bearden said (to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee).

Two weeks ago, when the (Zionist-dominated) Associated Press broke the story, it quoted leading American think-tanker and author, Robert Kaplan, “The world isn’t fair. A worse outcome to staying and helping the Chinese would be withdrawing and losing a great battle in the war against radical Islam.”

Here we have two clashing views: the former American, the latter Zionist. The American, Milton Bearden, who oversaw the US-Islamist alliance against Soviet imperial-colonial repression of the Muslims of Central Asia during the 1980s, realizes that the war in Afghanistan, like the war in Iraq, is completely, self-destructively insane when considered from the standpoint of the U.S. national interest. The latter, Robert Kaplan, a Jewish Zionist agent who once wrote a virtual Mossad dossier on those Americans smart enough to learn Arabic and support the Arab anti-Zionist cause, doesn’t care if the US destroys itself while destroying Af-Pak. The only thing Kaplan cares about is the “great battle in the war against radical Islam.” That war, of course, is a war for Israel.

Anybody who has taken Geopolitics 101 knows that the prime US foreign policy objective is to prevent the rise of a nation or bloc that could dominate the Eurasian land mass. The rising nation today is China, a new superpower with a 10% growth rate. And the dangerous (to US interests) bloc is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which adds Russian energy resources and nuclear weapons to the mix.

If it were rationally pursuing its own interests, the U.S. would be trying to help other powers act as counterweights to the development of a potentially hostile Eurasian bloc. The only sensible way to do that would be to support “radical Islam,” not fight it. Let me explain why.

When the Zionists and their dupes speak of “radical Islam,” what they really mean is not the crazy, isolated terrorist groups, most of them run by Mossad and other Zionist-influenced intelligence agencies, that target their fellow Muslims. What the Zionists are mortally afraid of is the Islamic world becoming politically united and economically and technologically successful.

The movement to rebuild the Islamic nation, the umma, is supported by a strong majority of Muslims worldwide: “Two-thirds (of of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims) would even like to ‘unify all Islamic counties into a single Islamic state or caliphate.’” (WorldPublicOpinion.org)

If the US really wants to support democracy in the Middle East, it should throw its support behind that majority of Muslims, and help pave the road to a newly-united Islamic umma. A newly-united caliphate would be the natural ally of the US, which would help it control and protect its energy resources against possible threats from energy-hungry China and nuclear-armed Russia and India. A newly-empowered, US-allied caliphate would use its oil wealth to become one of the world’s top three superpowers, alongside the US and China, ahead of Russia and India. It would be a key stabilizing force in a peaceful multi-polar world order. And it would be, among the big powers, the closest US ally.
Why isn’t the US actively helping the world’s Muslims re-unite their umma? Why is the US in fact fighting a brutal and deceptive war to smash and destroy key parts of the Muslim world, and to prevent any such reunification and re-empowerment?

The answer is obvious: This war on Islam is being waged by a fanatical minority of Zionists who have used their power in finance, media, political money, and organized crime to essentially take over the US and turn it against its own interests, as well as the interests of the world’s Muslims.

The Zionists know that if Muslims gain even a tiny fraction of the power they ought to have, relative to their proportion of the world’s population, Israel as a Jewish apartheid state is finished.

That is why the heavily-Zionist-influenced media churns out Islamophobic fantasies 24/7/365. And that is why the Zionists have duped the U.S. into a war on Islam, disguised as a self-evidently-absurd “war on terror,” launched by the 9/11 coup d’etat.

It is time for patriotic Americans to rise up and overthrow the Zionist facist regime that overthrew our government and burned our Constitution on September 11th, 2001. And it is time for Americans to demand a rational foreign policy that takes account of American interests, rather than being subservient to the interests of Zionism.

Greetings all, firstly, I reserve the right to approve or delete comments as I so choose. Secondly, I don’t consider comments like the one I’m about to go over to be spam comments, perhaps “troll” comments, but not spam. This wasn’t done by a bot or some kind of computer program, someone actually sat down and typed this, so I feel I can reserve the right to respond, or not, to this. I’ll respond once, maybe twice, but by the third time, I won’t respond and I’ll either let the comments stand and let their ignorance and stupidity shine for all the world to see, or I’ll remove them, as the case may be. So anyway here goes.

It is so touching to see a Muslim complain about bigotry. This from a people that discriminate everywhere they dominate.

“Touching”? In what way? Or are you just being sarcastic? How do Muslims discriminate everywhere they dominate? And what do you mean by “dominate”? There are many places where Muslims are the majority, they may even be heads of state but they don’t “dominate”… I often use The Gambia, and Senegal, to a lesser extent, as examples, because those are the Muslim-majority places that I’m most familiar with. Now, the rantings of the so-called Gambain President notwithstanding, there is a pretty sizable and vibrant religious minority in The Gambia, and they are free to practice their religion, I think they can even prosalitize if they so choose. Many families may have Muslims and Christians, etc., in the same family, and I’m told that Muslims and Christians will celebrate each others’ holidays, and you also have public holidays observed for both Christian and Muslim holidays. So while The Gambia is 90% or so Muslim, there is no domination and no discrimination here, at least not the kind you seem to be referring to. Now, this may, or may not, be going on in other parts of the world, but to say that “”Muslims” discriminate and dominate, etc., *everywhere* they rule, is just plain wrong. Maybe certain kinds of Muslims do this, but so do certain kinds of Christians, so Muslims don’t have any kind of a monopoly on either discrimination or domination, we don’t have to look too far back in our own American history to see this.

The minarets are harmless – but not Muslims. They preach hate and violence. They just don’t preach it, they do it.

OK, so then, are the minarets, though they are “harmless” as you admit, symbolic of the supposed hatred you are suggesting that all Muslims have toward non-Muslims? Is that what you are suggesting, and thus tha tis why they should be banned? i.e., ban hate with hate?

They believe in a god that delights in torture (Or maybe skinning people alive and pouring burning oil down a throat, as it says in the Quran, is ok).

I’m sorry Jay Kactuz… You know your name reminds me of the WWF/WWE wrestler from back in the day called “cactus Jack” lol but I digress. The parts of the Qur’an that you describe are not from a “God who loves torture” as you say, but are symbolic descriptions of the punishment for those condemned to Hell for their evil deeds. It was a way of describing to people, in ways that we humans could understand, the torment that would await the evil ones sent to Hell for their actions. Juxtaposed almost always with the imagery of Hell is the imagery of Heaven/Paradise/Jannah, and the good things that await those who believe and who do good deeds. And no, men don’t get 70 virgines for blowing themselves up either. I’d sure like to know where this came from. The closest thing is that everyone, men and women, will have “companions, pure and holy”, but a number isn’t given, and at least in the English translation, the kind of “companion” isn’t specified. The said companion could very well be referring to a Scrabble player or ping pong buddy, Allah alone knows best. But again, (sorry almost called you Cactus Jack again sorry), Mr. Kactuz, you are wrong again. Allah/God does not love torture, He has just told us what will happen to those of us, and it’s in the Bible too if you look, who do wrong in this life and who do not believe in Him.

They follow a man called Mohammud, that according to Islam’s own traditions, attacked, plundered, killed, raped, enslaved men women and children, raped and even beat his 9 year-old wife. Even so the Quran says this man is a “moral” example to follow. Even the so-called nice good Muslims except these things.

OK, Jay Kactuz, I’m not even going to touch this… I think I’m just about losing my patience with you. Just hateful lies and rhetoric, without even looking back at your own history to see what’s been done in your name/ the name of Christianity, nationalism, etc. The Prophet Muhammad did lead battles, and Muslims after him, rightly or wrongly, led battles, and perhaps Muslims raped, plundered, etc., but again, in Islam, there are specific rules for war, raping and plundering aren’t one of them.

Note also that everywhere Islam dominates it discriminates and oppresses. In case you haven’t noticed, Muslims do not accept freedom of speech and religion nor separation of religion and state.

OK, we’ve already been through this and I’ve already showed you how this is untrue. I don’t recall that places like North Korea except freedom of speech either, could you tell me what the reason is for that?

There are many places in the so-called Muslim world, where you’d have more freedom of speech and more human rights than say, hmmm, Burma or North Korea, for example.

oor maybe you have noticed the human rights situation in islamic societies.

That would depend on which “societies” you’re talking about. The human rights situation is better or worse, depending on where you are. And again, the lack of human rights or religious freedom isn’t predicated on religion alone, note my examples above.

This isn’t hate or islamophobia; it is speaking out against an oppressive ideology.

If it’s not hate then why did you feel the need to mention this? Islam itself is not oppressive. Some Muslims might be, some so-called “Muslim societies” might be. But Islam itself, isn’t an “ideology” and it’s not, in and of itself, “oppressive”, because if it was, if Muslims were so violent, than the slaves brought over here as Muslims, for example, would have been able to throw off their captors and gain their freedom and they were not, as far as we know, en masse able to do this, and “violent jihad” may not even have ever have crossed their mind, or maybe they were too weak to fight, or who knows. Allah alone knows best. But there’s so many holes you can poke in the “Islam is violent” ideology, you could write a book on that alone, and I’m sure many already have.

For years the West has been nice to Islam and Muslims and we have gotten nothing but hate and violence in return.

Hmmm, we seem to have gotten a lot of oil too, not to mention a lot of doctors, engineers, computer professionals, etc., so I beg to differ with you…

Muslims refuse to look at the ugly issues in their religion.

Oh, Mr. Kactuz, I don’t think you’ve read my blog enough. Firstly, it’s the Muslims we, and only us as Muslims, need to address, and not the “religion” itself. And I’m guessing you’ve not read my blog enough, because you’d see that I, and many others, attempt to address the problems in our community. But something tells me you’re not interested in any of this.

We need to draw a line in the sand and tell them that they must stop their hate, discrimination and violence.

We? Who exactly are you talking to!? Could it be that your comment has gotten so long, drawn-out, repetitive and full of hate and lies that you forgot who you were talking to? “We need to”? Me, the Muslim that you just got finished saying hates you, dispises you, is vilent toward you, doesn’t tolerate freedom of speech (even though I have approved your hateful and bigoted comment and even took the time to respond to it), hasn’t given you/The West anything in return, even though I live in the US, work here, pay taxes here, etc.? “We”? No, Mr. Cactuz, it’s you who needs to do something. Pick up a reputable book on Islam, do some reading, actually go out and meet some *real* Muslims! You’ve just finished telling us how you think “The Muslims” which is by extention me, because I’m Muslim, are so violent, hateful, etc., and then you say “we” must “do something”? Perhaps you were putting out a call to your fellow men with white hooded sheets on their heads?

Oh yes, they can still build their mosques to worshop their moon god and bow to their rock in Mecca. The Swiss ban was just to let them know that we are tired of their tantrums.

OK, I gotta laugh now! that sure had a “we just had to show them who’s boss” ring to it a “we gotta put them in their place”… air. But this isn’t funny, someone said that the Muslims in the US and Europe today are the Jews/n**gers of history gone by. And I can’t say I disagree, because if you read history, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, and Nat Turner and John Brown were viewed as “terrorists” at one time or another, yet are in many cases hailed as heroes today for standing up for freedom and justice. Guess you could kinda call them the “terrorists” or the “enemy combatants” of pre-antebellum times.

Ginnny, of course you will stay in America. We both know that the hadith and Quran say about women’s intelligence, but you are not so stupid as to go to a Muslim country. You wont leave the West because you know that Muslims Societies are hell on earth.

Actually, I can’t say for sure that I’d not go to a predominantly Muslim country. Perhaps I’ll go back to The Gambia one day, if things improve there. And I might actually stay awhile. Allah alone knows best. But I’d not *not* go because it’s a “Muslim country” and thus, in your words, a “hell on earth”. As far as the hadith on women’s intelligence, though, that’s a pretty hotly debated issue, and I read an article once that dispelled the myth that “women were half as intelligent as men”.

OK, I’m done, will not comment on this any further.

Swiss minaret ban ‘extreme Islamophobia’

Jamaat-e-Islami hold a protest in Pakistan. The party stated that this ban ‘reflects extreme Islamophobia among people in the West.’ – APP (File Photo)

ISLAMABAD, Monday, 30 Nov, 2009, updated Wesnesday, 02 Dec, 2009 : Pakistani religious groups on Monday condemned a referendum in Switzerland that saw voters approve a ban on the construction of mosque minarets, calling it ‘extreme Islamophobia.’

Switzerland on Sunday voted in favour of a ban on new mosque minarets – the towers or turrets attached to mosques from which Muslims are traditionally called to prayer – prompting dismay and anger in the Muslim world.

‘This development reflects extreme Islamophobia among people in the West,’ said Khurshid Ahmad, vice president of Jamaat-e-Islami, a Islamic political party that is represented in Pakistan’s parliament.

‘This also represents very serious discrimination against Muslims.’ Pakistan is the world’s second most populous Muslim nation.

The far-right Swiss People’s Party (SVP) had forced a referendum after collecting a mandatory 100,000 signatures from eligible voters.

Conservative Swiss politicians argued that the minarets were not architectural features with religious characteristics, but symbolised a ‘political-religious claim to power, which challenges fundamental rights.’

Ahmad described the Swiss decision as a serious violation of human rights and international law, telling AFP: ‘This is an effort to provoke Muslims and prompt a clash between Islam and the West.’

Yahya Mujahid, a spokesman for Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa – accused of being a front for the banned Lashkar-e-Taiba radical insurgent group – also decried the referendum as a blow for inter-faith harmony.

‘This new decision violates the principles of mutual understanding and religious tolerance,’ Mujahid said.

‘The West never takes respite in claiming to be champions of religious tolerance and inter-faith harmony, but this latest decision shows their bias against Muslims,’ he added.

Far-right politicians across Europe celebrated the results, while the Swiss government sought to assure the Muslim minority that a ban on minarets was ‘not a rejection of the Muslim community, religion or culture.’

Having won a majority on turnout of 53 per cent, the initiative will now be inscribed in the country’s constitution.

UN rep Asma Jahangir warns Swiss over minaret ban

Minaretmuse is not a-mused at the Swiss minaret ban.  Of course I’m biased in favour of all things minaret-ish (except for hideous plasticky ones). But what harm is there in a slender spire pointing to the heavens guiding our minds to higher things? It’s not as if they had a minaret-plague on their hands, there are only four in their entire country! Tch. In retaliation, I shall be banning all cuckoo clocks – now that’s a ban worth having.

My compatriots’ vote to ban minarets is fuelled by fear

Source: Chan'ad @Flikr

Tariq Ramadan

It wasn’t meant to go this way. For months we had been told that the efforts to ban the construction of minarets

in Switzerland were doomed. The last surveys suggested around 34% of the Swiss population would vote for this  shocking initiative. Last Friday, in a meeting organised in Lausanne, more than 800 students, professors and citizens were in no doubt that the referendum would see the motion rejected, and instead were focused on how to turn this silly initiative into a more positive future.

Read the rest here.

Switzerland has banned the building of minarets, after its people passed a referendum  to outlaw the slender mosque towers. The move is widely seen as an attack on Islam, generated by the ultra-conservative Swiss People’s Party (SVP), one of the largest parties in the country.

European countries are growing increasingly concerned about rising Islamophobia. The vote was not expected to pass. Yet on a 53% turnout, it passed by a clear margin. Over 57% of voters approved the proposal. Dutch far right parties are now calling for a similar referendum, and many states fear that anti-Muslim feeling could increase.

What is the problem with these simple, graceful mosque towers? Well, it’s clear that there’s nothing to be bothered about. Minarets adorn the top of mosques; sometimes, a call to prayer is made from its balcony (this is already forbidden in Switzerland). There are only four mosques with minarets in the country.

A minaret at a mosque in Serrières, Swtzerland. Photo by Tambako

So how did it all start? Ultra-conservative parties like the SVP started a petition demanding the banning of minarets. In Switzerland, if a petition gains 100,000 signatures, the government has to open a referendum on the issue. Reluctantly, it did.

Moderates were fairly confident the proposal would be rejected. But they got a nasty shock. Now, Article 72 of the Constitution, which deals with religion and state, will bear a short, sharp phrase: “The construction of minarets is banned.”

Muslims do not need minarets for worship, but the implications of the ban are extremely worrying.  The SVP statement* said the passing of the referendum was a refusal of “the rampant Islamisation of our country” before railing against arranged marriage and Muslim requests for “exemptions from swimming lessons”. Clearly, they are nutters, and they are trying to stoke up anti-Muslim feeling.

The SVP leaders, however, are claiming that the move is not anti-Islamic “This is not against Islam. The minaret is a symbol of political power,” a leading SVP parliamentarian told The Times. The party made heavy use of a statement by the Prime Minister of Turkey, the leader of a conservative Islamist party, who described minarets as “the bayonets of Islam”.

So the SVP set about making posters in red, white and black, showing a burkha-clad women surrounded by minarets drawn as bayonets. The main message of the image was clear: Islam is a threat. A Guardian editorial points to the added symbolism of red, white and black in Switzerland: it arguably has connotations of the Nazi swastika.

The SVP’s idea that minarets are political is clearly rubbish. They are a simple architectural feature on a religious building. But they know that the policy is against the European Convention of Human Rights on the grounds of religious discrimination. So they are claiming minarets are “political” to keep their constitutional amendment within the law.

The proposal is likely to be struck off under European law because banning minarets clearly discriminates against a particular religion. But the SVP may have already achieved their goal of increasing anti-Muslim resentment.

———

* SVP is the Swiss People’s Party’s German shorthand name. The SVP statement seen here is the French version. In French speaking areas they are called UDC (Union Democratique du Centre)

Part 2: The press and public – the reaction

Following my post about the Swiss minaret ban, here’s some follow up thoughts on some of the reaction.

Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph says he doesn’t like this particular referendum, but applauds the Swiss system. He says direct democracy like this is great: it makes for a more actively engaged electorate. Others argue that it produces “the tyranny of the majority”. I would agree. If the British people had referenda, capital punishment would be back today.

Some Muslim writers compare the minaret ban with the French furore about the burkha. Tariq Ramadan points towards anti-Islamic feeling in Europe but the French debate is arguably different. It is true that many people use the burkha to make anti-Islamic statements. It enrages people so much they feel justified in pouring hastily produced bile over Islam.

But the burkha debate is, at least theoretically, something different. This is a discontent with a conservative version of Islam, and a debate about the hotly contested meaning of hijab, the Islamic dress code. It is given added zeal by a particularly French commitment to secularism that, at times, moves from noble ideals to a grubby anti-Islamic reality.

Some secular writers are saying that perhaps the minaret vote is partly a reflection of Swiss society’s discontent with the increasing role of religion in public life. (See Joan Smith in the Guardian).  This is nonsense. If you’re concerned about this, you don’t vote to ban some small towers on a mosque.

The minaret debate has no legitimacy at all. It is simply an excuse to bash Muslims.

Muslims: the new bogeymen

Muslims are the new bogeymen of society, along with asylum seekers. Prejudice is often directed at minority groups, and these two are the 21^st century examples. Once it was acceptable to rail against black people or Jewish people; now it is Muslims and asylum seekers.

Take a look at some of the comments on media articles about the minaret ban. If we try substituting the word “Muslim” for “Jews” or “black people”, we see how horrifying it is.

Those with a jaundiced outlook on the left and right will spew the same predictable comments. They’ll say something like: “Most of the major terrorist threats in the world originate from people who say they are Muslim. So our vitriol against Muslims is justified.” The first sentence may be true. The second sentence is not. The existence of a tiny minority of terrorists does not provide the excuse to bash Muslims, and curb basic religious freedoms. That is just ridiculous. It is against basic democratic values.

But some seem to take leave of their brain and spout forth rubbish. Look at most of the comments in the Times. Or this person commenting on a Telegraph article, who says:

Oh, stop being so analytical!
What a wonderful result, and may the rest of Europe follow as soon as possible!
And not only with minarets as the target

Far right parties look to be winning. Muslims are being portrayed as “the enemy within”. This must stop.

Today is the anniversary of the arrest of Rosa Parks after she refused to comply with racial segregation laws. She refused to give up her seat to a white passenger and move to the back of the bus. She wasn’t the first person to defy the law in that way, but the time had come, and the place was right, and Rosa had the drive and the inclination to make it an important issue.

Rosa Parks is regarded as an African-American, of course, but like all of us, she was actually a racial mixture. In fact, her great-grandfather was an Ulsterman. If defiance of authority is genetic, that would be a good place to start looking.

Rosa’s bus is preserved in a museum, although slighty incongruously, it’s the Henry Ford museum in Detroit. Not incongrous because it’s in Detroit instead of Montgomery, Alabama; but because Henry Ford’s record of antisemitism doesn’t fit well with commemorating a pioneer campaigner for racial equality.

Because it’s all the same. Picking any group of people to hate, on any critereon, for any reason, only shows a lack of rationality and a weakness of mind. Like the good citizens of Switzerland who voted to ban the building of minarets. Because the overwhelming presence of so many minarets already erected in Switzerland (four) showed how traditional Swiss culture was being swamped by something foreign. See what I mean? Weakness of mind.

But the Swiss Nazis who exploited the Swiss constitution to get a referendum and scared enough of the weak-minded to vote their way don’t really care about minarets. Their objective is power. Power obtained by fear and hatred. And there’s one good way to deal with that. Resist. Stand up for your rights. Like Rosa Parks.

(Yes, I know she sat down for her rights.)

Received some hateful comments on my blog that I approved, and I’ll address them later Inshallah. Because I don’t think that hate needs to be hidden away, it needs to be exposed for the hate and bigotry that it is. Not swept under the carpet. But just one thing… If Muslims were so violent, the places like The Gambia, we’d like to hope, would have gotten rid of Yahya Jammeh a long time ago, and he is violent in his own right but Islam has nothing to do with it. Basically, you have 1.5 or so billion people, from such diverse places as Senegal, China, and beyond, and it’s only a fraction, a miniscule fraction, of said billion people, that are violent in the name of Islam.

This reminds me of documentaries that I’d see about the KKK and other hate groups, and there’d be clips of them talking about how black people are this and that, and “the Jews” are this and that, etc., and that’s what the “Jay Kactuz” comment reminds me of. Just another Klan member talking crap to justify their white supremacy.

But as I said, I’ll address this later, because hate has to be addressed and confront, though not all of the time, so if I continue to get hate comments, I continue to reserve the right to approve or delete them. Perhaps I just feel extra confrontation (oops shouldn’t use that word I’m a Mozzie ya know), uh, mmm, let me find a less threatening word so that Jay Kactuz doesn’t feel scared of “the Mozzie”, hmmm, I’ll just say that perhaps today I have more energy to debate than on other days. But that’s not saying that that will continue.

In the Guardian, Tariq Ramadan gives his perspective on the question I posed here yesterday:

There are only four minarets in Switzerland, so why is it that it is there that this initiative has been launched? My country, like many in Europe, is facing a national reaction to the new visibility of European Muslims. The minarets are but a pretext – the UDC wanted first to launch a campaign against the traditional Islamic methods of slaughtering animals but were afraid of testing the sensitivity of Swiss Jews, and instead turned their sights on the minaret as a suitable symbol.

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. It is important to look beyond these symbols and understand what is really happening in Europe in general and in Switzerland in particular: while European countries and citizens are going through a real and deep identity crisis, the new visibility of Muslims is problematic – and it is scary.

At the very moment Europeans find themselves asking, in a globalising, migratory world, “What are our roots?”, “Who are we?”, “What will our future look like?”, they see around them new citizens, new skin colours, new symbols to which they are unaccustomed.

Over the last two decades Islam has become connected to so many controversial debates – violence, extremism, freedom of speech, gender discrimination, forced marriage, to name a few – it is difficult for ordinary citizens to embrace this new Muslim presence as a positive factor. There is a great deal of fear and a palpable mistrust. Who are they? What do they want? And the questions are charged with further suspicion as the idea of Islam being an expansionist religion is intoned. Do these people want to Islamise our country?

“I don’t like Switzerland – it has produced nothing but theologians and waiters.” Oscar Wilde

“Switzerland has produced the numbered bank account, Ovaltine and Valium.” Peter Freedman

“Since its national products – snow and chocolate – both melt, the cuckoo clock was invented solely in order to give tourists something solid to remember it by.” Alen Coren

Swiss bigots vote to ban minarets…

Some reactions by the victorious camp in favour of the ban on minarets after the referendum on Sunday, 29 October:

“Forced marriages and other things like cemeteries separating the pure and impure – we don’t have that in Switzerland and we don’t want to introduce it.”
Ulrich Schlüer, co-president of the Initiative Committee to ban minarets.

“Society wants to put a safeguard on the political-legal wing of Islam, for which there is no separation between state and religion.”
Oskar Freysinger, member of the Swiss People’s Party and a driving force in the campaign

“People who settle here have to realise that they can’t turn up to work in a head scarf or get special dispensation from swimming lessons.”
Toni Brunner, president of the People’s Party

(all quotes from SwissInfo)

If one listens to its initiators, yesterday’s referendum was not about the construction of new minarets in Switzerland at all. The organizers of the campaign admit quite frankly what was really rejected: their image of a Muslim religion and culture and what they perceive as an assault on Swiss values.

With only four minarets existing in the country is hard to argue that the referendum is justified. Yet, the campaign poster speaks a clear language where minarets are used symbolically for a hostile attack: missile-sharp minarets riddle a Swiss flag. The rationale behind the campaign is “a” culturally pure Switzerland and “a” hostile culture of Islam.

So as of Sunday, the Swiss have joined the exclusive club of Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan as the world’s only countries that have laws which to prohibit the construction of towers on religious buildings (In S.A. and Afghanistan, it’s Christian churches though). With the outcome and implementation of the ban, Switzerland breaches the European Convention on Human Rights and is likely to face expulsion from the Council of Europe.

Just to be clear: a debate concentrated on issues (dispensation from swimming lessons, head scarfs, etc) is necessary for communities as a negotiation of shared communal values. However, in such debates the majority often drifts of to racial and cultural stereotyping of minorities. It looks as if the anti-minaret campaign is the most extreme example of this in a European country to date.

The question that the organisers of the winning side will have to ask themselves is whether their success will really help their goal of driving back “traditional Islam” and the construction of “parallel societies”.

The campaign has highlighted a massive stigma of Muslims in Switzerland as culturally inferior and ultimately unwanted. On top of that, Muslims will now be more marginalised than ever before. Discrimination will no longer be limited to the social level but also reflected in the legal structure as soon as the words ‘the construction of minarets is prohibited’ will enter article 72 of the Swiss constitution.

With this decision, the liberal and integrated majority of Muslims in Switzerland is under attack and extremist groups will gain momentum. If the initiators of the referendum were genuinely interested in the integration of religious and ethnic minorities they would see the outcome of their campaign as a catastrophe.