Arab World: Reactions to the Swiss Ban on Minarets
On Sunday, November 29, 57.5% of Swiss voters approved a ban on the construction of new minarets atop mosques, paving the way for a constitutional amendment. The referendum will affect the building of new minarets–not mosques–and will not effect Switzerland's four existing minarets.
The ban has sparked mixed reactions throughout the Arab and Muslim blogospheres: While some bloggers are outraged, others make the point that banning minarets does not hinder practicing the faith.
Lebanese-American Pierre Tristram, who blogs for About.com, opens a post with this paragraph, condemning the Swiss decision:
How can 59 million people be so dumb, Britain's Daily Mail famously asked in a day-after headline of the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. The Daily Mail can notch a new one for its shame gallery: How can 3 million Swiss be so bigoted?
Tristram closes with this scathing comment: “The difference between your average Swiss and Iran‘s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the poster child of racist rants, has just gotten much narrower.”
Egyptian blogger Hicham Maged searches for an answer in his post, and concludes:
In a nutshell, I am looking forward for Swiss people to re-evaluate what happened; it is not only whether law protect citizen's rights or not, which is something important to debate and go for in the Swiss courts to correct for sure, but what is more important for me is that this fatal mistake should set up an alarm for not falling into the swamp of ignorance where nothing fill it but fear, anger and stupidity ~ Everywhere!
Another Egyptian blogger, whose blog is entitled Not Green Data, recognizes the credo that “a mosque is a mosque,” but laments the loss of the mosque's beauty in the Swiss ban:
Can you imagine a cube of Swiss Cheese, without its eyes – the holes in it? Or a Swiss Knife without the compass or the screwdriver? This is exactly what the Swiss people want to do with mosques. A mosque will remain a mosques without its Minarets, and it will still function the way it is supposed to function without them. But it will then loose its architectural identity and beauty.
British blogger Matthew Teller, a Middle East travel writer, focuses on the propaganda posters of various Swiss
A poster by the Swiss SVP calling for a ban of minarets
campaigners, picking apart both sides of the battle in this post, describing the poster to the left:
The repulsive SVP, who’ve used what the Financial Times called “strident populism” to target ‘foreigners’ of all kinds in Switzerland as criminals, benefit cheats or worse, kicked off the campaign with the poster opposite: “Stop! Yes to the minaret ban”. Look at the imagery: minarets as missiles, women as menacing, the burqa as concealment, black as a threat, the Swiss flag cast into shadow from the east, the cross obliterated.
Algerian-American The Moor Next Door, seeing the ban as a power struggle, remarks:
The minaret, for its opponents, symbolizes Islam’s “arrival” in the Alps. It stands to proclaim the Muslim presence above other faiths and peoples. Banning it, then, is to ban a symbol of Muslim power and existence
…
The aesthetics of identity, and therefore power, are what the drive is really about. It is a way for a people in doubt to affirm and define their confused identity by rejecting that of the newcomer’s.
Syrian blogger Maysaloon has a unique perspective on what the most important narrative of this story is. Setting aside the issues of bigotry, fear, and architectural integrity, the blogger makes the following point:
Neither Swiss bigotry, nor the religious or architectural significance of minarets are what is important about this story. What is important is that for the first time in 400 years, at least since the Ottomans besieged Vienna, Muslims are having a real impact on what is happening in Europe.
The blogger goes on to highlight the ways in which Islam has influenced the “west” and vice versa, concluding:
To sum it up, I am not worried about the bigots. Minarets and sharia can be banned, headscarves can be torn off, and all the cartoons in the world will not stop the fact that Islam is now in Europe, and it is in America, and it is spreading throughout the world.
To conclude, Mauritanian Twitter user weddady‘s comment on the end result of the referendum sums up well the sentiment of many. He says, ” Now no one can pretend that Europe doesn't have a problem with Muslims, nor can anyone deny the extensive Islamist presence there.”
60 comments
This back and forth conversation with its allegation and counter allegation is senseless.
There is a solution to all these but unfortunately it is in the hands of the leaders and preachers of the 3.
In my humble opinion all 3 so-called religions as well as all other religions on this planet are not even scratching the surface of the great ‘truth’, ALL religion should be seen for what it is, a web of spiders.
Religion is an ineffective mind-control device leading from one idiocy to the next as histroy proves time and time again.
Relious people are quite incapable of addressing all these various issues with anything approaching open minds.
Somebody on here asks if anybody has read the Koran. Well, I have read it, albeit in English, so it’s not really the Koran I have read – merely somebody’s translation – but that’s the best I can manage. At least it’s an attempt to understand the theology behind the contradictory words and messages coming out of Islam. My views on it? Much of the content seriously worries me. But then so does much of the content of the Old Testament (Torah).
I have read all 3 books of Abraham’s variously devolved religions. I’d have to say that the New Testament is the only book that I, and I’m not per se a Christian in the biblical sense, take any comfort from.
I once met a Pakistani Muslim in a barber shop and in the course of conversation we came to the subject of the Koran. Have you read it I asked? “Read it? I know every word in it,” he said. “When I was a child I was made to learn the whole book by rote,” he added. “Give me an example of the kind of things it says,” I asked (at that time I didn’t know that an English translation existed). “I don’t know what it says, because although I was a child in Pakistan I had to learn the book in Arabic. And I’m not the only one,” he said.
ps- On an another theme mentioned in previous posts (above): the International Red Cross and the Internet were invented/born/developed in Switzerland.
Those of you who propose boycotting Swiss products can start right now – simply switch off your Internet connections and returning any Red Cross medicinies and relief packages.
There’s an old saying: Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.
I am personally afraid of Islam.
I am not Islamophobic, though, because my fear is rational…
There have been several terrorist attacks in the last decade done by people claiming to do them in the name of Islam (New York, Madrid, London, Bali…Etc.).
There is no way I can identify or discriminate radical muslims from those who are not, so… Why should I have to accept them coming to our countries and imposing their Mosques and their religion (where radical Islam is often preached in several of them, as seen on German TV programs).
Christianity is the same trash. Islam is a continuation of Christianity and Judaism. There is absolutely nothing tolerant about Christianity. Look 400 years back you idiots. The whole Judeo-Christian-Muslim concept is flawed, ignorant and intolerant. Islam is not any better or any worst. Millions have died in the last 2000 years by the so ever tolerant Christians. This is call comical. Good read the Torat and see how it claims raping 3 years old girls is o.k. as long as she is not Jewish. These religions are all joined at the hip.
Roderick,
I am personally afraid of Germans. Still have many bad memories from 50 years ago. But I don’t hold every German responsible for what millions of Germans committed 50 years ago.
I’ve been terrorized by Christians fundamentalists… so terrified I’m scared to go out on the streets…
They attack me with their Bibles, telling me that Jesus loves me and wants me to be saved and have eternal life and that it’s free to me.
It’s just horrifying, I think we better ban free speech sooner rather than later just to keep those dangerous Christians in their place, before they come up with a suicide love bomb…
;-)
Then why do you hols christians responsible for what they did 400 years ago, me thinks this is a little inconsistent