Swiss vote to ban Muslim minarets in sharpest challenge to Islam in Europe yet
If you thought the Danish cartoon controversy caused a ruckus, get ready for this. Reports out of Switzerland suggest that voters have today approved a referendum to ban the construction of new minarets — spires situated next to Mosques for the Muslim call to prayer — across the country. News agencies say that the legally binding decision was backed by an astounding 57.5 percent of the population. A week ago, opinion polls put support for the move at just 37 percent.
The move is likely to provoke the kind of mass confrontation that followed the publication of a series of cartoons in Denmark in 2005 which linked the Prophet Mohammed to terrorism. In the months that followed, more than 100 people died in unrest across the Muslim world, Danish embassies and shops were burned to the ground and protests erupted by Muslim groups in Europe calling for the censorship of opinions considered insulting to Islam.
The referendum was backed by the nationalist Swiss People’s Party. According to the Associated Press:
“The People’s Party has campaigned mainly unsuccessfully in previous years against immigrants with campaign posters showing white sheep kicking a black sheep off the Swiss flag and another with brown hands grabbing eagerly for Swiss passports.”
Local Muslim leaders say that minarets in Switzerland are not actually used for the call to prayer. In other words, they do not threaten to “take over the public space”. There are approximately 450,000 Muslims in Switzerland, about 5 percent of the population.
It is far too early to draw conclusions about today’s unfolding events in Switzerland and I will comment later when the situation becomes clearer. But it looks as though a backlash against Islam in Europe by nationalist forces energised by the failures of multiculturalist orthodoxies is now really starting to take hold.
It is just such an implosion of the centre-ground in favour of polarising groups on either side that has long been predicted by critics of politically correct, multiculturalist ideology. In other words, if mainstream parties refused to deal with the problem of intolerance and bigotry inside Muslim groups in a civilised manner, it was inevitable that fringe groups would deal with the problem in an uncivilised manner, all the while garnering ever greater support from a wider public disillusioned by the way things have been going. There’s more of this to come. You can rely on it.
Tags: Islam
November 29th, 2009 at 5:44 pm
Maybe the US & other nations should follow Swiss style direct democracy?
The Swiss just voted to ban minarets on mosques and this is a great exercise of their unique form of direct democracy regardless of your views on the subject. But my question is why do the Swiss get to overrule their politicians and parliament and here in the US, we don’t have that right?
Let’s bring Swiss style direct democracy to the United States so Americans can vote on the Wall Street bailouts, government health care, whether to audit or abolish the FED, or require Congress declare war before we invade another country. Read why Switzerland is free and America is not and help restore citizen control over the US government and Congress currently under control of special interests. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/holland9.1.1.html
November 29th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
I think this is only the beginning of a revolt by some Europeans against Islam’s attempt to take over the sub-continent.
Britain may be too far gone, but I have often felt that the history of Europe bodes ill for the Moslems living there. The Europeans, from the Crusades, Inquisition, and up to the Nazi regime, have exhibited a history of massive and horrific opposition to minorities, and I think in the end this will reassert itself.
November 29th, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Right now we are condemning countries in the Middle East for the way they treat religious minorities like the Baha’is and Christians, how long until they are condemning us for the way we are treating our Muslim communities. A sad sad day indeed.
November 29th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Michael Botterill – the elementary and constitutional rights of Muslims of religious freedom and civil liberties in Switzerland have not been curtailed by one iota by this move. This is a very big misunderstanding. The proposal objects to the construction of minarets attached to the worship places, the mosques.
November 29th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
Michael Botterill.
As someone who knows members of the Bahai faith I can assure that Muslims enjoy greater freedoms in the UK than ANYWHERE else in the world.
We don’t kill muslims here,but Muslims have killed MANY thousands of Bahai in Iran.
Your ignorance is forgiven
November 30th, 2009 at 4:25 am
Prediction: there will NOT be massive protests against this in Switzerland. Why not? Because the Islamists have seen beyond a doubt that a huge majority of the Swiss ARE FED UP WITH THEIR CR@P.
The Muslims only riot, uhhhhh, protest in places they are confident will not defend themselves, like Sweden. Or France when Chirac was in power.
November 30th, 2009 at 5:24 am
Michael Botteril – don’t be so sad – countries in the ME are already condemning “us” for the way “we” treat our (rapidly growing) Moslem minorities.
The problem with your statement is that they like to dish it out, but don’t like to be on the receiving end.
November 30th, 2009 at 8:58 am
Here is an interesting and comprehensive article on this subject from a year ago, covering the debate in Germany, where plans to build some kind of mega mosque in Cologne led to a spirited debate and put the spotlight on a German-Jewish journalist, Ralph Giordano, who broke with pc-dogma to protest against the mosque and make the point that the issues at stake shouldn’t be left to right-wing populists:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,565146,00.html
November 30th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
This is just one step but there should be follwoing more steps, and all steps should be under this principle: use the Human Rights abuses of islamic countries against themselves:
- Cancel scholarship student visa program with Saudi Arabia & Egypt & other countries: until they reform their text books, which preach hatred and violence against non-Muslims.
- Restrict religious visas for imams who come from countries that don’t allow reciprocal visits by non-Muslim clergy.
- Restrict the spread of Korans for countries that do not tolerate the fread spread of bibles and evangelisation, for example marocco & turkey & pakistan & etc.
- Restrict the building of mosques for people from countries that do not allow or restrict the building of churches for their indigenous christian peoples (Egypt, Turkey, Marocco, etc)
Reciprocity is a good principle to fight back because it’s rational and honest.
December 2nd, 2009 at 6:55 am
There is no country as Islamic as Saudi Arabia. It is the home of Islam, where Islam came from. Saudi Arabia still stones people to death, practices gender segregation, which can carry dire punishments just for being in the presence of an unrelated member of the opposite sex. They don’t allow women to drive, or even be outside their homes without the permission of their closest male relative. They legally pratices slavery until 1962, when it was abolished via pressure from other countries, it is still however going on underground and is still legal in some other muslim countries. They chop hands off of petty thieves, rendering them disabled for life. They still have the death penalty for apostasy, blasphemy, heresy. They allow no other religion to be practiced in the country, its against the law even to meet in private homes for pray….other then muslim pray that is.
No non-muslims are allowed to enter the city of Mecca or Medina. No non muslim immigration, only work visas…….which is allowed because without that, no work would get done……they use foreign labor for nearly everything. They ignore honor killings, they have public executions where the victim is paraded before the crowd before having their heads chopped of to the cheering crowd, or the crowd are invited to join in throwing rocks at the person until they are dead.
I could go on forever.
Muslims have got no right at all calling anybody else intolerant. Before they do, they had better open their countries up to any and every religion….and let churches be built all over their countries…..and they better get a heap of non muslims involved in making laws……running their country etc.
After they have done all that……I’m willing to talk to them about intolerance
Robin Shepherd says: Let’s be quite clear here in making a distinction between ordinary Muslims living in Europe and Muslim governments in the Middle East and elsewhere. A shopkeeper or a lawyer in Bradford or Geneva is not responsible for the actions of the Saudi government. Where there is an issue is in the statements and attitudes of Muslim community and religious leaders who should be pressuring Muslim governments to treat non-Muslims in their countries with the same degree of respect that Muslims are accorded in Europe. Perhaps the Muslim Council of Britain is involved in a long-running and vocal campaign to free up Saudi Arabia? Oh, that’s right, the only country they are bothered about in the Middle East is Israel! What does that tell us about their priorities……
December 7th, 2009 at 3:53 am
The ban on muslim minarets is definitively an expression of bigotry.
Unlike the danish cartoons which were an manifestation of the freedom of speech, it will have very different effects.
Muslim bigots around the muslim world won’t riot. Adverse bigotry is a much lesser evil in their eyes than freedom of speech. Because swiss bigotry does not threaten their oppressive power in the muslim world.
In the eyes of the majority of Muslims in Europe, political Islam will at last become a threat to be confronted, not a perverse fantasy to indulge or an unpleasant fact to deny.
The ban on minarets in Switzerland may be vile bigotry.
But many goods may come out of that wrong.
February 19th, 2010 at 2:29 am
Hello! Good idea, but will this really work?
February 20th, 2010 at 8:10 am
Hey I stumbled upon your webpage by mistake on ask while looking for something totally unrelated but I am very glad that I did, You have just snagged yourself another subscriber. :)
February 23rd, 2010 at 12:26 am
I’d allow as many minarets in Switzerland as ther are synagogues, church spires and steeples in Suadi-Arabia.
December 13th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
I would like to get additional blogs like your. Its a genuinely well written one particular and a true pleasure to study! Compose a lot more about this topic make sure you !!