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No more minarets in Switzerland.
- Thread starter Mafiaaffe
- Start date
5810Singer said:
Sorry, but that,´s just not true. The bible is in no way as disgusting as the quran the bible does not call for total domination, it doesn,´t call for a holy war. The quran repeatedly and unmistakably says people like you and me should be converted or murdered because we disagree with it. If a muslim does good to a non-muslim he can be considered as a good person but not as a good muslim however a christian that does good to a non-christian can be considered as a good christian.
5810Singer said:
A few freedoms will be lost to secure the freedom of many that,´s why we illegalize murder, stealing, rape (Yeah i know, poor rapists) etc. and that,´s why we illegalize the nazi party and that,´s why we should illegalize the islamic ideology. All i am saying is that i don,´t want people that follow a book. that says me, my family and my friends should be murdered, anywhere near me. I see the ban of the minaretes more like a sign, a sign that says: "We don,´t want your ideology here".
Icefire9atla
New Member
If Switzerland really is on the path to sharia law, banning minarettes won't do a thing to stop it. The only thing that this could accomplish is to inflame hatred on both sides.
I don't know enough to say if Switzerland is on that path, but if it is, the Swiss would be much better off to go after the cause, instead of the symptoms. The Swiss need a better system to assimilate their immigrants (look at the US, we have absorbed wave after wave of immigration).
I don't care if someone wants to build a mosque with a minaret on it, it's part of freedom of religion. Just like we should be able to post our buildboards up promoting our orginizations and cause. Just like christians and jews should be able to build their churches and synagouges.
I don't know enough to say if Switzerland is on that path, but if it is, the Swiss would be much better off to go after the cause, instead of the symptoms. The Swiss need a better system to assimilate their immigrants (look at the US, we have absorbed wave after wave of immigration).
I don't care if someone wants to build a mosque with a minaret on it, it's part of freedom of religion. Just like we should be able to post our buildboards up promoting our orginizations and cause. Just like christians and jews should be able to build their churches and synagouges.
If it had been a bill put through parliament it likely would not have passed. A minority party made the proposal into a referendum, the Swiss people voted on it and, because Switzerland is a direct democracy, the ban on building minarets should be enacted into law. Apparently, the law would contradict the constitution so there might be a stumbling block. I think it would just be a ban on new minarets the old ones would not be torn down.xman said:
Icefire9atla
New Member
Secondedscalyblue said:
Shapeshifter
New Member
As I'm swiss and participated in the vote there's a few things I want to say about this. Hopefully this additional view can give some insight.
First off all I agree it's a completely inane law and all it did until now was enrage muslims and draw the people of this country further apart. I voted against it and tried to convince as many people as possible to go voting so that it doesn't go through. I was really surprised when it was accepted. There are a couple of different aspects one needs to look at:
1.) How did it come to this? In this country if you want to build something, you need to write an application, and townspeople have the right to protest. If the people living in that area rejected the building application, the minaret wouldn't get built. I fine with that - the people living in the immediate surroundings of a certain spot should be able to have a word on things happening there. This is applicable to any sort of building, not just towers. Even if someone wants to change the color of his house they need to write an application, so neighbours can complain if they don't want a pink house in their sight. The problem is that with the 4 minarets built in certain towns, there was always a lot of protest, but not enough. In all cases, court rulings decided that it was okay to build the minaret. This caused the problem.
2.) Of course it's obvious that there's more to this then just minarets. Quite obviously this is about the fear of islam and "islamification". What exactly the latter is supposed to be - I have no clue. I don't see how any off the atheist/christian/whatever people in this country are affected or even "turned islamic" by the current state of affairs. I think the most obvious thing that floats around are the two following:
a) The burka as a symbol and the general oppression of women in many of the islamic families. Even if a woman isn't forced by her family to wear a burka or such things, there's still less equality between women and man in muslim culture (which doesn't really have anything to do with that religion in particular, but with the level of education and social advancement). And the Swiss in general, as well as the Swiss women in particular are very emancipated and advanced in ideas of social justice.
b) The general idea that all muslims hate us all. This idea has been pushed in the past, especially since 9/11 by america. It's feared that the idea of disliking the infidel is generally present in the muslim community, and cases where a muslim man kills a westerner just for looking at his daughter out of the blue, or killing his own children because they turn away from islam. There's a consistent fear that even muslims you might not suspect of being fundamentalist might one day stab you in the back.
This is what I'd say the word "islamification" best describes at the moment, as an actual "-fication" isn't really happening, just because there are a couple of mosques and stuff.
3.) How did it even get through? As always there were too many lazy bastards in the left/liberal segment, and the conservative Swiss are regular voters. Also it's a very typical trait to swiss people to have two distinct sides when it comes to foreign culture:
a) On one side, I must say Switerland is a very open minded, open country against foreigners. There's a lot of foreign culture present and the typical avarage pure-breed Swiss man is quite interested especially in foreign culture. They like foreign literature, music, theater... They like the dialog between cultures, and there's good reason why in an international dialog Switzerland long had a very neutral and important position, still with a large part of the UN being situated in Geneva and similar things.
b) On the other hand they seriously hate intruders! The curiosity and interst in foreign cultures ends aprubtly when a Swiss man feels that his home-sweet-swiss-home is being changed by influences not originated in swiss minds. It's kind of a zoo-ish perception. They can spend a long time looking at that tiger in his cage, glaze at its awesomeness and perfection and they're interested in studying it. But don't ever let that tiger out of its cage! That's possibly a reasonable analogy.
It's been found that in this vote, the middle range voters who are generally not right-wing have been been deciding. (As often).
4.) When the results were out, I was outraged at first. Well damned pissed how insensible and daft the voters have been. As I said this whole story brought nothing but discrepancy, made Switzerland less attractive and no we basically all hate each other. Though within a few days of thinking I must say - At least the cat has been finally let out of the bag. The western/islamic conflict is a _real_ problem and people need to seriously care about it. This was not about minarets, it was about the whole of muslim culture which partially stands 180,° in contrary with our western values and a way of dealing with this problem needs to be found. And this outcome has clearly demonstrated that there's a limit to tolerance and that people are pissed.
5.) I've now spent a while searching the internet on opinions by other countries on this ban. And it's seriously incredible what inane amount of bullshit is being said about switzerland. I'm seriously outraged. For example this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaQvbtoTPJw Now I'm not sure how representative that is, or if that TV channel is significant, but the plain INCREDIBLE LIES put forward in this video infuriates me beyond anything. Seriously. First he claims switzerland is not a democracy (wtf?) and the says that the swiss labour party SVP is a zionist party (WTF!?!) and even that there's a football club called "zion", skewing the name of the football club "FC Sion", which is a club in the swiss-french town of Sion in the Alps. Really, what is that shit!? Then there's this guy (very first hit when searching youtube for "swiss ban minaret"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqez7YfnjOw First off all he claims that "there are churches in muslim countries". Well, yeah. But here's some quotes from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Saudi_Arabia "Saudi Arabia allows Christians to enter the country as temporary workers, but does not allow them to practice their faith. Foreign Christians generally only worship in secret within private homes. Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are prohibited. These may include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols, and others."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iran "Due to the socio-economic and political pressures in the years following the Iranian Revolution, periods of outright persecution and times of more latent discrimination, many Iranian Christians, both as part of the general exodus of Iranians and as response to the specific pressures, have emigrated (...) According to the Barnabas Fund, 'the regime rules through fear, and they want Christians to be afraid'. Most prominent has been the death of Haik Hovsepian Mehr, bishop of the Jamiat-e Rabbani, in 1994."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Pakistan "Pakistani law mandates that any "blasphemies" of the Quran are to be met with punishment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iraq "In Iraq, the Christians are suffering from the lack of security since the invasion in 2003."
And the list goes on. Countries which seem to be more liberal in this regard seem to be Syria, Qatar, Lebanon, Egypt, at least by law. It is true that christianity isn't categorically forbidden in some of the muslim countries, but you can't use this as an excuse, really.
Then he goes on saying that this is all a good thing because the west is losing its "high moral ground". Well, so? So now we're all immoral or what? Does that put islam extremism in a better light or what? He says a muslim can come and say "I'm just following what you're doing, you don't allow muslims to build a mosque as they see fit", which is again bullshit because the west has generally been very open and tolerant towards foreign culture and religion, while they've been intolerant for a long time. We basically "invented" freedom of religion for crying out loud... Then he goes with the slippery slope argument that next we'll be banning mosques and the Quran which we all can't do anyway because it's unconstitutional. Btw it's not even sure the minaret law will actually pass because of this. At the end it's just the usual religious blah blah.
In any case. As much as I dislike the outcome of this vote, I'm just as pissed at islam culture. Of course I'm against any religion, and islum as a religion is not neccessarly any worse then christianity. The problem is not the religion, it's the culture, which lacks education and social modernity. I hope this outcome will at least give us all a reason to think more about this conflict and try to solve it reasonably. Education would be the ultimate solution, but there's a long way until that.
edit:
6) One thing I must add which is closely related to 3) is that Swiss people are typically very aware of foreign culture on foreigh ground. It's the general chorus that "if I go to your country, I will behave as you expect me to. I will adhere to your traditions and behaviour, and if I don't like it, I will go back home". And when they say this, they're really not talking out of their asses. It's a very fundamental trait of swiss diplomacy that they have high respect for foreign culture outside of Switzerland.
First off all I agree it's a completely inane law and all it did until now was enrage muslims and draw the people of this country further apart. I voted against it and tried to convince as many people as possible to go voting so that it doesn't go through. I was really surprised when it was accepted. There are a couple of different aspects one needs to look at:
1.) How did it come to this? In this country if you want to build something, you need to write an application, and townspeople have the right to protest. If the people living in that area rejected the building application, the minaret wouldn't get built. I fine with that - the people living in the immediate surroundings of a certain spot should be able to have a word on things happening there. This is applicable to any sort of building, not just towers. Even if someone wants to change the color of his house they need to write an application, so neighbours can complain if they don't want a pink house in their sight. The problem is that with the 4 minarets built in certain towns, there was always a lot of protest, but not enough. In all cases, court rulings decided that it was okay to build the minaret. This caused the problem.
2.) Of course it's obvious that there's more to this then just minarets. Quite obviously this is about the fear of islam and "islamification". What exactly the latter is supposed to be - I have no clue. I don't see how any off the atheist/christian/whatever people in this country are affected or even "turned islamic" by the current state of affairs. I think the most obvious thing that floats around are the two following:
a) The burka as a symbol and the general oppression of women in many of the islamic families. Even if a woman isn't forced by her family to wear a burka or such things, there's still less equality between women and man in muslim culture (which doesn't really have anything to do with that religion in particular, but with the level of education and social advancement). And the Swiss in general, as well as the Swiss women in particular are very emancipated and advanced in ideas of social justice.
b) The general idea that all muslims hate us all. This idea has been pushed in the past, especially since 9/11 by america. It's feared that the idea of disliking the infidel is generally present in the muslim community, and cases where a muslim man kills a westerner just for looking at his daughter out of the blue, or killing his own children because they turn away from islam. There's a consistent fear that even muslims you might not suspect of being fundamentalist might one day stab you in the back.
This is what I'd say the word "islamification" best describes at the moment, as an actual "-fication" isn't really happening, just because there are a couple of mosques and stuff.
3.) How did it even get through? As always there were too many lazy bastards in the left/liberal segment, and the conservative Swiss are regular voters. Also it's a very typical trait to swiss people to have two distinct sides when it comes to foreign culture:
a) On one side, I must say Switerland is a very open minded, open country against foreigners. There's a lot of foreign culture present and the typical avarage pure-breed Swiss man is quite interested especially in foreign culture. They like foreign literature, music, theater... They like the dialog between cultures, and there's good reason why in an international dialog Switzerland long had a very neutral and important position, still with a large part of the UN being situated in Geneva and similar things.
b) On the other hand they seriously hate intruders! The curiosity and interst in foreign cultures ends aprubtly when a Swiss man feels that his home-sweet-swiss-home is being changed by influences not originated in swiss minds. It's kind of a zoo-ish perception. They can spend a long time looking at that tiger in his cage, glaze at its awesomeness and perfection and they're interested in studying it. But don't ever let that tiger out of its cage! That's possibly a reasonable analogy.
It's been found that in this vote, the middle range voters who are generally not right-wing have been been deciding. (As often).
4.) When the results were out, I was outraged at first. Well damned pissed how insensible and daft the voters have been. As I said this whole story brought nothing but discrepancy, made Switzerland less attractive and no we basically all hate each other. Though within a few days of thinking I must say - At least the cat has been finally let out of the bag. The western/islamic conflict is a _real_ problem and people need to seriously care about it. This was not about minarets, it was about the whole of muslim culture which partially stands 180,° in contrary with our western values and a way of dealing with this problem needs to be found. And this outcome has clearly demonstrated that there's a limit to tolerance and that people are pissed.
5.) I've now spent a while searching the internet on opinions by other countries on this ban. And it's seriously incredible what inane amount of bullshit is being said about switzerland. I'm seriously outraged. For example this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaQvbtoTPJw Now I'm not sure how representative that is, or if that TV channel is significant, but the plain INCREDIBLE LIES put forward in this video infuriates me beyond anything. Seriously. First he claims switzerland is not a democracy (wtf?) and the says that the swiss labour party SVP is a zionist party (WTF!?!) and even that there's a football club called "zion", skewing the name of the football club "FC Sion", which is a club in the swiss-french town of Sion in the Alps. Really, what is that shit!? Then there's this guy (very first hit when searching youtube for "swiss ban minaret"): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqez7YfnjOw First off all he claims that "there are churches in muslim countries". Well, yeah. But here's some quotes from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Saudi_Arabia "Saudi Arabia allows Christians to enter the country as temporary workers, but does not allow them to practice their faith. Foreign Christians generally only worship in secret within private homes. Items and articles belonging to religions other than Islam are prohibited. These may include Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings, items with religious symbols, and others."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iran "Due to the socio-economic and political pressures in the years following the Iranian Revolution, periods of outright persecution and times of more latent discrimination, many Iranian Christians, both as part of the general exodus of Iranians and as response to the specific pressures, have emigrated (...) According to the Barnabas Fund, 'the regime rules through fear, and they want Christians to be afraid'. Most prominent has been the death of Haik Hovsepian Mehr, bishop of the Jamiat-e Rabbani, in 1994."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Pakistan "Pakistani law mandates that any "blasphemies" of the Quran are to be met with punishment."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_in_Iraq "In Iraq, the Christians are suffering from the lack of security since the invasion in 2003."
And the list goes on. Countries which seem to be more liberal in this regard seem to be Syria, Qatar, Lebanon, Egypt, at least by law. It is true that christianity isn't categorically forbidden in some of the muslim countries, but you can't use this as an excuse, really.
Then he goes on saying that this is all a good thing because the west is losing its "high moral ground". Well, so? So now we're all immoral or what? Does that put islam extremism in a better light or what? He says a muslim can come and say "I'm just following what you're doing, you don't allow muslims to build a mosque as they see fit", which is again bullshit because the west has generally been very open and tolerant towards foreign culture and religion, while they've been intolerant for a long time. We basically "invented" freedom of religion for crying out loud... Then he goes with the slippery slope argument that next we'll be banning mosques and the Quran which we all can't do anyway because it's unconstitutional. Btw it's not even sure the minaret law will actually pass because of this. At the end it's just the usual religious blah blah.
In any case. As much as I dislike the outcome of this vote, I'm just as pissed at islam culture. Of course I'm against any religion, and islum as a religion is not neccessarly any worse then christianity. The problem is not the religion, it's the culture, which lacks education and social modernity. I hope this outcome will at least give us all a reason to think more about this conflict and try to solve it reasonably. Education would be the ultimate solution, but there's a long way until that.
edit:
6) One thing I must add which is closely related to 3) is that Swiss people are typically very aware of foreign culture on foreigh ground. It's the general chorus that "if I go to your country, I will behave as you expect me to. I will adhere to your traditions and behaviour, and if I don't like it, I will go back home". And when they say this, they're really not talking out of their asses. It's a very fundamental trait of swiss diplomacy that they have high respect for foreign culture outside of Switzerland.