The Trouble With Minarets

Democracy isn't pretty when the majority of a country makes a political decision that goes against more universal values of tolerance and equal rights.

But that is exactly what the Swiss have done. The minarets, of which there are four in the country, do not even conduct the call to prayer, which is their traditional use. The ban, following an aggresive campaign by the SVP (Swiss People's Party), got through with a 57% majority.

This is one more example of an anti-immigrant, even racist undercurrent that underlines the SVP. This is the same party that kicked up a fuss with their advertising campaign to tighten immigration laws with a poster of white sheep kicking a black one out of Switzerland. Their 2007 justification for the minaret ban (when the campaign started) is a laughable one if it wasn't such a serious issue:

"We're not against mosques but the minaret is not mentioned in the Koran or other important Islamic texts. It just symbolises a place where Islamic law is established."

says Dr Ulrich Schlüer, the brain behind the original sheep poster, and an SVP member of Parliament. More recently, he also claimed that minarets were a symbol of the political will to establish Sharia law.

Local Muslim leaders have avoided drawing attention to the issue, reports the New York Times, and have avoided interviews with international Muslim news agencies. But a political backlash from other Muslim nations will probably be certain, given the uproar from Muslim political leaders on past symbolic gestures (such as the Danish cartoon controversy) that might be offensive to Muslims.

This is troubling not only for the 400,000 Muslims of Switzerland, but also for the Swiss government, who actively opposed the ban and now are placed in the politically tricky position of enforcing it, while mounting a PR campaign in Muslim countries and wooing Switzerland's many wealthy Muslim investors with whom they have commercial and banking ties.

Posted on November 29, 2009

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