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No minarets? Fear and trembling
Q: What's your reaction to Sunday's decision by voters in Switzerland to ban construction of minarets, the slender towers from which Muslims are called to daily prayers?
Deo gratias, for the First Amendment: Voting to ban (or permit) minarets in the U.S. would never be permitted. We are spared the high dudgeon that Europeans (including of course the Swiss government) are lathering on the "no-to-minarets" vote of a majority of Swiss citizens.
Yet, were such a vote to take place in the United States, it would be touch and go with a good chance of passing.
Is this religious intolerance? Or is it the expression of deep-seated fear that Islamic extremists are the tip of an Islamic iceberg longing to restore the caliphate and extend itself to the Alps and beyond? Deep-seated fears and intolerance feed on one another. The Swiss vote shows that otherwise rational people with Enlightenment values living in a modern society are capable of expressing those fears, in fact, in a democratic manner.
Let me admit that I have felt a gut-wrenching revulsion not at minarets, but at head-to-toe-veiled women some with eyes barely visible. It is a rare and transient site in airports or on the sidewalks of New York. I assure myself that this is an expression of these women's religious and cultural beliefs. Furthermore, I say to myself: this is a free country; wear what you dare; it's none of my business. And yet....yet, I am left questioning what such a cover-up says about those beliefs and their underlying view of women?
The answer for the Swiss and others is not casting moral opprobrium on the "no" voters, but actually dissecting and examining the fears that led them to vote as they did. In that undertaking, members of the Western Enlightenment majority may not be wholly credible. We need the Muslim citizens of Switzerland--and elsewhere, including the United States--to explain and clarify--day in and day out. It is a complex task. Some variants of Islam are living in the modern world with pre-modern ideas and values. Other variants have adapted while retaining their beliefs and values. It can be done. Catholics and Jews have done it, no reason Islam cannot and should not.
By
Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
|
December 2, 2009; 11:41 AM ET
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Posted by: tjmorgan1 | December 16, 2009 3:51 PM
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Dear Mrs. Steinfels
As much as I, a Swiss citizen, am gutted about the Swiss vote on minarets ban, I do not agree with your comment that exhibits little understanding of Swiss democracy and history. Switzerland has been a place of refuge for the persecuted for centuries (one shameful exception: Switzerland could and should have saved much more persecuted jews during WWII). This was also the case for the Muslims from the Balkans which represents the large majority of the Swiss Muslim communiy; they came as war refugees in the last 20 years.
It is wrong (and very easy) to explain the Swiss vote with primitive fear or even with stubborn xenophobia. Switzerland has a long democratic history, and it represents the successful attempt to integrate people of several ethnics, languages, and religions into one community. Switzerland has succeeded in the long term - certainly not all multiethnic states can say that.
While it is elsewhere still going strong to measure the degree of civilization of a society at the highest possible proportion of migrants, many Swiss feel quite differently. They think that living together is more worthwile than living in parallel (in "ghettos"). This conception has ensured utmost freedom for every single person in Switzerland. That's also why Swiss are not reluctant to look at immigration from the perspective of whether it fits the community with their shared values (e.g. democracy, principle of equal opportunities, equal rights for women, etc.) or not.
Of course, fears have been conjured and some might have voted in favor of the minaret ban because they see in every Muslim a potential terrorist. And that grieves me.
For small states, so said Montesquieu, direct democracy fits. Switzerland has the direct democracy and practices it with passion and conviction. Swiss citizens take their political responsabilities very seriously in all wha matters the public affairs of the community. The fact that 57.5% of participants have expressed themselves in the vote against the further construction of minarets, is an information about which one should take enough time to think.
Posted by: Fred75 | December 10, 2009 12:54 PM
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As a dual national Swiss-American living in the USA, who voted in favor of this initiative after giving it careful thought, I believe I have something to say to my fellow Americans and others who may misunderstand this decision by the Swiss people. For me, my vote was about preserving Swiss culture -- NOT religious intolerance. Muslims remain free to worship as they wish. Switzerland is a very small country, maybe a little bigger than Massachusetts with a population of 7 million people. It has distinct cultures that have been around for hundreds of years. If it were to become a melting pot like America, in a generation or two there would be no Switzerland.
Posted by: pjs1965 | December 5, 2009 7:58 PM
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In my opinion Switzerland is the ONLY democracy that I am aware of in the world. For others to complain of the results of this democracy look to your own systems. Who do you believe runs the United States /Europe,look at the rest of the world can you name any country except Switzerland that holds referendums on a regular basis to actually ask their population what they should do. Here in the U.K. we the voters are totally ignored for five years after each election. On this particular case how many Islamic states allow new churches to be built?