Swiss people ban building of new minarets

[irydion]

Also, if someone doesn't know it, the origin of a minaret is a christian belfry (or whatever church towers are called in english). It's not a muslim invention.

 

[Kulindahr]

Also, if someone doesn't know it, the origin of a minaret is a christian belfry (or whatever church towers are called in english). It's not a muslim invention.

That's one account. Some are known to have actually been watchtowers, used because they made convenient tall places to yell from, so another account has it that they derived from watchtowers. A third account is that they derive from lighthouses, an argument given some weight by the fact that "minaret" is the word for lighthouse.

I have an idea for the Muslims, though: they could put up their own cell towers by the mosques, for their own cell phone company, and then put a platform up on the cell tower.....

 

[irydion]

I know about these accounts. But the watchtower theory is associated with Al-Qayrawan if I recall. And there were belfries in Africa as well. While the example of North Africa, the very edge of islamic world, could barely spread all over the empire.
It is also true what you say about the name of the minaret, but name is one thing, and the origin is another.

 

[bankside]

The integration of third world stone age fundamentalists has failed. However the integration of ordinary muslims and other ordinary europeans has gone reasonably well, and muslim communities are well established for several centuries within europe. Europe has indigenous muslim culture.

Also, let us not forget turkey, a para-european moderate majority muslim country with reasonable prospects of european membership; Turkey is an example of what islam looks like when it has its own enlightenment, and secular forces restrain religion from its usual excesses.

When people see the foolishness of their own fervour, they can reject their religion, or they can re-imagine it as something less offensive. It worked in both of those aspects for "christendom," through the reformation, the enlightenment, & the renaissance. There is no reason why islamic countries cannot follow the same path of moderation and progress, and start dismantling the "ummah" just as "christendom" has fallen by the wayside as a relevant concept.

 

[SoulSearcher]

Swiss citizens disgrace themselves on minaret vote (from the Vancouver Sun):

http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion...ce+themselves+minaret+vote/2292469/story.html

THE MONTREAL GAZETTEDECEMBER 2, 2009


A sizable proportion of Switzerland's 7.5 million people committed an unexpected and shocking act of religious intolerance last weekend by voting to ban the building of more minarets on mosques.

[Quote truncated by moderator]

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

 

[SoulSearcher]

I do not know where you are from, but it is quite clear that your knowledge of Islam in Western Europe and Turkey is grounded in wishful thinking instead of reality.

The mass immigration of muslims to Western Europe started in the 1960's, not centuries ago.
The crime and unemployment rates for the first and second generation of these immigrants are atrocious. Educational levels are equally terrible. Inter-cultural marriage is non-existant. Influx of brides from their home countries remain steady and high. And all these figures are on a further decline for the third and fourth generation. These are the kids of the kids of the kids of the 1970's immigrants. And these kids all still have a double nationality, which means legislation in the countries their grandparents immigrated from still compels them to do military service (Turkey), and obliges them to name their kids with proper Arabic names (Marocco). This to illustrate the level of control these countries still exert over their 'foreign subjects'.
To call this a 'reasonably well' integration is dellusional.

The only place in Europe where muslim presence has been established for centuries is on the Balkan, which is a cause of the Ottoman invasion and conquest of this region. The Yugoslav wars of the 1990's are an example of how well established and integrated this 'indigenous' muslim culture actually was. Indeed many, many centuries after they 'immigrated'.

Turkey has been governed by the AK party headed by Erdoğan since 2003. This is non-secular conservative religious party. The recent tentions, lawsuits, arrests and implimentation of religiously inspired laws show how torn Turkey still is between the enforced secularism of Atatürk and Islamic religious sentiments and influence.

I am sorry, but your optimism is misplaced and certainly not shared by the vast majority of the European electorate.

I'm Israeli, living in California. What exactly would "integration" look like to you? To me, it seems like the same excuse wingnuts use to push for tougher stance on immigration of Mexicans in California. I mean if I start eating cheeseburgers and watching baseball, will that make me American enough? What would make me more Israeli and less American? Is there a scale? At what point does this turn into veiled racism?

 

[SoulSearcher]

The Swiss People's Party is famous in Europe for being an extreme right wing party, that thrives on spreading fear and xenophobia. And the homosexuals who are cheering this clearly racist legislation in the name of "direct democracy", which is what Switzerland has, need to know that they are NO friends of gays in Switzerland. There are gay rights in Switzerland, precisely because it was not allowed to be put to vote. Minarets have nothing to do with Islamist extremism. Gay rights should also be not put to vote, rainbow flags should not be put to vote, it may represent the "gay agenda" or "an attempt to recruit our children to the homosexual lifestyle".

In 2007, the Swiss People's Party was almost charged for a nasty anti-gay poster (they're famous for that as you can see), trying to block a voter referendum to grant inheritance rights to same-sex couples, whom the ad campaign called “infertile and well-off.” The Party was not charged because Switzerland didn't have legislation protection homosexuals from public insults. They also want the anti-racism commission in Switzerland disbanded.
http://www.sfbaytimes.com/index.php?sec=article&article_id=7068

The colours of the hands, the sheep, the crows are no coincidence, as I'm sure you'll recognise.

 

[SoulSearcher]

This is not a mud throwing contest. If you do not like direct democracy, that is fine with me, but the vote passed mainly due to the backing of the feminist movement, not on an anti-gay ticket by an anti-gay party.

You should take your own advise on blanket statements to heart and try for a bit mor nuance.

What are you talking about? Who said the minaret vote had anything to do with gay rights. I said that this far right party is no friends of the gays, as far as legislation goes, and that direct democracy is not the correct way to ensure rights of ethnic, sexual, and political minorities, as we have seen in California with Prop 8. There were all kinds of fear mongering and bigotry perpetuated in both cases. People cheering bigoted and xenophobic legislation who are themselves targets of "direct democracy" need to be more aware of this. Minarets have nothing to do with females' rights, its not like mosques are gonna close down. It was just a symbolic vote to publicly affirm bigotry. It'll be like Californians voting to ban the rainbow flag, which really won't affect gays or how gays affect society, but symbolically, it'll mean public rejection of gays and the "gay agenda".

And I'm very familiar with Swiss feminists. And this wouldn't be the first time feminists would lead a mostly racist campaign. In the US, early feminists were racist, and didn't want black men to get the vote before they did. Very very few Muslim women in Switzerland wear burqas, but it didn't affect the dirty campaign that they led:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6936267.ece

 

[SoulSearcher]

I have stated why I think integration has not succeeded. I am not going to repeat my reasoning ad nauseum, just because you feel argumentative, and like to change the issue.

Answer your own questions, they seem to be rhetoric anyway.

Oh I'm not changing the issue, you listed a number of ways Swiss Muslims haven't assimilated, but I still don't understand what assimilation means. I mean what would you have different than what you stated is the case? There are countries like Canada where various groups are allowed and even encouraged to maintain cultural ties. I don't quite understand what assimilation would look like, for example, in my case, and since you speak so much about assimilation, I thought you would offer some insights. And I also mentioned that in my experience here in the US, assimilation is often used as a cover by racists to push for restrictions on immigration or migrants rights around the border states.

 

[bankside]

Splash, I was very measured in my remarks. I opened by stating that the integration of stone-aged fundamentalists had failed. If you were trying to contradict me, your remarks only seemed to support my premise. Also, I qualified Turkey as having only reasonable prospects of successs in its European ambitions. Yet it's governance in the last 5 years cannot overturn almost a century of progress away from the stone age. A setback is not the same as a failure.

The Balkan thing probably had more to do with the stone age rearing it's head within Christianity than within Islam, and yes they have been there for centuries.

Europe is supposed to be the continent that understands nuance. It isn't in evidence here and if your assessment of the European electorate is correct, it is they who disappoint.

 

[Kulindahr]

I know about these accounts. But the watchtower theory is associated with Al-Qayrawan if I recall. And there were belfries in Africa as well. While the example of North Africa, the very edge of islamic world, could barely spread all over the empire.
It is also true what you say about the name of the minaret, but name is one thing, and the origin is another.

The word you want is steeple; a belfry is where bells hang.

At the time Islam's hordes swept across North Africa, Christians had barely begun putting up towers of any kind by their churches. The few towers they did have were watchtowers.

Transition from a watchtower, which was also not infrequently used as a place from which to make public announcements (a la the crier in The Wizard of Id) to a steeple or minaret is the most likely progression, since Christians weren't really using steeples until the late seventh and early eighth centuries.

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm Israeli, living in California. What exactly would "integration" look like to you? To me, it seems like the same excuse wingnuts use to push for tougher stance on immigration of Mexicans in California. I mean if I start eating cheeseburgers and watching baseball, will that make me American enough? What would make me more Israeli and less American? Is there a scale? At what point does this turn into veiled racism?

That's a superb question!

What I recall from sociology class is that integration has occurred when the newcomers have adopted sufficient of their new country's customs and attitudes that they are no longer seen as outsiders, or if they have been there long enough engaging in positive interaction with their new country that they are accepted as a positive part of the cultural "landscape".

The Irish in America are a good example of the former; the Chinese in San Francisco and elsewhere of the latter.

After that it gets complicated......

The Mexican question illustrates one of those complications: when a certain ethnic community has been present and accepted, but a new influx of the same folks occurs in a way that brings negative response, the response doesn't distinguish between the established community and the newer immigrants. When criminality is associated with the newcomers, that serves as an opening for the entry of all sorts of animosity.

But the Mexicans also make a good comparison with the Muslims in Europe: with the Mexicans, even the majority of illegals, assimilation is following its typical pattern in the U.S.: the first generation acquires enough English to get by, the second speaks two languages, the third hardly speaks any of the original language; adoption of customs is following the typical pattern as well. In Europe, with Muslims, this is not the case in general.

I don't know enough about one important aspect of integration/assimilation to venture any comment, but I'll introduce it for others to chime in on; it's the "their kids play with our kids" phenomenon: when little Jonny brings home little Juan to play after school, the "otherness" of Juan's family drops immensely (yes, there are exceptions, but this even happens with gays -- I recall an article where a fairly thoroughly ostracized gay couple became suddenly far more accepted when one's son started going with his friends to their homes). The question here would be whether the Muslim children do in fact play with the children of the established population.

There's also one definite negative which fits here: when immigrants seek to have their customs not merely respected but honored/followed by their new country, the way they are viewed tends to shift from "newcomer" to "invader". That's been seen when Hispanics in the U.S. march for 'rights' -- and wave Mexican flags when they do. Welcoming attitudes can flip totally in such cases. According to reports, Muslims want their adopted countries to turn into carbon copies of their original ones in many ways -- and so long as that is true, they will not be accepted, integrated, or assimilated.

 

[SoulSearcher]

This is a longer essay written by a Swiss and presented at London's Goethe Institute back in 2003, but it highlights some of the issues and concerns as perceived by this author. His final reflections start with, "Coverage of the terrorist attacks in the United States, by politicians and the media alike, has singled Muslims out as the new ‘damned of the earth’, and made dialogue even more urgent."

"After the tragedy in the US, security measures were taken all over the world, including in Switzerland. Clearly this security policy was justified to some extent. But as a policy approach in the longer term, it will provoke serious tensions if no distinction continues to be made between radical and moderate Muslim movements."

http://www.opendemocracy.net/faith-europe_islam/article_867.jsp

No hate please!

 

[Kulindahr]

To a certain extent the inability or failure to distinguish between ordinary Muslims and their barbarian cousins is a product, in the U.S. at least, of an educational system far more focused on helping kids feel good about themselves than on teaching them to think, and to value thinking. The lack of ability to discriminate leaves people relying on their emotions, and the evaluation criterion becomes "Do I feel safe?"

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

A recent poll suggests that if the referendum would be held today, 69 % would vote against the minarets instead of just the 57.5 % that did.

source: http://www.geennieuws.com/2009/12/en-het-minaret-debat-gaat-door-nu-is-69-tegen/

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

It would still be wrong if 99.99% of people wanted to ban it.

[url="http://www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=50841"]That's what the OIC said.[/URL]

I doubt they get far with it, somehow.

 

[Kulindahr]

Maybe the government should find an alternative plan, to allow minarets but require certain architectural and aesthetic standards. They could be designed to blend in with the scenery, using other forms as inspiration:

• farm silos
• cell phone towers
• carnival rides
• the space shuttle
• giant dead trees
• the Seattle Space Needle
• airport control towers
• intercontinental ballistic missiles
• windmills
• Toronto's CN Tower
• smokestacks

Just a thought.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

Maybe the government should find an alternative plan, to allow minarets but require certain architectural and aesthetic standards. They could be designed to blend in with the scenery, using other forms as inspiration:

• intercontinental ballistic missiles

Just a thought.

When I was in Istanbul, the minarets looked like just like they were.

It reminded me of the 80s cartoon M.A.S.K. ...



Did you know that "Matt Trakker" sounds exactly like "Matt Wanker" in Dutch?

 

[SoulSearcher]

What do mosque minarets and kosher slaughter have in common in Switzerland? A piece in the Haaretz that talks about the use of referenda in Swiss history to get around constitutional protections by using excuses, to prevent certain minorities to immigrate, laws against Jews are still enforced in Switzerland.

Shlomo Avineri

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1132945.html

What do mosque minarets and kosher slaughter have in common? Both are banned in Switzerland, a free, liberal, secular and democratic country.

[Quote truncated by moderator] © Copyright 2009 Haaretz. All rights reserved

 

[irydion]

kosher slaughter is forbidden? very good, unless it's forbidden even if the animal is stunned before the procedure. They should forbid importing kosher meat as well, unless the animal was stunned first.

the claim that "the same circles" are behind both actions is dumb.